Context

EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT

I graduated from Montana State University in 2020 with a bachelors in English Education and a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies. During my undergraduate degree, I studied abroad at a Finnish teachers' college and completed my practicum in a Finnish school. After graduation, I began teaching English I and Honors English I at Belgrade High School. Simultaneously, I earned my Masters from MSU in English Education. After I completed my second year teaching in Belgrade, I moved to Butte, Montana where I teach Senior Composition and WRIT 101 as a dual enrollment course with Montana Technological University. I am currently heading into my sixth year of teaching. 

Butte, known as the Richest Hill on Earth and located on the Continental Divide, is a city steeped in history, conflict, and opportunity. Throughout the decades, Butte School District experienced large demographic swings due to the boom and bust nature of mining and the Butte's rich immigration history. Currently, the Butte School District is made up of nine different schools. However, across the district, enrollment numbers have dropped, causing funding and staffing challenges. 

Butte High School's student body is majority white but with a substantial population of Hispanic students (5.5%) and American Indian/Alaskan Native students (2.2%) (U.S News, 2023, para. 5). Recently, the Butte Native Wellness Center, a community organization, has begun partnering with Butte High School to offer resources, support, and community to our Indigenous students. 

Ever since I began teaching, I've been an active member of the Montana Federation of Public Employees (MFPE). This past May, I was elected as the second vice-president of the Butte Teacher's Union (BTU) and served as a member of our 2025-2027 bargaining team. I’ve attended the NEA Representative Assembly in Florida as a delegate, was a panelist at the AFT/Microsoft AI Symposium in Chicago, and I’m a BTU delegate to the Southwestern Montana Central Labor Council. 

CONNECTING SELF ASSESSMENT TO CONTEXT

How does awareness of your own biases, experiences of privilege, and personal values inform your chosen Capstone Project?

I am a young, white, cis-gendered teacher who was born and raised in Montana, and both of my parents are educators. I have experienced much privilege throughout my life and have developed blind spots and biases (See Artifact A for an in-depth examination of this question). With this, I foregrounded active listening as a central tenet of my pedagogy, leadership, and capstone project. 

Overarching Competency #1: Group Processes — Developing

Throughout my teaching career, I actively engaged in all sorts of group meetings, learning opportunities, and events. I examined and understand some of the difficult group dynamics that arise from having a diverse membership with sometimes conflicting opinions, ideas, and experiences. However, before TLI, I could not manage or guide groups, which is why I considered myself to be at the developing stage instead of the performing stage. 

Overarching Competency #2: Communication — Emerging

Previously, I developed and shared surveys about Standards Based Education as a way to communicate with other teachers in my department. However, my experience with communications never expanded beyond the relatively small realm of my English department, therefore placing me at the emerging stage of this competency. 

Foundational Competency: Explore and Challenge Inequity — Developing

I am well-versed in the fields of identity, social justice, equality, and inequity. My minor is in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; I was a moderator for MSU’s Common Ground program, and I studied these topics as a peer advocate at MSU’s Voice Center which offered support to students impacted by sexual assault, stalking, or relationship-based violence. If I were rating my ability to explore and challenge inequity within my classroom pedagogy and curriculum, I would rate my starting stage as performing. However, when I think of my work with adults—with my co-workers—I realized that I did not know a lot about the inequities in our school district, and I did not apply knowledge of these differences to plan, implement, or adapt practices in our district to address inequity. This is why I ultimately decided that I was at the developing stage of this competency. 

Association Leadership: Leading with Vision — Emerging

Before TLI, I had not participated in a committee in the Butte School District, and I had not organized or managed activities that would implement BTU’s and MFPE’s missions, values, and visions, which left me at the emerging stage. However, this is a competency I decided to focus a lot of energy on for my capstone project to be successful. I needed to frame the transition to EZ-Dues as aligned with our members' values and the values of unions in order to organize and guide a critical mass of members to invest themselves in EZ-Dues.. 

CONNECTING ASSESSMENT OF DIVERSE STAKEHOLDERS TO CONTEXT

Describe your work with diverse stakeholders, shared learning experiences, and how you anticipate your leadership pathway mindset might evolve during the TLI process. 

Prior to TLI, most of my work with diverse stakeholders took place in my classroom as I worked with diverse students. I used student exit tickets, knowledge of interests and backgrounds, and summative and formative assessments to design culturally responsive curriculum. As part of this work, my classroom policies took into account how different factors in my students' lives could cause some to have less access to technology or time to do homework after school (for example, if they had to babysit younger siblings or work full time to help support their families). Understanding this inequity, I did not assign homework. However, I never worked with diverse stakeholders outside of my classroom's walls. As the Association Leadership pathway guided my TLI project, my mindset evolved from working with diverse stakeholders in terms of my students to thinking about how I could work with diverse stakeholders outside my classroom (my coworkers, employers, and community members). I anticipated that I would struggle with this shift. 

Describe how your awareness of those from different cultures, experiences, and backgrounds inform your chosen project.

The diverse stakeholders in my project had different experiences, backgrounds, and values that influenced the way they view education, unions, and the legislature. One challenge I anticipated was navigating the different political standings of my diverse stakeholders. The union-busting legislation EZ-Dues responds to, such as SB 277, was brought by Republican legislators. However, I needed to be careful not to attack 'Republicans' overall and to not ostracize our Republican BTU members. I avoided partisan attacks and instead framed EZ-Dues through shared values and protecting the shared values and rights we hold dear.