Lori Walsh: Glenna Fouberg is known in South Dakota as Mrs. Education. She has changed lives through her work on alternative education at the district and statewide levels. Now she's a member of the 2020 class of inductees into the South Dakota Hall of Fame, and she joins us now on the phone. Glenna Fouberg, welcome. Thanks for being here and congratulations.
Glenna Fouberg: Well, thank you. And I'm not sure I want to be here, but I am.
Lori Walsh: You don't want to be here because it's humbling, or?
Glenna Fouberg: Well, it is humbling.
Lori Walsh: Tell me a little bit about this honor. Yeah.
Glenna Fouberg: Yeah. You're absolutely right. It's very humbling and it's surprising and it's sometimes... Where the term Mrs. Education came from, I'm not totally sure, but I think it was a friend in Watertown that put that label on me, so I guess I'll live with it.
Lori Walsh: All right. Well, let's talk about some of your experience in education. And this is, of course, a year where we have been focusing on it more than ever, as teachers and administrators and parents and students, bus drivers, and support staff have all these challenges thrown at them all at once.
Tell me a little bit about some of the challenges that you saw over the years with helping kids graduate. With getting them into the classroom and helping them believe that they could do the next hard thing.
Glenna Fouberg: Well, I think, when I taught in public schools for 30 years, I mean, grades 7 through 12. Excuse me. Of course there were some that almost didn't want to graduate. They'd rather fail. But I think the one philosophy that I've always used in the 30 years of teaching English, and then especially the 13 years I directed the alternative program, first of all, you have to deal with kids with humor.
And the second is, I think, they generally live up to expectations. And we always use the phrase, "They don't care what you know, but they want to know that you care." And I think that was very true in the alternative program. I mean, we were successful at about 86% graduation. True, we didn't graduate everyone, but that's almost virtually impossible.
In a lot of cases, they were kids living on their own. I had a young man that was late every morning, and believe it or not, I didn't yell at him. But I talked to him and he was living on his own, closing Pizza Hut at one o'clock in the morning. He had one set of clothes, went home and washed them, and a lot of times they weren't dry in the morning, so he was late to school.
So I said, well. I went over, at that time, we had The Main, on Main Street, a men's clothing store, and I went over and talked to Steve and said, "I need a whole set of clothes for a kid about this size." I have no clue if I paid for it. I have no clue if Steve gave it to me. It's just, I don't know.
But anyway, I came back with a whole set of new clothes and I told the young man, I said, "Okay, now here's a new set of clothes, but you should have a dry clothes in the morning. But I'm still going to do what an alternative school should do. I'm going to give you some alternative times. You be here ready to go by 10 o'clock and stay the day." And he's graduated and, in fact, he's really quite successful today.
So those are the kinds of things. Again, it comes to not what they... They don't care what you know, that they really like to know that you care. And especially children that live on their own when they're 16, 17. I know there's parents somewhere, but a lot of times we couldn't find them. So anyway, I'm babbling, I guess, but that's really what the whole philosophy was.
Lori Walsh: It's a wonderful story. It's a very human story. And thank you for sharing it with us about that young man. We saw that in South Dakota, when the students went home for virtual learning after classrooms were closed, how many students sort of disappeared off the radar of districts because they didn't have access to technology or for reasons that because they went to work then. Or reasons that we just don't that we just don't know. Is it just a one-teacher, one-student connection, kind of day by day you have to try again and again and again? Talk a little bit about persistence, if you would.
Glenna Fouberg: Well, definitely persistence. First of all, I guess, when I went up to the alternative program, which was in 1990, I believe, I had been at Holgate as an English teacher for 17 years. I went up to the alternative program. Had a fantastic staff. There was four of us that worked with the high school kids, which at that time was 10, 11, 12.
And that staff was very persistent and was working with kids, getting homework, done, getting to school. I mean, there were things I did at that time. I'd have mothers call me and say, "Come and get so and so out of bed." Well, you can't do that today, but at that time I could. I'd just go in and I'd say, "All right, get out of bed. You got to get to school. I'm giving you five minutes and I'll take you there."
I had a young man that was often late and I just would say, "I'll be there to get you in five minutes." And in five minutes he would be coming up the back step because he didn't want anyone to see where he lived. Sometimes it was frustrating, but the staff was very persistent.
When we added the junior high program, had two fantastic people, actually three, one left to go somewhere else, and then the third one came. Worked. I don't know that any of that staff member ever... if missed a day of sick leave, I don't remember it. So just in getting there, was a lot of persistence. But they had the best interest of the kids in their heart-
Lori Walsh: What kept you going?
Glenna Fouberg: And I opened a classroom and juvenile detention and in New Beginnings.
Lori Walsh: What motivated you to continue to show up, to do that hard work, to keep getting up?
Glenna Fouberg: Well, I kind of liked the kids, and a sense of humor. I mean, I don't even know if I should repeat this, but we had cameras and it went around the classrooms and my office. And I looked up at my camera in my office and I saw a chair fly across the room in the junior high room. So I jumped the four steps out of my office, ran down the hall. I know who it was.
So I opened the door and I said, "Where's so and so?" and they said, "Well, he's on his way to your office." So obviously we'd passed each other in the hallway. I got back up to my office and he's sitting there grinning. And, of course, what are you going to do? I had to laugh. I wish I had written a book because I might've think I've had a best seller.
Lori Walsh: I wish you had written a book too. It's not too late.
Glenna Fouberg: Well, yeah, it kind of is, but. And had a lot of funny times in the junior high and the high school. I taught in Alaska one year, we had a lot of fun experiences. I think humor, having a sense of humor, is a big part of teaching. Now, it doesn't mean you have to laugh in class every single day, but sometimes there's some humor to it that can lighten the whole situation.
Lori Walsh: And kids are inherently funny and they appreciate, I mean, absurdity. They appreciate humor. They appreciate wordplay. They appreciate a good joke, too. It makes it all a little bit nicer.
Glenna Fouberg: Oh, absolutely. And I see these alternative kids out in town now around. They're taxpayers, they're working. A majority of them, of course, did not go on to tech school or college, but not everybody has to. But they're working. They're journeymen for electricians. They're working for the city. Working... I can't even think of where I've see them.
And every once in a while, I'll run into someone that'll say, "Boy, am I glad you helped me get through school." And I'll tell you, that is the reward of everything. When somebody says, "Thank you for helping me get through school." I can live with that.
Lori Walsh: Glenna Fouberg, boy am I glad you joined us here today. Congratulations on your induction into the South Dakota Hall of Fame. We appreciate your time with us today.
Glenna Fouberg: Well, thank you very much. I hope I didn't babble too much.
Lori Walsh: Not at all. You can find more at sdexcellence.org for the South Dakota Hall of Fame website. That virtual induction is September 12th.