Kim Neujahr: Helps Her Students Discover the World, Despite NCLB

As a school teacher in rural Montana, Kim Neujahr is no stranger to hard work. She hails from a working-class background, put herself through college, and once owned and operated a preschool/daycare serving over 50 families at a time. Now after 30 years of teaching, Mrs. Neujahr and thousands of teachers like her are looking at the worst legislative crisis to face education in decades, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Designed to force accountability, NCLB offers federal funding to states that achieve Adequately Yearly Process. Critics say that NCLB pushes educators to “teach to a test” at the sacrifice of true, analytical learning; it fails to nurture those skills that can’t be measured on a written test. And politics aside, it’s the teachers at rural schools like Morin Elementary, where Mrs. Neujahr teaches, who face the consequences of NCLB, both good and bad.

And it’s the teachers like Mrs. Neujahr who make the best of both.

The classroom barely gets an Internet connection and her students have no hot lunch program, but Mrs. Neujahr’s kindergarteners are excited for the beginning of the school year. She’s invited all 10 of their families over to the school for a quick skills assessment and, mostly, a quick “meet and greet.” When the year begins, their classmates will be on different levels of development, including a deaf child, a mute child and one who has repeated kindergarten twice before. Mrs. Neujahr will find a way to take these kids on a journey of discovery whether it’s in the schoolyard during recess or through a book during reading time. “When it’s fun and spontaneous, they don’t even know they’re learning!” says Mrs. Neujahr. “We’re looking at bugs outside, talking about biology, but all they know is they’re having fun.”

She also believes in teaching her students what they want to know, which it usually turns out, is what they need to know. “They trust me to show them the world. They’re young and don’t feel judged or tested. It’s important to develop that love of learning early.”

Often, Mrs. Neujahr’s students remember her when they choose their career paths years later. Some have become successful lawyers, disc jockeys, teachers, advertising executives and journalists. A former student wrote to her 14 years after he had been in her class just to tell her that her classes helped inspire him to become a scientist. It’s moments like that she finds most rewarding. She says, ”Knowing that I’ve helped them on the path to discovery, that I made an impression and changed a life to seek out knowledge, that is far more meaningful than test scores on some standardized test.”

So while NCLB seems to set up rural teachers for failure, Kim Neujahr knows that as long as there are teachers who fight for children and their ability to learn through discovery, there will always be scientists, lawyers and journalists in our future.

(Disclosure: Kim is my mother. My awesome mother.)

(this article was originally published in an e-magazine produced by Women of Style, Spirit & Success)