Voices from the Field: Kelsy Sproul - Sedan, KS

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Sedan, Kansas — where Kelsy Sproul grew up — is a town of about 1,000 people in southeastern Kansas, a remote dot surrounded by wheat and corn fields and pastures for cattle grazing. It’s a place where many kids don’t expect to attend a big university.

At a recent conference, Kelsy, a proud rancher and Native American, flashed back to 25 years ago, as one of those students.

“I was that kid that didn't have parents or family that ever attended college,” Kelsy recalled. “And when you were in high school, you go and you meet with your counselor.

“My parents were great. They're entrepreneurs, right? They're business owners. They started and sold multiple businesses and they did a fabulous job for rural America. But my high school counselor — I'll never forget— he said, ‘You know, you're not really college material.’ You should probably stay here and just take over the family business. Right.

“And I always wanted to go to Kansas State. I always wanted to go to Kansas State. I wanted to be a Wildcat. And in junior high, I hand-painted my bedroom purple and white. And I hand-painted a giant power cat on one wall because I thought, you know, if I don't get to go to Kansas State, I'm gonna bring Kansas State to me.”

After graduating high school, Kelsy headed into the workforce instead of college. She traveled, to Chicago, to Nashville. She worked for a time as a professional musician before launching a successful IT business in her garage. But during a divorce, she had to dissolve that business, and returned with her son to the support of her family in Sedan.

While working at her parents’ bar, she met her current husband, Raymond, and formed a family while operating their cattle ranch outside Sedan. Over the years, their family and business grew, and every five years, she and Raymond would set goals for the future.

When she was pregnant with her fourth child, she and Raymond sat down once again to set their five-year goals. They were not going to have any more kids; what would she do by the time the youngest was 5? She enjoyed teaching Sunday school, enjoyed working with kids, hers and others’.

Maybe she should consider working in the school as a paraprofessional aide?

“It was my husband that said, ‘Kelsy, I really don't think you should be a para because you're probably gonna have better ideas for how to handle that classroom. And I really think you are capable and you should go to college and become a teacher.’

“And so that's kind of how that started. And I said, ‘Are you sure? I don't know if I — I don't know. I'm not really college material.’ You know, I was still saying that to myself. And he goes, ‘Kelsy — you are a teacher, you, you need to do that.’”

That nudge without hesitation, that support without question, led her, at age 35, to apply for college at Kansas State, her first step back toward the classroom, to become a strong voice for the next generation of rural students.

ENTERING THE CLASSROOM

Kelsy took a long, curving path back to the classroom. After two years of general education courses, she was ready for her professional teaching program.

In Sedan, though, they couldn’t wait. They needed her help as an emergency substitute.

“You know, as everybody knows in education, there's a terrible teacher shortage and it's drastically affecting rural America and rural schools,” Kelsy said. “I had just got accepted in that professional program. I hadn't had any courses on lesson planning or anything like that yet.

“But I did have four kids, and our superintendent called, and she said, ‘Kelsy, we haven't been able to find a kindergarten teacher.’ And it was three weeks before school was scheduled to start, they'd had the job posted, and she said, ‘I know you aren't done with your program yet, but would you mind coming in as a long-term sub and taking this classroom over?’

“And, you know, at first I was scared 'cause I had never been in a classroom, but I was very comfortable with small children because I had four of my own, and I also saw it as an opportunity. I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher and I thought, you know what, what if somebody else gets this position and then I never get that opportunity again?

“And something that I believe a lot of rural Americans understand is that when we have an opportunity that comes our way, we take it because they're far and few between in rural America. And so, I took it. I started teaching my class full-time kindergarten teacher — started my profession in the first year of my professional program.”

To help prepare her for the class, the district gave her a scripted curriculum to use with the students.

 ”But I quickly saw that it wasn't connecting with the students, and it wasn't connecting with me, either,” she said. “And so I brought in what I did know, which was agriculture, and I put it in to these lessons.

“Like I used the lessons more of a framework, as a framework, the curriculum, and then I just layered my agriculture knowledge into that and I noticed that not only did it help me learn it. My students learned a lot better, too, because they're familiar with agriculture and they're familiar with our local environment and our place, and so I was able to connect with them the same way it was connecting with me.”

KELSY’S IDEA

Not only were the students more engaged, they were learning. Their test scores improved dramatically, from the sixth percentile to the 99th, and behavioral problems dissipated as students gained more confidence. As she continued in her college work, she learned that the teaching technique she intuitively discovered had solid theoretical support.

The next year, she had a big idea: What if we expanded the program throughout the elementary school?

“I talked to my superintendent, and again, working in a rural district, there's a lot of possibilities you get to do, and I said, ‘Hey, this is really working for my kindergartners. These scores are great. They're learning a lot. I think it would be beneficial for our entire elementary school to have,’” she recalled. “An agriculture class at least one day a week, for 30 minutes to teach literacy and reading, using agriculture as a lens, because I noticed my kindergartners really caught on to those reading skills and concepts when I used it that way.

“And he said, ‘Absolutely, let's do it.’ I didn't get paid extra for it, which I wasn't needing, but I had the opportunity to do it. And so I taught the last hour of the day Elementary Agriculture, but not as a science itself, not for agricultural literacy, but using it to teach reading to all of our elementary students.”

She taught first through fifth graders, a different grade each day in the class, and her successful place-based project, “Cultivating Roots: Integrating Agriculture and Education in Rural Classrooms,” received a 2025 Grants in Place Award from Rural Schools Collaborative. With the grant, she bought root viewers and was able to take a group of fifth graders on a field trip to the Flint Hills Discovery Center three hours away in Manhattan, Kan.

She told of the journey at Rural Schools Collaborative’s Hub Summit:

 ”Now mind you, we teeter in Chautauqua County — trades places often — we’re either the poorest county in the state or the second poorest county in the state, depending on the year. So a lot of our students don't get to leave the county. And so, they were able to go to Manhattan and go to the Flint Hills Discovery Center, and they were amazed because that museum was dedicated to their lifestyle.

“All the time, they didn't think their lifestyle was important. And then they go up there, and they see a whole museum dedicated to them. And what was great is when you first walk in on that museum, they have a big map on the floor. If you ever make it to Manhattan, Kansas, you've got to visit.

“It's really phenomenal. But there's a giant map on the floor, and there's maybe a handful of towns on that map, and it's talking about where the Flint Hills is. However, one of the towns on the map was Sedan, because we're known as the gateway to the Flint Hills. We're at the bottom right, and right when you get into the Flint Hills.

“And all my students just thought that was so amazing, that they saw their name on the map. I mean, when we watched the news, the weatherman (doesn’t) cover us. Like, we're just not even in — we're not on any map. Right? And so they got to see that.”

BRINGING K-STATE TO SEDAN

They also got to visit the Kansas State campus, where they heard about the College of Education and the College of Engineering, and got to taste the legendary ice cream at Call Hall. Then, as part of a collaboration with K-State’s ED ASTRA Rural Teacher Corps, the university brought a group of teachers to Sedan’s Elementary Ag students. They put on an entire day dedicated to STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — for Kelsy’s students.

 ”They loved that that K-State came to them, right? They were looked at. They were recognized. They were noticed. And so I was asking, ‘What was your favorite part this year about Elementary Ag? And they said, ‘K-State.’ And I had a student …

“And he said, ‘You know what, Mrs. Sproul, I never thought I could go to college, but K-State told me I could. And I think I wanted to go there because they have the very best ice cream.’ 'cause the Call Hall ice cream is pretty, is pretty special. But he is going, too, in his mind now, he's going, and to me, I want to be that teacher.

“Because I refuse to ever tell a kid that they're not college material. And these kids got to experience college. They got to see that their life mattered. And it was reflected in a beautiful museum.”

Kelsy finished her degree in the spring of 2024 but decided to keep going. She was accepted into Kansas State’s graduate program and is now a graduate teaching assistant in the College of Education’s Rural Education Center, a research and outreach project that focuses on improving rural education.

 ” I think we have a lot of work to do from a state level regarding how we look at rural education in Kansas and the students,” she said. “I found out 77% of all districts in Kansas are considered rural districts, and our policies at our state level and our curriculum and things — I just don't believe have rural students in mind.

“And so that's what I foresee me doing in the future, being an advocate, doing some research, finding some promising solutions to help all rural students succeed.”

Voices from the Field is part of the I Am a Rural Teacher project. I Am A Rural Teacher shares the stories, experiences, and aspirations of America’s rural teachers. By highlighting the narratives of veteran, new, and future teachers, I Am A Rural Teacher strives to support an education ecosystem where rural teacher-leaders are front and center. This project is supported by the Rural Teacher Corps: A Community of Learners.