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“I
wanted to give it a try,” she says of her decision
to take a job in Frazer.
It was hard.
The teacher who preceded her lasted only until December.
“As
a first-year teacher I came in thinking I was going to be the nice one and I
got tougher,” she says.
Ginter recalls
how early in the year one student would sneeze violently through much of class,
particularly when she passed near him.
“I’m
allergic to white people,” he murmured. “I think he really
believed it,” she says.
Frazer is
nearly all Assiniboine, but Ginter says her students have little knowledge of
their culture, or much pride in their school and community.
In Bozeman,
Ginter had friends in the Native American Studies program learning their history
and traditions, to bring that knowledge back to their tribes.
“I expected
to meet all these Native American people who are proud of their culture and indulge
their culture, but I don’t really see that,” she says.
She tries
to fill the gap. During Native American week, she studied about and taught her
students traditional American Indian cuisine.
She thinks
the kids’ fascination with rap music and the gang symbols they display
is replacing their history. “They’re trying to relate to a culture
because they don’t have knowledge of their own,” she says.
She has gotten
to know many in the community who were initially reticent. “I’m not
shy,” she says.
She plays
basketball and jumps rope with students during her free periods. Her social life
consists of shooting pool on Thursday nights at the Wagon Wheel bar in Nashua,
the town where she lives. Many weekends she visits her mother.
“My
little 7th graders, I think they’re pretty upset I’m not coming back,” Ginter
says. She’s not sure what effect her leaving will have on the rest of her
students. For the older ones, it will be nothing new.
She isn’t
sure what will happen to her current students.
“There
are so many awesome kids here,” Ginter says.
“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.”
Kim
Black Eagle, whose Assiniboine name means “Dancing Sacred
Black Eagle Woman” will probably be back next year.
“I’m
an Indian teacher and this is my community, so I stay,” she says at one
moment. But then she wavers.
At 43, Black
Eagle graduated from MSU Northern in
Havre last spring with a degree in biology. It is her dream to go to medical
school.
“They’re
demanding Indian doctors just as much as they’re demanding Indian teachers,” she
says.
The idea
of not returning, of applying to medical school, is intimidating but alluring.
“I
shouldn’t give up my dream,” she says. “But I think, if I
leave, do these kids have a chance?”
Now she
helps them by teaching the Assiniboine language, a knowledge given her by her
grandparents and aunt.
“Our
pens and pencils are our weapons of knowledge to save our people,” she
tells the kids.
Black Eagle’s
small body contains a manic energy. Her black hair swings side-to-side as she
scrawls words on the board furiously, and darts from student to student.
It is her
first year teaching at the school but she has lived on the Fort Peck Reservation
all her life, growing up on her family’s 140 acres north of Nashua.
She spent
years at Fort Peck Community
College, gradually
migrating in her studies to the natural sciences. Then she enrolled at Northern,
twice a week driving almost 200 miles to her classes, while raising six children.
Last summer,
while preparing to take the med school qualifying test in Grand Forks, N.D.,
her son Ricky, 17, was trampled during the wild horse races at the Wolf Point
Stampede Grounds. She withdrew from the program to care for him.
Back in
Frazer, with a son who needed her close, Black Eagle jumped at the opportunity
when the school needed a language teacher one week before classes started.
Now, it
is 11:20 a.m. on Friday and the juniors file in after the bell. There are eight
of them, just one girl. The boys are nearly men: tall and built thick, with
broad shoulders and hard eyes.
Black Eagle’s
room lacks windows, but her walls are bright, with coloring projects. Posters
hang on the walls with photos of young, sun-drenched Indians in traditional
garb.
A chessboard
rests on a table near the back and throughout the day students come in to play
during their free time. And they’re good.
“Chess.
That’s the game of life,” Black Eagle says. “The king is
usually not your friend.”
Two of the
boys sit in the back along the counter that runs against the wall. Her son
Ricky sits at her desk.
Black Eagle
begins the lesson but the boys talk over her, challenging her. In a book another
teacher gave them, the Lakota language differs from what she is teaching.
She explains
that Lakota, a variant of the Assiniboine language, is passed on orally. It
is why the kids will see words spelled differently than on the brittle, hand-written
sheets Black Eagle works from, sheets written by an elder before dying.
The boys
begin to shout over her, ignoring her. The question of language is resolved,
but they argue for the sake of it. The girl stares at her desk. Black Eagle
tries to restore order but the boys won’t have it. One gets up and walks
briskly toward the door, exiting without explanation. Black Eagle steps out
into the hallway after him, and then hesitates, stops. She can’t leave
the room unattended. With one eye on the class, she buzzes the office intercom.
The boys
smirk when there is no answer.
After a
few long seconds, the office secretary’s voice crackles. Black Eagle
explains a student who has left class now wanders the halls.
Ricky
argues with Black Eagle about what she should have done. He shifts
and fidgets in his mother’s chair. She tells him if he
doesn’t settle down she’ll send him to the office.
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