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            “On the high school side,” he says, “we don’t keep them that long.”
            Scrambling to fill vacancies often results in the hiring of teachers outside their areas of concentration. A superintendent might hire an English teacher to teach science, because no other options exist. But after that teacher’s first year, the school board often won’t renew the teacher’s contract because he or she is not qualified.
            “A lot of teachers are let go because they’re not meeting district expectations,” says Smoker Broaddus. “They need high quality, extremely motivated teachers that want to be there every day.”
            Other teachers leave because of the remote location, or they just get worn down by discipline problems.
            English teacher Don Giesler will be back, but convincing his students of that is hard. Students express disbelief, pointing out he had signed only a one-year contract. Giesler tries to allay their doubts, explaining a one-year contract was all he could sign. Teachers at Frazer are offered only one-year contracts until the end of their third year.
            “The juniors were terrible when I first got here,” he says. Yet recently one of them told him, “We’re glad you haven’t given up on us.”
Every few weeks Giesler’s 7th graders publish a six-page newspaper, “Smoke Signals,” consisting of weather, interviews with graduating seniors and articles -- mainly about basketball players.
            The teachers are reluctant to speak about the specifics of disciplinary problems. But in the March 20 issue of “Smoke Signals,” an anonymous student essay titled “Life in Frazer” provides some explanation.
            “I am a person who lives in Frazer, Montana. It is a place where lots of bad stuff happens. Many people in this town do drugs, steal, or get abused. Many boys in my class act mean and rude. There are a few boys in my class that have been bad due to family problems. Some boys have had bad experiences, deaths, or even been touched by someone. Many things go bad in this town. I wonder why?  Many people act that way to express their feelings towards the world and to other people. The only solution in this town and school is to sit down with someone and let it all out and then maybe our school or community could change or even act like it’s a better town.”
            At times a collective lack of self-esteem seems to pervade the school. Giesler asks the seven first-period seniors present, out of the 10 who make up the graduating class, why so many teachers leave.
            “Because we’re bad students,” one replies.
            The seniors describe how they’ve made past teachers cry. They yawn. They speak with a mixture of despair and pride at how they’ve driven away weaker teachers.
            “They got to be able to stand up,” says one, as tardy students trickle in.
            Standing behind a lectern at the front of the classroom, Giesler is tall, with intelligent eyes behind thick glasses. He is bald, something students and fellow teachers tease him about relentlessly. He bears it with a grin.
            Giesler, 51, seems timid at first. But soon you realize almost nothing rattles him. He was a jail guard in Billings for six years before taking a pay cut to teach at Frazer. Before that he spent 20 years in the military. Both jobs, he says, were good preparation for Frazer.
            Whitesell found Giesler’s resume posted last summer on the Office of Public Instruction Web site and persuaded him to come to Frazer, promising “free reign.” At the time, Giesler recalls, 12 of the 14 English teacher openings on the OPI site were on reservations.
            Giesler declined offers off-reservation and moved into the Teacherage. His coffee table there is strewn with worksheets and books. Giesler puts in four hours a night on homework. Living alone allows him to devote the time to his job.
            Initially, the kids put up a front to a teacher they assumed wouldn’t last.
            “God, I won’t make it until Christmas,” he remembers thinking. Passing by the library one day he saw a female teacher lying on the carpet crying. Other teachers’ support helped him to keep going.
            Slowly, his days got better.
            Aside from a basic Native American education class required for teaching certification in Montana, Giesler received no other training for Frazer, relying on his experience with other cultures from his military years. At times, when students get angry they call him prejudiced. He replies that he wouldn’t be in Frazer if that were true.
            The kids, he says, threw at him the insult, “You’re nothing but a Sioux.”
            At Fort Peck, the Sioux and Assiniboine share the reservation, though they did not get along historically. Frazer is the only town on the reservation almost entirely Assiniboine. For Frazer kids, to call someone a Sioux is to put them down.
            “Thanks for considering me Native, but I’m not. I’m German,” Giesler replies.
            Lately, his students question why he still makes them work. By this time of year, they tell him, previous teachers had given up and were showing movies.
            “It’s been worth it,” he says of his decision to come to Frazer. “If you see even a little bit of progress it’s rewarding.”
           
            Becky Ginter won’t be back next fall. “Me leaving has nothing to do with the school,” she says as she scrubs the previous day’s pots. “I need a Wal-Mart and a stoplight.”
            Ginter, who grew up in Malta, 100 miles west, teaches sewing, cooking, childcare and health. She laughs easily and loudly. When a student boasts to her of being a “P.I.M.P.” (a reference to a song by rapper 50-Cent), she replies by adding an “L.E.” to the end of his spelling.
            Ginter, 27, thinks out loud. The first half of her thought comes at normal volume and then her voice drops conspiratorially to a whisper, as when she looks at a calendar and says: “I wish we could have parent-teacher conferences on Thursday so we could have a short day” – pause, whisper – “on Friday.”
            The Frazer school board suspended her program due to lack of funding. Ginter’s position was eliminated.
            She says she would have left in any case. “The convenience of life is really different out here,” she explains.
            Ginter graduated from Montana State University in Bozeman in 2001 and taught preschool for two years in Billings.

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