HURON – Adolescents referred to Our Home Inc. for treatment of sexual, drug or alcohol problems are away from home for weeks or as much as a year and a half, but they aren’t falling behind in their school work.
In a public-private sector partnership that has been successful since Our Home was established in Huron in the early 1970s, literally thousands of kids have kept up with their educations while going through treatment.
“No matter where kids are in South Dakota, there has to be an educational component to what takes place,” said Huron School Superintendent Terry Nebelsick.
“When Our Home started, the model that we still have today is that the public school would provide the educational component for the kids during their treatment at Our Home,” he said.
Laura Willemssen, assistant principal at the Huron Middle School, oversees the educational component at Our Home.
District teachers teach middle and high school classes at the Our Home campus southeast of Huron for kids who range in age from 12 to 17.
Those in the Rediscovery Drug and Alcohol program are in treatment for 45 days, while young people undergoing treatment in the Adolescent Sexual Adjustment program are here for a year and a half.
“We’ve been fortunate to have four teachers who can really teach about any subject, with the combination of them,” Willemssen said.
Courses typically include math, science, fine arts, language arts and social studies.
Class sizes generally range from eight to 15 students.
Our Home kids are counted as Huron kids when the district turns in its student enrollment figure for state aid.
The district is charged with providing educational services to Our Home kids throughout the year.
At the beginning of each semester, the four teachers and high school counselors and administrators review student transcripts to determine which courses need to be offered based on how many of the kids need them, Willemssen said.
If just one or two kids need to take government or speech, for example, they can complete those requirements online.
Once in awhile there may be a situation where a group of students is taking algebra and a couple kids are taking geometry.

“And because of the support that the Our Home staff can provide with supervision, you’re able to teach two classes at the same time,” Willemssen said.
Nebelsick said there are occasions when a student is able to complete all of his or her high school credits while in treatment in Huron.
“Once in awhile we have a graduation,” he said. “But most of the time we’re doing the best that we can to get as many credits as we can so that when they go back home they can continue their education instead of being way behind.
“The most important mission we have is to have them gain credits while they’re here so they can go back home and be successful,” Nebelsick said.
Blaise Tomczak, program coordinator for the Rediscovery and ASAP programs at Our Home, said the agency’s Parkston facility has a similar model.
“However, with Parkston, some of the kids will go to the public school in Parkston, where here they don’t,” he said.
The uniqueness of having teachers at the Our Home campus is that all of their preparation involves academics, Nebelsick said.
Teachers in K-12 schools must prepare for academics and behavior, he said.
“How do I manage a classroom?” he said. “How do I manage behavior in a classroom? That’s not a component out there.
“Our Home manages the behavior component so it’s consistent with their treatment,” Nebelsick said.
That way, kids aren’t getting mixed messages from Our Home and their teachers.
“They are constantly in Our Home’s care with our academic component,” he said.
Our Home staff is in each classroom so if problems arise they can be dealt with right away, Tomczak said.
Behavior issues do happen from time to time.
“However, if you go out there and you spend a day you’d be very surprised at how these kids are in school,” he said. “They’re very well behaved.”
Our Home also has an education liaison from its treatment center who works with the teachers.
That way, the liaison can let a teacher know if a student is anxious about something, for example, an upcoming meeting with parents or something that was revealed in a treatment session, Tomczak said.
“So we can help the teachers understand where those kids are coming from,” he said.
Teachers and administrators are always interested in hearing how kids they have taught or known in school are doing months and years later.
But with the Our Home kids, there are privacy issues involved.
“I think we all want to know that, but just because so much of it is confidential there can’t be a lot of follow up,” Willemssen said.
“Once in awhile you’ll hear back from a kid and they’ll say, ‘hey, I was at Our Home 15 years ago, and this is where I’m at right now,’” Tomczak said.
School and Our Home staff work to make a student’s experience with teachers as positive as possible.
When they go back home, they then, hopefully, view their teachers as advocates rather than obstacles, Nebelsick said.
“Sometimes when students struggle, they don’t see teachers as an advocate,” he said.
“I think that we do a good job trying to get that across to them,” Tomczak said.
Willemssen taught classes at Our Home for a couple summers, and said she saw the focus on positive behaviors.
“Those kids like to be reminded that they’re doing a good job, just like everybody else, but there’s more opportunity for that,” she said.