Familiar face arrives

Editor’s note: This is one in a continuing series of stories devoted to South Heart’s and Belfield’s new teachers and staff.
Folks who grew up in Southwest North Dakota – particularly South Heart and Belfield – generally like to stay close to home these days. Whether it’s in the agriculture industry or other passions, teachers always remain a hot commodity for area schools.
For Nathaniel Jilek – a former football and baseball player with Dickinson State University who graduated from DSU with a business education degree over the summer – being close to his parents, Doug and Deanna Jilek, was important for him. In addition, he was recently married to the former Anna Beer – a Lemmon, SD native and New England educator – so becoming the business education teacher at South Heart High School was a positive first step in his new career.
“I’m really enjoying it so far, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy kids and yeah, I like my job,” Jilek said. “I did start as a business administration major, but then I did actually switch to a business education major, so I graduated with a full business education degree.
“Once I made the move, I really enjoyed my classes and enjoyed the professors and just really enjoyed being in a classroom and around school with students so, I’ve just had a lot of fun.”
While with the Blue Hawks, Jilek also was a standout baseball player and starting linebacker for the team, so he also is translating his experience into being an assistant coach for the Heart River Cougars football team under head coach Jerome Hoffman.
“Yeah, it’s definitely really cool; I definitely miss playing but I also love coaching,” Jilek said. “I get so much joy to see other kids’ success, and I think I almost get more joy seeing someone else score a touchdown than when I scored a touchdown … I just enjoy seeing other people get success.”
With Anna being a teacher as well, it creates a convenient arrangement because the two can bounce ideas off each other and learn together in the process as younger educators.
“We definitely come up with some stories about teaching the students for sure,” Jilek said. “And I want to have a happy and healthy marriage and then hopefully start a family and raise children up as well. And then in my professional career, I definitely hope to be a really good teacher for a very long time.”
One other gratifying element to his business education position is the ability to offer young people a solid head start to their futures in the adult and financial worlds, which can be one of the most-challenging elements for young people as they head off towards their own destinies. So, Jilek says he appreciates the chance to get them going in the right direction.
“Some of the classes definitely vary in variety, but one of the classes I do teach is financial literacy, and it is just all about understanding finances, budgeting, the stock market, credit and debt, things like that,” Jilek said. “It’s a valuable thing for them to learn, and the field is definitely just growing more now, and even when I was in high school, there was stuff that was similar, but I never took a financial class even when I was in high school and that was just a few years ago.
“So, it’s definitely becoming more of a thing now, but it’s definitely a good thing that’s growing more now.”
Jilek also was a standout athlete for the Dickinson High School co-op in baseball and a football player at Trinity who graduated in 2021, and – coming from a rather-large family – he is happy they get to spend time together and remain close. But he is anticipating becoming more involved in the education field and helping in all the activities he can as a benefit to his position.
“We definitely get to see each other often and stuff like that, and they definitely enjoy hanging out as a family,” Jilek added. “I definitely just want to have a good impact on some kids’ lives, and I definitely hope that there are kids in the future – 10, 15 years down the road – when they get asked, ‘How did you end up where you were,’ that they definitely look back and say, ‘I had a really good teacher in high school and he really pushed me and motivated me.
“‘Maybe I was at a really rough spot, but he pushed me and motivated me to turn my way on my own,’ or something like that; because that’s why I got to where I am, and that was important.”
For more information about South Heart Public School, and all their activities, please keep reading the Billings County Pioneer and/or visit their website at www.southheart.k12.nd.us. Please see the Billings County Pioneer’s Facebook page for more photo-galleries and videos.