Educators from around North Dakota attended the annual North Dakota Indian Education Summit at the state Capitol in Bismarck.
More than 120 educators registered for the Summit, sponsored by the Department of Public Instruction.
Lucy Fredericks is the director of Indian and Multicultural Education for DPI. She said the Summit's purpose has always been to provide professional development and training, with the focus on Indian education.
"Eleven percent of our students in K-12 are Native Americans," Fredericks said. "It's our highest minority population in the state."
Fredericks said the Summit provides strategies that are culturally relevant for teachers to use in the classroom, to help those students succeed. She said over the past 11 years, the Summit has been successful.
"We raised our Native American graduation rate from 52 percent to 78 percent within 10 years," Fredericks said.
Fredericks said the hope is teachers take what they learn at the Summit, and apply it in their classrooms.
The keynote speaker at the Summit was 2024’s national Teacher of the Year. Missy Testerman teaches English as a Second Language to kindergarten through eighth grade students at Rogersville, Tennessee.
"One of the things I'm really passionate about is appreciating, understanding and elevating all of our students' stories," Testerman said in an interview. "Native American stories are inspirational, they're important, they're part of North Dakota's history, and part of the history of the United States. So I'm just thrilled that the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction feels like this is important, and focuses on it."
Testerman said she wants teachers to start the school year with the mind-set that all of the students can learn.
"The most important factor in our classrooms is not technology," Teterman said. "It's always the teacher in the classroom."
