I’m the receptionist, the attendance secretary and the person who finds and recruits speech pathologists. “If we weren’t able to secure a teacher for our district, families would either be forced to homeschool, send their students to boarding school or travel multiple hours a day for them to attend the nearest school.” Lewis is an invaluable asset to the community, District Clerk Victoria Davis said. Lewis, did you hear him read to me? He’s getting so good!’ The kids share in my teacher-joy and that’s something so special.” One of the seventh graders came up to me and said, ‘Mrs.
“My favorite moment was when a struggling reader was starting to really grow. “The kids learn together and the older kids work with and help the younger kids,” Lewis said.
The one-room environment offers unique opportunities. The school district provides housing for Lewis and her family, and they have come to love the community so much that they are building a new home in the district.
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The two-hour trip from Boise takes drivers on a narrow, unpaved road through a canyon that can become impassable in bad weather. Stunning mountain vistas are part of everyday life in Prairie, Idaho, population 116. “I became a teacher because I love the spark that happens when things click for kids, when they start to decode words, or when they are inspired to write a story, or when a math concept becomes clear,” Lewis said. In Prairie, she has the freedom to incorporate service- and project-based learning into her classroom and to develop lessons that span multiple grade levels. “Their support continued long after I graduated and helped me continue to grow as an educator.” Instructors who were passionate about education. Her education at Boise State was thorough, she said, enhanced by “I was drawn to the one-room schoolhouse because of the challenge and the opportunity to stretch my creative teaching muscles.” “Before coming to Prairie, I spent my entire life in Boise and the surrounding areas,” Lewis said. She teaches five students in kindergarten through 8th grade, including her daughter Lily, a seventh-grader. Stephanie Lewis (BA, elementary education, 2015) became the district’s only teacher in 2020. Nestled between evergreen trees in Prairie, Idaho, across from a sweeping meadow with the Trinity Mountains rising behind it, sits a bright red schoolhouse. One alum’s story: Teacher Stephanie Lewis took the lessons she learned at Boise State to her one-room school in Idaho’s smallest school district It will fund three additional placements in the fall. In spring 2023, grant funds placed teachers in the towns of Gooding and Melba. Mentoring continues through that first year in the classroom. The Micron Aspiring Rural Teaching Fellowship provides student teachers with a $5,000 stipend for their student teaching semester in exchange for a commitment to spend their first year of teaching in a rural school. “Our hope is to build collaborative partnerships where Boise State and rural districts work alongside each other in a hands-on setting,” Gochnour said.Īnother partnership, with the Micron Foundation, is placing more qualified teachers in rural Idaho classrooms.
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Gochnour has been a rural educator for close to a decade and will be based in Minidoka, Idaho, a small town in South Central Idaho, to provide on-site coaching and professional development for new teachers across the region. What's it Like in Idaho's Smallest School District?Īs a step towards Satterfield’s goals, the college hired Bethany Gochnour (MA, curriculum and instruction, 2018) for the new position of rural clinical instructor. “We want each of our graduates to become education professionals and leaders ready to contribute to the Idaho workforce.” “Meeting rural school superintendents has allowed me to clearly understand what their needs are so the College of Education can reimagine and create programs that prepare our students,” Satterfield said. One of his first outings was a tour of rural school districts in Southern Idaho. An Idaho learning tourĭean James Satterfield arrived at Boise State in July 2022.
School districts in rural Idaho face unique challenges and as a result, find it difficult to retain experienced teachers for a range of reasons, including remote locations and scarce housing.īoise State’s College of Education is on a mission to help rural districts contend with these struggles and ensure that young Idahoans get a quality education, whether they’re in the state’s largest school district – West Ada with more than 39,000 students – or one of its smallest, Prairie, with five. The classroom is up-to-date and wired with modern technology like any other classroom in the state Prairie’s school has plenty of Old West charm: a small library with hundreds of books and a gym that doubles as a lunch room and community center.
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