Tag: Native American

Hello, I am LeRoy, St. Joseph’s Indian School’s Fleet Manager. The maintenance garage here at St. Joseph’s Indian School is a 3,600 square foot facility that has four stalls for working on vehicles and equipment. It was built in 1985. It also has a wash bay with a car wash.  There are two hoists for lifting vehicles. The facility also has metal-cutting and welding equipment for fabricating many items for plant projects. The shop is well equipped with hand tools, diagnostic and testing equipment that is required for the many areas of repair that are performed.

The garage facility employees two full-time Technicians that maintain and repair over 70 vehicles for St. Joseph’s. Vehicle range from a 65 passenger bus, to pickups, suburbans, cars, vans and even Japanese mini trucks. In addition, there are 10 pieces of heavy equipment (such as road grader, pay loader, back hoe, etc.) and dozens of smaller construction and lawn care equipment items that are also maintained and repaired.

In the office, we keep records of all work performed and part used on all the vehicles and equipment. We record and keep record of fuel and vehicle mileage monthly. We buy and sell vehicles and equipment as needed. We assign all the vehicles and parking to all the various areas and departments.  We have 12 vehicles (which include 4 minibuses) that stay at the garage and are for out-of-town travel for all departments. We keep the schedule for these vehicles and have them ready for travel every day.

I have been managing the garage and the fleet for eleven and a half years now, and my technician has been here for 15 years. I love my job and enjoy working with all the staff and students here at St. Joseph’s Indian School. Thanks to all that make it possible.

Hi, my name is Julie and I am the Clinical Services Director at St. Joseph’s Indian School. I have worked at St. Joseph’s since 1987. I began my work here as a Child Care Worker.  I have also been a Residential Coordinator, Counselor for the college program that we had in Mitchell, South Dakota and a Family Service Counselor for 1^st– high school students.

I currently oversee the Clinical Department and the Health Center.  During the summer months, the Health Center is not as busy as it is during the school year.  We see less activity as there are fewer students on campus.  We do however, provide services for the staff and their immediate family and have a nurse on call when students are here.

The Clinical Department is very busy during the summer months.  The Family Service Counselors visit the homes of the students that are on their caseload.  The reason for these visits is to remain in contact with the student and their parent/guardian to see how their summer is going and to see if they are in need of anything.  The counselors are required to visit a number of their families over the summer, but they enjoy seeing and hearing about what is going on in their lives.  The counselors will then update staff when the new school year begins in August.

The Family Service Counselors along with the Clinical Support/Admission staff will be working on admission files.  Our admissions process begins with the parent/guardian filling out and sending in the application for St. Joseph’s Indian School.  Once we receive the application, the student is put on our waiting list.  These files are divided up over the summer months and the counselors go out to interview the student and their parent/guardian using our Social History form.  Admission meetings are then held in July and August for student acceptance.

We hope and pray that you all are having a wonderful summer and thank you for your continued support.

 

Greetings to everyone from St. Joseph’s Indian School.  The technology department has a very busy schedule during the summer months.   Many hours are spent installing new computers, rebuilding older computers and making sure everything will work when the students and staff return for the new school year.  Computers are put on a five-year rotation and the teachers are on the top of our list this year.  They will be excited to see new computers when they return in the fall.  Before that, we must take out the old computer, clean it up, vacuum it out, remove all the old data and rebuild it to be put back into a classroom for student use.  These are used as standalone computers for educational games for the students.

We are also installing eight promethean boards in the school classrooms.  Promethean boards are student interactive learning systems that greatly enhance student education.  As you might be able to sense, the technology department builds some muscle in the summer!

Along with computer changes, there are many software changes that need to be made over the summer.  We write a lot of our own computer programs here at St. Joseph’s Indian School.  The programs range from keeping information on each student to tracking their educational progress.  Creating our own computer programs, enable us to “tweak” the program to our exact needs.  The summer is the time to make these changes.  The list seems to grow each year with minor changes to some programs, adding a few reports to other programs or creating a whole new application for staff to use in the fall.   Don’t forget the training on these new programs – we’ll be preparing for that as well.

