For a third year in a row, Minnesotan named National Rural Teacher of the Year

NINA MOINI: For the third year in a row, the National Rural Teacher of the Year is a Minnesotan. The National Rural Education Association bestowed the honor last year to Melissa Oberg, who teaches special education in Grand Marais. The year before that, it went to Morris teacher Jenny Maras.

And I'm excited to meet this year's honoree, Jeff Granrud. He teaches math at Howard Lake-Waverly Winstead High School. That's a district of about 1,300 students. It's about an hour west of the Twin Cities. Mr. Granrud, thanks for your time and for being with us this afternoon.

JEFF GRANRUD: Thank you for having me. This has been a surreal adventure. And it's quite humbling.

NINA MOINI: Well, it sounds like you've made a difference in a lot of people's lives, especially since you've been teaching for nearly 30 years, it sounds like. You mentioned it feels humbling. What else are you feeling as you reflect on that time and the lives that you've touched?

JEFF GRANRUD: Over the experience of applying for National Teacher of the Year, being nominated for it, and going through it, I've done a lot of reflecting on students and colleagues that have really guided and directed me to becoming the educator I am today.

NINA MOINI: Have you had people reaching out to you? What has that been like?

JEFF GRANRUD: You know, I've had some phenomenal, phenomenal students that have reached out and that, over the last 30 years, we've maybe lost contact. And it's been fun to reconnect with them. Some of them are going, I remember when you were a first year teacher.

NINA MOINI: Aww.

JEFF GRANRUD: Yeah. And I'll be honest, I thought I knew everything my first year. And entering year 28, I realized that I really don't anything.

NINA MOINI: Well, I think that's the best attitude, right, always learning. I do wonder what led you to math. Math can be a divisive topic for people. I feel some students either love it or they hate it. I don't know. What do you think?

JEFF GRANRUD: Yeah. That's always a tough one. I still remember open house when we have parents come in and they tell me in front of their kids that I hate math. I'm no good at it. And on the inside, I want to shake my head and say, don't do that. You're setting me up for a really, really hard job.

But what led me into it was, believe it or not, was a college scholarship. Life was a little bit challenging at the time. And I had a professor by the name of Dr. Ling at Mayville State University who offered me a renewable scholarship if I were to declare mathematics education as a major. Now, I'll be honest, being a teacher, let alone a math teacher, was never on my radar.

NINA MOINI: But look at you now, almost 30 years later. I love what you said about sometimes students, or kids in general, are really listening and absorbing some of what they hear. And maybe there is a parent who's anxious about this or that, or others are talking about it. How do you go about trying to work with confidence for students because I think it can be so individual. And it's hard not to look around and see what everybody else is doing or how everybody else is doing.

JEFF GRANRUD: I've spent the last 2 and 1/2 weeks this year solely working on building relationships. My curriculum maybe could be a little bit further along. But if I don't ask, if I don't build those relationships with my students, they're not going to ask for the extra help. They're not going to put in the extra time. They're not going to send me an email like I got last night at 7:00 saying, hey, Granrud, I know I turned in this assignment. So they were right. I just missed it. But without those relationships, some of those pieces of the puzzle fall apart.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And I do wonder about it's been five years, hard to believe, right, since the start of the pandemic. And it has been a time of a lot of different disturbances, a lot of flexibility, adaptability. Test scores have suffered in some instances. How have the past five or six years, if any way, changed or shaped your approach to teaching?

JEFF GRANRUD: Boy, I still remember Howard Lake-Waverly Winstead going into distance learning. And they gave us three days to really crash course and figure it out. But hold on. Excuse me for one moment.

NINA MOINI: Oh. Sure.

JEFF GRANRUD: But I think, overall, it allowed us to really expand what we do and how we do it. I have a digital board that I can take all of my notes and put them on Google Classroom, which allows students to go back and reflect, which is a big one.

I'm now teaching a college credit course through SMSU called College Now College Algebra. And so the pandemic has allowed us to open some doors for our rural students that maybe weren't necessarily there.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And going back to that level of changes over these years, you're talking about Google Classroom and all these different tools. Has that been tough or challenging for you to keep up with all the ways that technology has changed around learning or does it excite you?

JEFF GRANRUD: It excites me. But at the same time, there's that what next kind of piece in my mind that I'm finally getting this one down. And if they make changes, or adjustments, or modifications, how do I prepare for that? So it's cool because we have opportunities. But at the same time, technology is always changing. And it's like my computer and my cell phone, within six months, they're obsolete. So we just got to try and keep up.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And so I understand you've also done a lot of coaching-- wrestling, football, track. How different is coaching than teaching or does one inform or help the other?

JEFF GRANRUD: I try to take the same belief into the wrestling room, which is where I'm currently coaching. It's where my heart and my passion are as far as outside of the school classroom. And I try to give those kids that one on one attention that maybe a small adjustment in working from student A or from wrestler A to wrestler B to wrestler C, we're all different.

We all need something just a little bit differently. And I think taking that idea that I've had for the last 28 years in a classroom to meet individual needs has really helped me figure out how to be a better coach. But with that said, I'm still not as good of a coach or teacher as I want to be.

NINA MOINI: Always working on improvement and learning it sounds like. So I understand you're going to be giving this keynote address next month at the National Forum to Advance Rural Education. I wonder, since this is an award for rural teachers or teaching in a rural area, what do you think is special about that or different about that? And what do you want to really highlight in front of all those people?

JEFF GRANRUD: So my keynote, when I was asked to prepare one, I had no idea what I wanted to speak on. But it all circles back to student connections. And some of those student connections are, what do we do with kids? What do we do with students that are intentional, that are hopefully life changing, that are finding the amazingness or the awesomeness within our kids? And so that's what my presentation is going to be on at the National Forum to Advance Rural Education.

But I think what makes rural unique is I'm now in second generation students. So the parents that I had when I first started, they got kids that are in my classroom. And I just I look at them and I think to myself, man, I can't be getting this old.

NINA MOINI: I love that. I love that you're seeing them. And I had teachers like that too where it was different generations coming through the classroom. It means so much. It's such a special role that you play in so many people's lives. And congratulations to you. And thank you for coming by Minnesota Now. Really appreciate your time, Mr. Granrud.

JEFF GRANRUD: I appreciate the opportunity. It's been a pleasure.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. Jeff Granrud is a math teacher for Howard Lake-Waverly Winstead Schools. And he is the 2025 National Rural Teacher of the Year.