Brad Burenheide, associate professor in Kansas State University’s College of Education, found clarity in his career seven years ago while sitting in the back row of a rural Kansas high school classroom observing a K-State student teacher.
While he has spent a decade and a half teaching at the university level, that classroom observation at Rock Creek High School (RCHS) in St. George, was a turning point: He needed to be back in the secondary classroom as a career companion piece for his university teaching.
“I was sitting in the classroom watching and I just thought about what I might do differently in the lesson,” he said. “The student was doing great, but I just thought it would be enjoyable and meaningful to be able to teach in the secondary classroom again.”
That’s when he took the first step.
“I asked the cooperating teacher what electives get taught at RCHS, and he said none,” Burenheide said. “They were maxed out in what their schedules could allow. I ran the idea past Todd Goodson, Curriculum and Instruction department chair at K-State and RCHS Principal Eric Koppes, and within a month, I was on the line schedule for Current Issues.”
It seems to have been a rather smooth addition to his teaching duties. It helped that Burenheide was familiar with USD 323 Rock Creek, where his children have gone to school.
“I live in Westmoreland, and it is a lovely little town of about 800,” he said. “The other town in the district is St. George, and its population is about 700. Rock Creek is a 3A/4A school district. It sits right on the line of the two classifications; however, this might be the last time in the current cycle that the high school is 3A. It is fortunate that it is one of the few districts still growing. The reputation of the school has been instrumental in this growth.”
The district has 317 students in grades 9-12 this year. The rural area between the two towns has growing rapidly as Manhattan continues to sprawl eastward.
His own experiences as a student in a small town have shaped his opinion on the value of smaller rural schools.
“I grew up in Sabetha, KS and I was blessed,” Burenheide said. “Like Rock Creek, it bounced between 4A and 3A while I was there. It was small enough that you knew your classmates and you had a real sense of family and community. But it was big enough that you had plenty of opportunities for growth and curriculum choices.
“I like to joke that I was a quadruple threat growing up there: All-League in football and forensics, captain of the Scholars’ Bowl team, and a state champ in FBLA Business Law,” he said. “Add to that I was in band and the school play, and golf, and weightlifting, student government…. It was just so much fun.”
And he wanted his own children to have those options, as well.
“Rock Creek had that,” he said. “My oldest was able to participate in wrestling, football, and FFA, and do on-the-job training and was hired the moment he graduated for the company that trained him. My oldest daughter was in band, FCCLA, and was the wrestling manager, but was also able to take dual credit courses to get a jump start on her college career and is now succeeding in nursing school. My middle son was able to take a wide variety of courses to find out what he wants to do and is gainfully employed with a skill set that he’ll be able to make vertical moves as he wants. This rural school does a wonderful job providing opportunities for growth and cares about the kids. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
He’s also no stranger to teaching in a rural Kansas school. For five years, he taught world history and civics at Colby High School; he spent another five years at Valley Heights Junior/Senior High School, Blue Rapids. At Valley Heights, he taught American government, world history, current issues, and multimedia at the high school level and seventh grade social studies and eighth grade American History.
Burenheide taught Current Issues at RCHS for five years, though last year he made the switch to teaching Latin. That’s correct…Latin.
“I had always wanted to learn Latin as originally I thought my career path was going to be pursuing a PhD in Medieval and/or Renaissance history,” he said. “Not ever having studied it before, I would move in fits and starts while early in my teaching career and in my master’s degree and make a little progress but get flustered. It wasn’t until the Covid Pandemic hit and being stuck at home that I tried it again; but this time, I had a different curriculum to use, and the learning stuck. In the span of three months, I had completed the Cambridge Latin Curriculum and completed a professional development course on Latin and was just breezing through the lessons I was engaged in.
“As I had been keeping my teaching license current for my research project, I thought if I was learning it well enough that I could get certified in it. I took the Praxis test and passed it. That really got the wheels spinning on the possibility of teaching it at RCHS. I asked my friend who taught there, and he thought it was a brilliant idea. Everyone I ran the idea by said go for it. Even the principal said that this was a way of offering a second option for Foreign Language and said, ‘Let’s try it!’
“As I look back at that, it also strikes me to see if the philosophy of teaching that I hold applies to other content areas as well.,” Burenheide said. “To teach Latin is providing me with the ability to stretch my philosophical/pedagogical lens a bit and look more at education from not just the social studies point of view, even though Latin language also looks at the culture and history of Rome.”
This is the first year Latin has been taught at RCHS, and Burenheide said the school is most likely the smallest public school to offer it.
“When I was recruiting kids for the class last spring, I had kids who were interested and definitely excited, but low and behold, the kids in my class now weren’t necessarily the ones I had targeted,” he said. “I’ve got 15 kids in the yearlong class, and they are simply amazing. As the class has progressed, the feedback I am getting from them has been rewarding.”
