When Katelyn Gorder, the Family and Consumer Science (FACS) teacher at Grafton High School, showed up for work on Jan. 17, she mostly expected it to be just another Wednesday. However, something seemed a bit strange.
“I felt like there were some things going on,” Gorder said. The school had scheduled an assembly in the gym, and even though the middle and high school students weren’t going to the event, administrators had found a substitute teacher for Gorder to be in attendance.
“When I showed up,” she said, “something felt kind of fishy. I mean, we had county commissioners there and the Superintendent of North Dakota schools was there, and I was, like, there is no way. I am not that important.”
Gorder’s suspicions rose to a new level when Stephanie Bishop, the vice president of the Milken Educator Awards, was brought up to speak. “I was brushing it off,” she said. “I was, like, oh my goodness, I got worked up for nothing. Then they did call my name, and I was so confused. And truly my first reaction was, okay, the door's there. I think I'm going to go that way.” After being given the award, she had to give a speech and her mind went blank. “I think I said ‘I like teaching,’” Katelyn said with a laugh. “That was my speech. They caught me so off guard. … I am still shocked.”
The Milken Award
The Milken Awards annually honor educators across the country who are early- to mid-career for what they have achieved – and for the promise of what they will accomplish if given the resources and opportunities afforded to them by being given a $25,000 award. Gorder is the sole North Dakota 2023-24 Milken Educator Award recipient.
As to the surprise presentation, that’s exactly how the Milken Awards are designed to be. From their website: “Educators cannot apply and are unaware of their candidacy. Recipients are surprised with the news of their Award at all-school assemblies before cheering students, colleagues, education officials, community leaders and media.”
About Katelyn Gorder
To better understand what makes Gorder so special as an educator to receive what some call “the Oscars of Teaching,” we should start at the beginning of her story. She started out in life on a farmstead located about three miles away from the school where she now teaches. “I am originally from Grafton,” she said, “and so are my parents, and so are my grandparents, and so are my great-grandparents. This place has always been really special to me.”
Her grandfather, William Gorder, helped start the North Valley Career and Technical Center in Grafton. “He was a counselor (in the 1970s), and they came to him with this opportunity of building this building, here in Grafton. It was kind of one of the first of its kind in this area, at least.”
Beyond her familial roots in Grafton, the seeds that would grow into Katelyn’s passion for teaching were first planted there, too. “When I got into high school, I took all of the Family Consumer Science classes that I could,” she said. “I just enjoyed baking and I enjoyed sewing, and I loved the hands-on. That was just where my heart was.”
Gorder got her Bachelor of Science degree in Family and Consumer Science education from North Dakota State University in 2015, and quickly found her first teaching job at Skyview High School in Billings, Mont., teaching FACS. She worked there for eight years and helped to launch several programs that gave students hands-on learning experiences in career exploration and development, including a student-run coffee shop and outdoor adventures club.
Returning to Grafton
Like a lot of people who grew up in our state and left to find work, Katelyn kept one eye open toward North Dakota and any opportunities to come back home. So, when the superintendent in Grafton, who had been the principal of the school when Gorder was still a student, reached out to her in 2022 and said the FACS teaching position was open, she knew it was time again to listen to her heart.
“This is a place that my whole family grew up, and there’s just a lot of roots here,” she said. “So, I kind of had just reached a point in my life where I just wanted to be closer to my family.”
Since returning, Gorder has been given the latitude to craft the school’s FACS and career-preparedness programs in line with her own vision of immersive learning. Enrollment in her FACS courses, including classes on independent living, nutrition and food preparation, and culinary arts, is surging. Within these courses, students learn important lessons in financial literacy, child development, staying safe online, personal health practices, cooking techniques and a lot more.
She began a new course called Teaching Profession Class for students interested in pursuing a career as an educator. It’s offered both to students in Grafton and remotely for students outside of the district, through Northern Red River Interactive Television.
“I think the best thing for anyone considering (becoming) a teacher is to spend time with kids and get in the classroom,” Gorder said about the course. “I would encourage you to job shadow a teacher for a day and interview a teacher and sit in their classroom for multiple days and actually work with kids.”
Just as essential to developing a lifelong love for the profession of education is learning how to work well with the other adults in the same line of work. Gorder credits all her colleagues who have been there for her throughout her career, thus far.
“My first few years of teaching, I felt so blessed that I had the colleagues that I did,” Gorder said. “I had some pretty veteran teachers that had done it before and thoroughly enjoyed teaching. … I just feel like I had the perfect storm of all these people supporting me and pushing me towards education. I feel really blessed because that's not always the case, that everyone feels so excited to be a teacher.”
And that support system just continues to grow to this day. “Sometimes a FACS program can be a little bit isolating as nobody else in a small school is doing that,” Gorder said. “So, you don't have a lot of people to ask questions, like (if) something goes wrong in the lab or your mac and cheese starts on fire, the math teachers might not know how to answer that. But I’ve always felt like I had a great support system, and they definitely gave me a lot of comfort in mistakes that I made and that maybe it's not that big of a deal. It's going to be okay. You have burnt mac and cheese, but that's okay. We'll do better next time.”
Receiving a Milken Award this year has helped Gorder to feel even more confident in her abilities as a teacher, and it’s a feeling she wishes she could share with all her fellow educators.
“After winning the Milken Award, I had a lot of teachers that I had in high school or even in elementary school that reached out or sent cards or sent flowers, just congratulating me,” Gorder said. “It has been a really good honor for the year, and I think every teacher goes through years that they're like, ‘I don't even know if I'm any good at this … should I keep going? Am I even helping anyone?’ I'm at the point where I wish everyone could win an award because it's a morale booster, and it’s definitely something that I will never take for granted. It puts a little pep in your step to kind of keep going, and what you're doing is working.”
