Online magazine features Hays-Lodge Pole

Slate online magazine’s recent edition has a feature on the need for more Native teachers. The article highlights almost exclusively the Hays-Lodge Pole district on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

The remote district in southern Blaine County has been through several troubles in recent years, but school officials told Slate that the number of Native teachers has increased from 38 percent in 1997 to 78 percent today.

Slate quotes Aloha Shortman, a sixth-grade teacher, as saying she is more successful in making contact with her students not because she’s a better teacher, but because she is Native.

When she asked her class to find Italy on a world map during a social studies lesson last August, they couldn’t do it, she recalled.

One student’s finger landed on Brazil. Others grew bored and restless.

Shortman quickly shifted gears, searching for a way to make a lesson on the Roman Republic.

“What about the Law of Twelve Tables?” she asked, referring to the foundational Roman legislation. “What does this remind you of, in our culture? What do we have that’s like it?”

Several hands shot up.

“The tribal code?” the first student answered correctly.

While test scores of other minority students across the United States have slowly risen the article said, those of Native students have stayed the same, the article said.

Having more Native role models might help, it said.

For instance, it noted that Denise Juneau has been elected the first Native American superintendent of public education.

Hays-Lodge Pole Superintendent Margaret Campbell said her job is to hire the best teachers, and if they are Indian, all the better.

Indian teachers are often good for Indian students, she said, “because they’re going to be invested if they know the students will be their neighbors.”

Non-Native teachers have varying degrees of success, she said.

An Industrial arts teacher who moved to the area moved out before school started because he didn't like the remoteness of northern Montana, she said.

Yet, another English teacher was very popular with students. After five years, she moved to Africa to meet with her boyfriend she had met online.

“We tried to get her to stay,” Campbell said