Two of those students will be EDCATS—students in the K-State COE teaching program in the future in foreign languages, while some are looking at careers in science and low and know Latin will provide a firm foundation in their studies. Another student is looking at vocal performance as a career and is working on Latin pronunciation for arias and other performance pieces.
“Perhaps one of the most rewarding pieces is a student came in from taking the PSAT and proudly said, ‘I got a word right as I knew the Latin root and then inferred the derivative of it.’”
He’s not sure how long he’ll be teaching Latin, but he’s added Latin II in the nested class, and students are already voicing their enthusiasm for the addition. He also plans on having students take the National Latin Exam both years to show some “proof in concept.”
“I’d love to get the program fully established,” he said. “As long as I have the energy, mental faculties, and desire, I would like to keep doing it.”
Returning to the secondary classroom has only strengthened his teaching at the university level.
‘It is a belief I held as a higher ed professor that it is necessary to stay relevant in the field,” he said. “This allows me to try new techniques, see if previous techniques still work, and to keep an eye on how students have evolved. In other words, it allows me to keep a finger on the pulse of education today and bring this information to students in my courses at K-State. Just the realism that I get from the experience. My philosophical foundation as an academic is a pragmatist. The only way I felt I could stay abreast of what was occurring in schools was to see if my personal beliefs of education were still relevant after 10 years at K-State.
“I’ve been fortunate that Rock Creek was wide open to letting this experience be a laboratory to try some new ideas and explore some new thoughts into my repertoire of teaching strategies. The kids have been the best with it. I’ve said, ‘Hey, I want to try something with you all, and the kids have given me their best efforts with it. It has been so much fun to do. It’s a premier school in Kansas, and it is such a privilege to teach there and being involved with the education at their school. The school has been so supportive of any creative thing I have tried with the kids and the kids there are just wonderful.”
And he brings those lessons back to the K-State campus.
“This is providing me with the opportunity to really stretch my repertoire of strategies and concepts about pedagogy,” Burenheide said. “I’m taking some fresh ideas to my students now, and every once in a while, I get, ‘How do you know this will work in the classroom?’ which I always encourage my K-State students to ask. Inevitably, I can show them the lesson plan and how I taught it. I still have the current practical means of showing them, yes, it does work. Here are some of the finer points that I have experienced with it. Plus, it really makes kids think about how far they can push their own teaching.”
And teaching in a rural setting has its benefits.
“It’s funny,” he said. “As a rural kid myself, I had no problem taking my first teaching job in Western Kansas. I spent five years there with my wife, bought a house, had a child. It was great. For a lot of personal reasons, it was a great opportunity for my wife and I to figure out how to grow up together and how to be a married couple. Some of my students have balked at this and said, “there’s nothing to do.” I think I’m a living embodiment that that’s OK and you make of it what you want it to be. I was able to complete my master’s degree while there and had no problems pursuing intellectual interests and other activities. Furthermore, the idea of family and community you get from a rural school is unbeatable.
“The fact that it becomes a close-knit community all of its own is a perfect reason for rural schools,” Burenheide said. “You combine that with a growing curriculum and perhaps the use of technology to enhance these options, and you have what you hope for all kids—a learning community that cares about their kids and can provide a multitude of ways to teach them, and it becomes a special part of a child’s upbringing.
These days, his teaching and related duties fill his calendar. He’s in his 16th year at K-State, where he directs the secondary social studies program, teaches graduate courses and honors courses and also leads a class in the Summer STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program for middle schoolers on the K-State campus.
On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, he teaches part time at RCHS; plus, there’s the hour or so for each class that he spends preparing and developing material for those lessons. He’s also taken on the role of interim wrestling coach for the school.
“The coaching piece will be tough,” he said. “I’ve always been good at maximizing my time and I’ve really had to concentrate on doing that.”
Then he balances that with his K-State teaching and mentoring obligations and projects such as writing academic papers about his experiences and brainstorming an idea for a book on Latin pedagogy.
“It helps that I’ve got my secondary social studies program down pretty well,” he said. “I teach 10 hours of courses with that, guide the secondary social studies Master of Arts in Teaching program, and then the other duties as well, and it chews up a lot of my time.”
But he gets a little help from home.
“My family is very supportive of what I do,” said the father of six. “AJ, Hannah, and Drew are all out on their own. Brooklyn is a sophomore, Madison a sixth grader and Sam is a second grader. And then I read, study, and have other hobbies as well. I just love working with kids and being around them. Whether it is in the various classes I teach, coaching, helping at football games by keeping stats or announcing. It all revolves around my family and goes along side of it.
“And teaching is when I’m happiest.”