Moving on: ELL teacher Kerri Nazarenus takes new job with Iowa school

When Kerri Nazarenus began teaching English language learner classes in Lexington in 1992, she was not certified as an ELL teacher.

That situation actually made sense at the time because Nebraska was only just putting an ELL endorsement program in place for the state's teachers.

Nazarenus, who is now director of Grand Island's English language learner program, said both she and Lexington school officials were surprised by how many students she had during her first year of teaching.

"They said I'd have about 20 students," Nazarenus said. The actual number of students in her class was far, far higher. She said that was a challenge for a first-year teacher.

To help with her new job, Nazarenus said, she began taking ELL endorsement classes along with a number of Grand Island teachers seeking to get endorsed in the new field: Yolanda Nuncio, Nanette Neuhaus, Mary Small and Connie Franzen.

Nazarenus taught two years in the Lexington school district before transferring to Grand Island -- not to teach ELL but to teach kindergarten.

"I taught kindergarten in the morning at Shoemaker Elementary and was a paraeducator for Cindy Avila, a second-grade teacher at Shoemaker," she said.

The following year, Nazarenus was a full-time kindergarten teacher, and by her third year in the district, she was a kindergarten teacher in the morning and ELL coordinator in the afternoon.

That move to coordinator came during the 1996-97 school year, when Grand Island district officials believed the district had 300 to 350 English language learner students.

Nazarenus said that also was the year when the Grand Island school district was audited by the Office of Civil Rights in Kansas City. The civil rights office did not give Grand Island a good grade.

"It said we were underserving ELL students and undercounting ELL students," Nazarenus said.

One of the problems was that Grand Island did not have enough ELL staff either to assess or to teach students.

"That was my welcome to administration," she said.

But Nazarenus said the civil rights people were very good to work with, because they identified the areas where the school district needed to improve.

At the same time, the civil rights officials allowed Grand Island officials to develop their own plans for bringing the district's ELL program into compliance.

Going into education was not in Nazarenus' plans when she traveled to Minneapolis to attend North Central Bible College, which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God Church, after spending her final year of high school at Grand Island Senior High.

Of course, Nazarenus didn't necessarily have any career plans when she first enrolled at the college, where she did not declare a major during her first two years.

Finally, Nazarenus said, "I needed to declare a major. I wanted to graduate. I decided to major in elementary education."

But Nazarenus never considered that declaration to be merely a matter of convenience. She noted that she did her student teaching -- and all her teaching practicums -- on the north side of Minneapolis, in inner-city schools.

"I loved it," Nazarenus said. She said the experiences opened her up to the full breadth of education.

Nazarenus said her inner-city teaching experiences included extensive work with Laotian Hmong students. That's one reason why she believed working in ELL would be a good fit for her.

Nazarenus said that, when she left Nebraska for Minnesota, she did not necessarily plan on returning to the state.

But as she entered her second semester of her senior year, Nazarenus began to realize that her classmates -- who came from all over the country -- were not necessarily going to stay in the Minneapolis area. They were going to scatter across the country.

"I decided to come back to Nebraska because of my family," she said.

At one time, a desire to be close to her family might have put Nazarenus close to Lincoln. She was a Lincoln native and attended Lincoln Southeast High School.

But during her senior year, Nazarenus' parents, Bob and Mary Nazarenus, moved to Grand Island so her father could work as district superintendent for the Assemblies of God Church.

Moving to Lexington for her first Nebraska teaching job was a logical move for Nazarenus, who said she had volunteered at an Assemblies of Good summer camp in Lexington while she was in high school and college. She only had a paid position at the camp her final two summers.

"I knew the community," she said.

Now Nazarenus is about to make another move to Tama, Iowa, where she will become superintendent of the South Tama County Community School District.

The state of Iowa has always been fairly aggressive when it comes to school consolidation.

Nazarenus said her new school district, which has 1,600 students, includes students from six communities. The high school and elementary school are in Tama, and the middle school is in Toleo. Nazarenus said Tama and Toledo are distinct communities, even though the two communities are immediately adjacent to each other.

There also is an elementary school in Chelsea, but voters will decide on May 27 whether that school should be closed.

Among the things that have impressed her so far is community support for schools.

"There is a lot of public participation," said Nazarenus, who noted that people from the general public attend school board meetings in sizable numbers.

She also said people who attend board meetings do not come because they are interested in a particular agenda item but are there because they are interested in education and school board meetings.