Fully embracing teaching the Ovando way

OVANDO - Nathan Graves came to Montana for its beauty and its education. He began his teaching career in the fall of 2021 with the fourth - eighth grade classroom in Ovando School. As an avid learner himself, Graves is excited for the chance to instill the want and need to learn in young people.

Graves, originally from Illinois, was attracted to the beautiful campus and the Environmental Studies program at the University of Montana. Through working in the Missoula YMCA summer camp programs, he realized that he had a lot of fun working with children. He wanted to explore teaching and switched from Environmental Education to Elementary Education. Graves graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Elementary Education from the University of Montana. In June 2021, Nathan and his bride Meghan were married in Seeley Lake.

For his student teaching, Graves taught kindergarten at Hellgate Elementary in Missoula. He loved seeing the young kids learn and comprehend new things. 

"With kindergarten-aged kids I loved seeing the huge steps over such a short period of time," said Graves.

While student teaching, his mentor mentioned the opening at Ovando School for an upper grades teacher. Graves and his fiancé both liked the area. As Graves found out more about the hands-on, place based learning that Ovando utilizes, he became very interested and applied for the position. 

"Middle school ends up being a really good time for [seeing kids make connections]. It's a good time to explore the world," Graves said. "I love this age, it's not as much about seeing the big improvements, but instilling the want and need to learn."

As a first year teacher, Graves commented that he has a lot to learn, but he brings the newest strategies and ideas in the most current curriculum.

"I get to use all the information I learned in college within four to five months of learning it. I don't think there's a lot of jobs where you can immediately apply almost everything you've learned over the course of college," Graves said. "Thankfully, I've got a great supervising teacher [Andrea Tougas] and she's got tips and tricks [as] an eight-year teacher."

Graves said it has been a challenge adapting to a small school teaching in a multi-grade classroom.

"It's different from the one grade classroom than I anticipated," Graves said. "It's going to make me a 10 times better teacher at the end of the year than I was at the beginning."

Graves said learning opportunities like the two-day ski trip and the annual Montana History field trip help enhance the classroom experience. The whole school cross country skied one day, practicing winter safety and survival skills. Then participated in the countywide downhill ski program at Discovery the next day. 

"These are skills that not every kid needs, but these kids do," said Graves.

Graves realizes that he may be doing things a little differently than has been done in the past, but he has found that teaching is a journey of one step at a time. If a student brings up a subject, Graves looks forward to learning about it through research and discussion, utilizing the opportunity to teach the value of learning. 

"The Ovando school has a unique understanding that we're able to step out of the classroom and go hiking or cross country skiing or stream monitoring," Graves said. "It's amazing and it's not every school that can do that. Then we bring it back to school."

When Graves is not teaching, he loves to be outside – hiking, fishing and camping with his wife Meghan and dog Sally. Buying yearly passes to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks has become his habit.