Alumna RoseMary Clairmont Working to Revitalize Native Education

A member of the Sicangu Lakota tribe in South Dakota, Clairmont (’21 EdD) is the first Native American woman to graduate from NYU Steinhardt's EdD in Leadership and Innovation (EDLI) program.

As the first Native American woman to graduate from NYU Steinhardt’s EdD in Leadership and Innovation program, RoseMary Clairmont (EdD ’21) is using her knowledge and drive to foster educational excellence within the American Indian community.

A member of the Sicangu Lakota tribe in South Dakota, Clairmont knew from a young age that she wanted to earn an advanced degree someday.

“When I learned that few [Native people] went to college, and even fewer got advanced degrees, that was like a challenge to me,” says Clairmont. She studied elementary education at Ottawa University and became a classroom teacher in Arizona before obtaining her MEd in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Reading Instruction and Structured English Immersion from Arizona State University. Several years later, she earned another master’s degree in American Indian Leadership from Penn State.

“After my second master’s, I said ‘I’m done, I want to be in the classroom helping Native students,’” says Clairmont, who has a combined 16 years experience as an educator and school systems leader. “But I had this gnawing, biological-clock-ticking kind of need for a doctoral degree. For many years, I sat with that feeling, questioning what I would research. Deep down I knew I wanted to write about something meaningful, something that would make change.”

Throughout her academic journey, Clairmont had always felt that she was piecemealing things together, adding policy courses into her degrees because she “felt things were missing.” When she more seriously began looking for a doctoral program, she started a list of things she wanted to study, what she wanted to experience, and how it would all relate to her career.

“NYU Steinhardt’s online EDLI program kept popping up for me, but it felt like such a reach,” says Clairmont. “One morning I finally looked at it in earnest, and it hit everything I was looking for: It’s about working across sectors to change the education landscape, it’s short and flexible, and I didn’t have to uproot my family to enroll.”

Getting admitted into the program was an emotional moment for Clairmont, who grew up having teachers tell her that she’d never even make it to college and would “end up a statistic.”

Kids have the free will to have a dream, and our job in learning and teaching is to give them the resources so they can be successful.

RoseMary Clairmont (EdD ’21)

“At the time I didn’t understand what that meant, but over the last 35 years, this attitude toward Native students hasn’t changed,” says Clairmont, whose specialty is the preservation of Native history within the education space. “I think that’s why I have a passion to change the climate for Native students and to hold teachers accountable for the direct influence they have on them and their educational experience.”

Today, Clairmont is the assistant director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Education Department, a role she stepped into after spending more than eight years as an educational specialist with the department. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe was one of first to implement an educational code more than 30 years ago, which ensures tribal citizens receive the highest quality and relevant education that is based in the language, culture, and history of the Tribe, including traditional methods of teaching and learning.

“As assistant director, I work with school leadership to enhance student retention and academic performance and collaborate with experts and researchers on implementing culturally based curriculum,” says Clairmont. “I meet frequently with leadership at the state and federal government level and our eight other sister tribes in South Dakota, as well as superintendents, school boards, and teachers, to help uplift and support the educational code.”

Thanks to her time in the EDLI program, Clairmont feels like she has a particular kind of influence and authority in which she can hold space with educational decisionmakers to create a better way for Lakota children and all Native kids.

“What I have learned in my formal education is that degrees matter in some spaces, so part of my work is trying to flatten the system so that we have more people at the table,” says Clairmont. “Kids have the free will to have a dream, and our job in learning and teaching is to give them the resources so they can be successful. Part of that means getting them into the right environment so they can bloom. These students need to know that they are worthy, they have a purpose, and they are our next generation. I tell them, ‘When I’m a grandma in the community and I fall over, I hope you will be there to pick me up. If you do, I’ll know that I did what I was supposed to do.’”

A founding member of The Liber Institute, Clairmont is currently working on a parent-forward engagement initiative called Building Bridges that seeks to build more trust between Native parents and school administrators. Learn more about Clairmont’s work to revitalize Native education in this episode of The Teacher’s Forum.

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