Dr. Scott
Simpson

Learning Specialist

Before joining the TIE team as a Learning Specialist in 2008, Scott spent 6 years as a high school English, drama and speech teacher in Texas, Nebraska and Colorado, and taught 10 years as a full time English, theatre and language arts Education professor at York College (Nebraska), Black Hills State University, and Abilene Christian University. He holds an M.A. in English Curriculum and Instruction and a Ph.D. in English Creative Writing, both from the University of Nebraska– Lincoln. He also spent about 3 years as the Executive Director of a youth and family camp in the Rockies of Northern New Mexico. Scott is a published poet, writer, songwriter and indie music producer and does most of his best creating and thinking while hiking Black Hills trails with his wife Sheryl and their dogs Gandi, Ellie and Oscar.

Music website: www.ScottSimpsonMusic.com

Songwriting & Poetry podcast: Dancin' Moon Songcast

email Scott

Direct Line: (605) 721-4296

Current Projects

Expertise

  • Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Administrator

  • Culturally Responsive Teaching

  • Civil Discourse / South Dakota Humanities Scholar

  • Essential Understandings Development

  • Circle of Trust Facilitation

  • Video Interviewing

  • Videography / Documentary Film Development

  • Website Building & Maintenance

  • Language Arts / Writing Instruction

  • Music Composition / Production

  • Songwriting / Creative Writing

  • Relational Trust Building

  • Intrinsic Motivation

  • Character Education


Calendar of Work


2022

  • May 19-21: Turtle Mountain Team of Champions Seminar Day #5 - Belcourt, ND

  • May 16: Timberlake School District Cultural Awareness Presentation, Zoom

  • May 1-3: Lakota & Dakota Elder video interviews, Placerville Camp

  • April 29: IDM Lesson Planning training, McIntosh, SD

  • April 25-28: Classroom Coaching, Turtle Mountain Schools- Belcourt, ND

  • April 22: Wolakota Project Zoom Presentation for Oglala Lakota College

  • April 8: Turtle Mountain Team of Champions Seminar Day #4 - Belcourt, ND

  • April 6-7: NDSU, NDNAEU Faculty Training- Fargo, ND

  • April 4-5: TIE Conference Presentations - Sioux Falls, SD

  • March 30: Douglas Middle School OSEU Presentations - Box Elder, SD

  • March 22: Spring Creek Elementary Staff Retreat - Laramie, WY

  • March 18: Lone Man School Culture Teachers OSEU Support - Oglala, SD

  • March 11: Turtle Mountain Team of Champions Seminar Day #3 - Belcourt, ND

  • March 4: Lone Man School Culture Teachers OSEU Support - Oglala, SD

  • February 25: Turtle Mountain Team of Champions Seminar Day #2 - Belcourt, ND

  • February 18: Spearfish School District Professional Development Day Presentation - Spearfish, SD

  • February 9-11: JAG Retreat at Broom Tree Retreat Center, Irene, SD

  • January 21: Turtle Mountain Team of Champions Kick-off Seminar Day - Belcourt, ND

  • January 14: Timberlake School District Cultural Awareness Presentation, Zoom

  • January 3-6: Presenting The Champion Pathway at Hawaii International Conference on Education, Kona, HI

2021

2020

2019

2018

Important Web Links:

Recent Presentations:

Keynote Presentation Descriptions:

Leading Together® Keynote

Dr. Scott Simpson & Sharla Steever,

TIE Learning Specialists, Courage & Renewal® Facilitators

The Leading Together program is an offering of the Center for Courage & Renewal designed to build adult community in schools. The program is grounded in research and closely aligned with Social Emotional Learning and Relational Trust constructs. Leading Together is designed to strengthen the relationships between principals and teacher leaders to facilitate positive, trusting relationships between adults in the school community. It’s about reclaiming the heart of your school community, which ultimately drives your desired results forward.

