Leah Juelke is the 2018 North Dakota Teacher of the Year
By: North Dakota United
Tags: Education, Ndu Member Profiles, North Dakota, Teachers

All five finalists for Teacher of the Year are members of North Dakota United.

For Juelke, receiving this award at Fargo South was especially personal as it’s where she grew up, having graduated there in 2001. She knew then that she wanted to pursue a career in assisting people, but initially she thought that path would be through nursing.

“My mom was an art teacher, and in the back of my head I was always thinking it would be fun to be a teacher,” Juelke said. “The helping people aspect was always there, but I was focused on nursing because I’d been a CNA during high school and a little bit during college. And I thought that was where it would take me.”

She did her first year at North Dakota State University as a nursing major, and then joined the Army. “I took a semester off and went into the Minnesota Army National Guard,” she said. Juelke’s unit eventually got called up to go overseas, and she stayed back stateside, and started training new recruits on CPR and medical practices. She realized that she loved teaching the soldiers that were coming in. “It was very clear at that moment,” she said. “I love the medical part of the Army, but I love the teaching more.”

She continued school and received her bachelor’s degree in English Education and ELL from NDSU, as well as a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction.

After college, she went out to see the world. Starting as an instructor at a boarding school in Taiwan, she also taught in Ecuador, and traveled to China, Costa Rica, Oxford, England, and across Europe.

“After teaching in other countries, it really put me in a place where I had to figure things out for myself,” she said. “I was new to their culture, wherever I was. I went through language issues, where I couldn’t explain what I wanted to the person at the bank, and I had to use my little book or rely on someone else. I think that really helps me as a teacher, teaching the population I teach, to empathize with them and understand where they’re coming from when certain situations happen.”

2018 North Dakota Teacher of the Year Leah Juelke stands in front of a bulletin board in her classroom, filled with pictures and news clippings of her students.

In her time as an EL instructor at Fargo South, she has implemented a great deal of innovative projects and practices, including helping to coordinate the EL curriculum across disciplines, so that the students can fast-track their English skills. “So, in science, they will be doing prepositions at the same time that I’m doing prepositions in my English class,” she said. “Social studies and math will be doing the same.”

Also, for the past three years, Juelke has put together anthologies of narratives, written by her students, about their journeys to America. “The first year I did it, it was just an assignment in class,” she said. “After I read them, I just kept thinking, wow, other people have to read these. I kept sharing them with the other EL teachers. And then I started thinking, why can’t we produce something?”

She launched her “Journey to America” narrative writing project during the 2014–15 school year, and received a grant in 2015, and every year since, that allowed her to publish hard copies of the stories as well as bring in John Bul Dau, a Lost Boy of Sudan, to Fargo South to speak in front of the entire school and help her students in crafting their narratives.

“He started telling the students, don’t be ashamed about your story,” Juelke said. “Don’t be shy. Look at me. I drank urine and I am now a CEO of my own company. I’m not embarrassed to tell my own story.” Juelke also partnered with the surrounding universities in Fargo and Moorhead to bring in college students to help the students with the technical writing during the project. At the end of the project, students celebrate with a public reading of the stories at NDSU.