The head of the class

After a short summer, kids are headed back to school, and as their classes begin they're likely to notice a few new faces.

For the next couple of weeks, the Transcript will feature those new teachers here in the paper, beginning with Nathan Jensen, Amber Fortney and Courtney Wiesz.

Wiesz, a former employee here at the Transcript, will be teaching business education for high schoolers this year, and she can't wait to get started.

In 2012, Wiesz earned a degree in advertising from Liberty University in Virginia, and got an English Education degree from Valley City State University in 2016.

Among the classes she'll be teaching are financial literacy, word processing, intro to business, multi-media and sports entertainment marketing. Wiesz said she's particularly looking forward to her marketing class, which is a new elective students can opt into.

Overall, however, she's just happy to be teaching business, and Weisz believes she can use her background in both advertising and English to enhance her students' learning experience.

"I felt that business would kind of give me a way to use both of my backgrounds, because a lot of things overlap," said Wiesz. "... a lot of the skills that business has are things that I've taught in English."

Wiesz, who lives in Cathay, taught English for several years as she finished her education degree with VCSU, and she even has experience substitute teaching at NR-S. Wiesz said that's where she began to develop her desire to go into teaching full time.

"I started being a substitute teacher, and I kinda just started to love the environment," said Wiesz. When discussing how this will be her first time teaching business education, she added "It's definitely a new thing for me, but I'm really excited for the challenge."

Also new to NR-S this year is Nathan Jensen, a long-time educator and administrator who's been brought on to teach elementary physical education, and to coach junior high football and junior high girls basketball.

Jensen, a native of Grafton, N.D., has already had a long career in education across multiple states, including North Dakota, Wyoming, and most recently, Arizona.

When asked what brought him to NR-S and back to North Dakota, Jensen said, "Arizona is just a different world when it comes to education, truly it's the wild west. So, I just really wanted to get back to where I know education matters, where people invest in their schools and where people invest in their programs."

Over the years, Jensen has been a boy's and girl's basketball coach, baseball coach and football coach, and has taught social studies and physical education. He's also been an elementary and high school principal at multiple schools, including at Edmore and St. John in North Dakota.

"My last position I was dean of students, which was all discipline all the time," said Jensen as he explained what he's looking forward to this year. "And that was with a population of 2,700 kids, so I was pretty busy. So coming back to the classroom is what I'm really looking forward to ... kind of decompressing myself and keeping it fun and exciting for the kids."

Jensen has a B.S. in social science education, a minor in physical education, and a secondary principal license. He's also getting certified in ESL and has one class left before he can get his superintendent's license.

On what he enjoys about teaching, Jensen said, "I'm personally a lifelong learner so I always like to see kids in that environment where they're constantly learning, constantly getting new ideas and then actually seeing them use that new concept."

Meanwhile, there's another new teacher at NR-S, and she's bringing something new to the district: an art program.

Amber Fortney, a native of Dickenson, N.D. and a mother of two, has art degrees from Bismarck State College and NDSU, and has recently been gaining experience teaching art part-time in Fessenden.

This year, she'll be splitting her time between the Fessenden-Bowdon District and here at NR-S, making this her first year teaching full-time. All the while she'll be completing a master's degree in teaching at VCSU, driving the Bowdon bus route twice a week and student teaching.

Needless to say, Fortney is very busy, but she's looking forward to getting her class started at New Rockford, where she hopes to open doors that were previously closed to students here.

"I think in rural communities there's a lot of emphasis on sports and different things," explained Fortney, "and so there's a lot of kids that aren't being represented, and I was one of those kids. ... So I really like finding these students who haven't had the opportunity to take art and helping them blossom."

When asked what she hopes students take away from her class, Fortney said it's all about nurturing their passion.

"I really hope that I can find that passion and keep it growing," she said, "and just give them the confidence to create and be able to talk about art and be free in their expression."