Leading Together prepares school leadership teams to build relational trust in their own adult community by:

· cultivating self-awareness

· building relationships

· fostering teamwork and shared leadership

· strengthening capacity to listen and be fully present in teaching, leading, and relationships

· sharpening ability to focus and maintain attention

· addressing conflict constructively

· reconnecting with what originally inspired us to become educators

This motivational and interactive presentation will engage participants in a sampling of the experiences that Leading Together® has to offer. It will leave participants with a deep awareness of the importance of relational trust development among adults in the school environment.

Culturally Responsive Teaching & Learning Keynote

Dr. Scott Simpson & Sharla Steever,

TIE Learning Specialists, WoLakota Project Developers & Directors

Drawing upon more than six years of WoLakota Project experience with Native American education in North and South Dakota, this presentation addresses some of the tougher issues surrounding Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) in any setting. Elements addressed include:

· Dealing with implicit bias in ourselves and structural bias in our curriculum and schools

· The elements necessary for implementing CRT

o Socio-Cultural Consciousness

o High Expectations

o Desire to Make a Difference

o Constructivist Approaches

o Deep Knowledge of Students

o Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices

This motivational and interactive presentation will engage participants in examining their own biases and teaching/learning environments. It will include activities drawn from WoLakota Project practices within schools with high Native American populations and will leave participants encouraged to explore how CRT might look within their own school environments.

The Reflective Educator Keynote

Dr. Scott Simpson & Sharla Steever,

TIE Learning Specialists, Courage & Renewal® Facilitators

“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teachers are authentically present in the classroom and are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, helping their students weave a world for themselves.” – Parker Palmer

In a time when stress and pressure on elementary, middle and high school teachers in public, private and charter schools continues to rise because of internal and external demands, Courage to Teach® provides educators an opportunity for rest, renewal, and re-engagement with their identity and integrity as teachers. This motivational and interactive presentation will engage participants in a sampling of the experiences that Courage to Teach® has to offer. It will leave participants with a heightened sense of personal and professional renewal, readiness to return to work refreshed and energized.

Guided by Essential Understandings Keynote

Dr. Scott Simpson & Sharla Steever,

TIE Learning Specialists, WoLakota Project Developers & Directors

“Opening yourself to another worldview will assist you in understanding what occurs both in and outside of native communities.” –Lakota Elder Dottie LeBeau

Essential Understandings are a way of expressing to the world what is “essential” to understand another’s culture, written by the people who live that culture. In South Dakota and North Dakota, the state Education Departments invited elders from the tribes living within the states to write what they felt was most important for people – Native and non-Native – to know and understand about their culture and language. The documents, “Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings” and the “North Dakota Native American Essential Understandings” offer the people of each state an anchor to the wisdom, knowledge and beauty of the people who have lived in this place the longest. Dr. Scott Simpson and Sharla Steever have lead this work in both states for the past six years, and offer a unique insight into the importance of listening to our elders and moving forward in education guided by that wisdom.

Why Focus Our Attention on the Essential Understandings?

1. So that the people of a geographical area (via their elders) will understand their definitions of themselves, something that has not been the case, historically. Non-native definitions and ways of being in regions of the world have been diminished because of a history of non-listening. Native definitions and ways of being have been stifled through the silencing of historic oppression, separation and targeted, forced assimilation.

2. To open up a deeper understanding of the natural environment of a region by listening closely to the experiences and stories of those who have been there longest, and whose traditional culture and way of life were shaped by and within this environment.

3. Essential Understandings are a beginning place to which all of us, native and non-native, can bring our full selves around the circle (placing doing in service to Being) so that the algorithm of our interacting can expand understanding rather than diminishing it.

4. The process of coming to understand my neighbor is interwoven with the process of coming to understand myself.

This informational and experiential presentation will offer participants an opportunity to reflect on the value of using Essential Understandings to guide learning as well as to consider writing them in places where they have not yet been established.