Annette Romans: Teachers and students gain from increased professional development
Wíŋyaŋ Wakȟáŋ Owáyawa is part of the American Indian Catholic Schools Network which includes eight former boarding schools that serve 16 Tribal communities. Among other initiatives, AICSN partners with Holy Cross College to offer an alternative Bachelor of Arts completion program that caters to the specific needs of teachers in Indigenous network schools. There’s also a Transition-to-Teaching track for teachers with a BA in another field seeking elementary education licensing.
Participants in the Holy Cross College AICSN Fellows Program come to the college’s South Bend, Ind., campus to complete coursework in the summer and take online courses during the school year. The program uses a cohort model which supports community and collaboration among the participants, helping them overcome the challenges of teaching responsibilities with the demands of rigorous coursework. In the final semester, fellows develop a small-scale action research project that reflects their students’ needs.
One Fellow, a teacher at Wíŋyaŋ Wakȟáŋ Owáyawa – Our Lady of Lourdes School in Porcupine, S.D., believed increased use of the school library and its print-rich environment combined with explicit instruction of reading strategies would boost students’ engagement in reading.
The Wíŋyaŋ Wakȟáŋ Owáyawa teacher explored reading engagement in her semester-long capstone project; she collaborated with her peers to take kindergarten through fourth-grade students on weekly hourlong library visits and implement explicit lessons on reading strategies from phonics and word study to daily reading rituals. Through pre- and post-intervention surveys, she found students had a better attitude toward reading and increased the amount of reading they did at home. Students also spent more time in the school and community libraries and were likelier to take library books home after the intervention.
The teacher graduated from Holy Cross College with a degree in Education—with honors—this past May, and Wíŋyaŋ Wakȟáŋ Owáyawa students have an effective reading intervention in place to boost the likeliness of their future academic achievements.
Inspired by the success of the Fellows Program and the win-win opportunities for Indigenous school teachers and students alike, AICSN leadership broadened the professional development opportunities they offer. To successfully expand the options, they created a new position to develop and deliver year-round educator training to promote excellence in teaching, one that I am honored to lead in 2025 and beyond.
Annette Romans, former Director of the Holy Cross College AICSN Fellows Program, accepted the new Educator Formation Coordinator position with AICSN and recently launched individualized professional development sessions with the AICSN schools. The new series of professional development sessions addresses Science of Reading-backed best practices and literacy intervention strategies.