Telephones are another responsibility for our department.  Our current telephone switch is quite old so plans are underway to replace it.  New telephones need to be setup to be compatible with the new system.

Since every piece of technology always works here, we don’t have to worry about technical support.  What am I saying?  Of course, it’s normal around here, there always seems to be something not working somewhere.  We provide technical support for the entire campus which means days filled with nothing else.  This can make our days very interesting and also very frustrating, but we enjoy it very much!  We strive to be a very user-friendly technology department.

Hello!  My name is Jean and I am the Residential Coordinator for the 4^th & 5^th grade homes.  I came to St. Joseph’s Indian School planning to volunteer for a year or two, but the children and staff proved to be too great of a lure and 31 years later, I’m still here!

There have been many changes over the years, one of which was the addition of the Summer Break Home, which is offered to our students who will be in the second through eighth grades next school year.  Part of my job is to help supervise this break home.  We have 11 students with us this summer. Unlike most years, all of the students this summer are from the younger grades.  They are excited to do almost anything we can come up with!  These students are here for a variety of reasons, ranging from an educational need to the desire to continue to be in a setting where they are comfortable and secure.

The students start off the day with Summer School from 8:30 until 11:30.  This is staffed by our Title 1 teachers and they are able to work with the students in small groups on academic needs or on reinforcing the learning that took place during the school year.  They went on a field trip last week to the Lewis and Clark rest area in Chamberlain, South Dakota – right on Interstate 90.  This is a great place to check out if you are in the area.  The students could walk outside from the mezzanine level into a replica of the keelboat or longboat, in which Lewis and Clark traveled up the Missouri River as they demonstrated the possibility of overland travel to the Pacific Coast.  The students and teachers also enjoyed a hike in the hills behind the rest area.

On school days, lunch is served in the Dining Hall.  The students enjoy visiting with their friends who are attending the Rising Eagle Day Camp, who also eat lunch there.  A lot of our other students from the Lower Brule Indian Reservation and Crow Creek Indian Reservation, who went home for the summer, come back for the camp.

The afternoons, evening and weekends are filled with outside activities.  The students enjoy swimming at the Chamberlain pool (which boasts diving boards and slides), playing in the park, hikes, cooking outside and some trips out-of-town.  The students have already enjoyed a trip to the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls and a trip to the Mitchell Aquatic Center with their houseparents. Some friends of St. Joseph’s recently gifted the students with a number of summer activity items ranging from bug spray and sunscreen to giant marshmallows and squirt guns.  Talk about a fun time!

The staff for the break home consists of houseparents who may work with a different age group during the school year.  Lisa, who normally works with sixth through eighth grade girls, said today that she has a whole new respect for those who work with the younger students!  I think we have set a new record for using band-aids this summer.  Between bike riding and skateboarding, we have gone through a lot of them.  When I saw the students at lunch yesterday, they were proudly showing off their scrapes and battle scars!

Thank you all for your prayers and support.  The students remember you daily in their prayers, also!

Good morning! My name is Mary Jane, I am Outreach/PQI Director at St. Joseph’s Indian School.

The bookmobile just returned to St. Joseph’s Indian School’s campus Thursday evening.  We traveled to 14 Indian Reservation communities up north.  During that time, we visited with roughly 120 children and gave out 360 books!   (Each of the children selected one new and two used books for themselves.)

During the trip I had the privilege of visiting with several former students.  One of the women, Esther from Kenel, graduated at St. Joseph’s Indian School in 1939.  She had gone to school here for 4 years.

As she describes her time here,

St. Joe’s was my home for 4 years, the best years of my life.  That’s where I learned to cook.  I got to work in the kitchen all four of my years there.  It was the best, I was able to try everything we made before the other kids.  I wanted to stay on and work there but I wasn’t old enough.   So I went to Marty for several years.

Esther said she is 91 years young.  She has many, many of her grand and great-grand children living with her in her home in Kenel.  We look forward to our return visit there to chat with Esther some more.

Our bookmobile heads to Lower Brule Indian Reservation this afternoon.  On Monday we head south to the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations.