ALUM FEATURE
ELEVATING EDUCATION:
AARON DANG ’13 | BY NANCY DAVIDSON & JOEL GACKLE
T
eachers are essential. If it wasn’t clearly understood before COVID-19 arrived, it is now. Teachers are essential to children, parents and society. Teachers are innovators, change-makers, advocates, mentors and passionate leaders in their classrooms every day. Aaron Dang ’13 is a teacher. Dang’s father is a refugee from Vietnam. He spoke no English when he arrived, so he relied on his Vietnamese to English dictionary for every word. He later met Dang’s mom, an Iowa native. Their short marriage brought the gift of two sons, who would find themselves navigating childhood in two cultural lifestyles. As a child, Dang didn’t take school too seriously. He loved time with friends and reading, but that was the extent of it. His social nature and occasional mischief-making didn’t always align with the expectations of his teachers. While attending Horace Mann Elementary in Sioux Falls, Dang and his brother were two of very few Asian students. There was limited diversity of any kind. Experiencing racism and being presented with questions, based on assumptions that no child should encounter, did nothing to encourage a love of school or learning.
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THE AUGUSTANA | FALL 2020
...THEY CHALLENGED ME TO THINK ABOUT WHO I WOULD BE AS A TEACHER.”
In his junior year of high school, Dang - AARON DANG ’13 began thinking more seriously about his future. After exploring a variety of possibilities during and after high school, he eventually realized he enjoyed working with children and began his pursuit of an elementary education major. Just as during his secondary years, his post-secondary experiences had been anything but awesome and he felt something was missing — until he found his way to Augustana University. As often happens, it was a personal connection that brought him here. His girlfriend, Kathy (Haag) Dang ‘10, now his wife, graduated with an elementary education major and was teaching in Sioux Falls. She introduced him to Augustana, and the rest, as they say, is history. From the moment Dang began to pursue a transfer to Augustana, he felt a sense of welcome and connection. He met Assistant Professor of Elementary Education Dr. Julie Ashworth ‘75 and the wheels began turning rapidly. Ashworth and Becky Fiala ‘83, field placement coordinator, invested themselves in creating a plan for Dang’s timely completion of his
baccalaureate degree. Throughout his experience he met faculty members with whom he developed lasting relationships, including Professor of Special Education Dr. Steve Van Bockern ‘74 and Associate Professor and Teacher Education Program Director Dr. Sharon Andrews. Dang said, “Everyone in the Augie education department was important to me in ensuring I graduated on time, with passion and they challenged me to think about who I would be as a teacher.” At the university, Dang says he felt a sense of belonging he hadn’t felt anywhere else. It changed his disposition and how he felt about learning. For the first time he could say “learning is cool. “ “The kind of education and instruction I got from working with someone like Julie, too, gave me new ideas of how to look at education. Understanding it as a social obligation. Education is something that all kids should have access to no matter what, period, no matter any kind of label.
