Ladonna Mielke is a middle school social studies teacher at Mobridge Pollock Middle School. She serves as a mentor for the DOE’s Mentoring Program. Last summer, she and her mentee, Logan Kadoun, went on the East River Road Trip with the DOE.

What made you decide to go into teaching?
My parents and teachers expected me to go to college and keep learning, so I did. It took me a little bit to decide what to teach. I was originally going to do ag ed, but then I switched to history because I’d always loved history. It’s been a good fit for me.

What’s the best part of teaching?
Getting to see the kids engage in what they’re learning -- the lightbulb moment. Also, being able to see my students later on as adults, seeing what they’re doing with their education, and how they’re doing in life in general.

What’s the most challenging part of teaching?
Balancing everything. There are a lot of different needs in every classroom, and it’s my job to find the best way to help everybody, and to keep everything going in the direction that it should.

You serve as a mentor for three teachers. Why did you sign up for the program?
I had done mentoring before with online programs. Then we got a new teacher here at Mobridge, and she asked me to be her mentor, and that worked out really well. She went on to grad school, and I decided to keep going as a mentor, so I signed up for the DOE’s mentoring program. My first one with that program, Logan, is now in her second year of the program, and the DOE called me and asked me to mentor two other teachers as well.

Did you have a mentor at the start of your career?
I first started teaching in Faith, and I didn’t have a mentor there. But when I started at Mobridge, I had a mentor, and that really was a great thing to have, being in a new school and a new town.

In your experience, what’s the most important part of a mentor/mentee relationship?
Being candid. It’s important to get to know each other well enough to say what you need to say, and then work through it. I appreciate people I can be candid with.

What’s the most useful advice you can give to a new teacher who’s just starting out?
Don’t be a silo; seek out support. Nobody knows everything – not a single one of us knows everything, even after we’ve been at it for 10-15 years. I’m still learning, and I still need to seek out support and advice. Having someone willing to say what’s necessary can really be helpful. Different perspectives help.

What do you, the mentor, get out of the mentoring program?
I really like the different perspectives you get from being a mentor. I’ve been a teacher for 15 years, and I always want to be learning. When you see a new teacher, they have all of these new ideas; as a mentor, I can help them to make their ideas work with some planning. I’m a planner by nature, so I like bringing that to the table. That thought process, that rejuvenation of being around that gung-ho person who’s ready to go – I can be the person who can help them to figure it out, to make it happen. And the great thing is, at the end of it, you have a new colleague that you can bounce things off of, that you can have in your orbit. Logan, the one who’s in her second year of the program, already has found some amazing ideas and articles online, and she sends them to me, and we can talk about that.

Are you planning on going to the Civics & History Summit this year? How about the Road Trip?
Yes, I’ll be going to the Summit for sure. I need to figure out all of the resources for when the new standards come into effect. I want to be prepared. I’ve signed up for the West River Route this year. I like that they have a Central Route this year too. Last year, I was on the East River Route, and I brought a lot of ideas back to the classroom from that one. I especially have talked a lot with my students about the Prehistoric Indian Village in Mitchell. It was really interesting – I’d love to take a class there to see it and to help them get that perspective .