Welcome to the Pierre Indian Learning Center website. The PILC is a school located in Pierre, South Dakota that serves as an educational center and living area for approximately 250 first through eighth students annually. These students come from fifteen different tribes in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. They live, learn, laugh, and grow at the PILC for more than two-thirds of the year.

PILC Philosophy statement

Learning is a lifelong sharing process which is vital to all people. It should draw from the past to help ensure the future.

PILC will provide a cooperative program which encourages Native American students to grow and be responsible caring individuals with realistic goals for success in a multi-cultural world. It will actively involve tribal, community and family members to create this positive learning environment that will prepare the students to be citizens, proud and knowledgeable about of their culture, and prepared to face the future.

Mission Statement

We live in respect of ourselves, others, and the environment.

Goals

The goals as stated below reflect those of all components of the Pierre Indian Learning Center.

1. Pierre Indian Learning Center students will be given the opportunity to assume responsibility and develop self-esteem through holistic/relevant curriculum, living experiences, and extra curricular activities that will stimulate self-discipline, motivation, leadership, and independance.
2. Pierre Indian Learning Center students will have the opportunity to participate in multi-tribal cultural experiences and life-skills so that they can increase their culutural awareness and enhance their personal sense of identity to succeed in the various environments they encounter.
3. Pierre Indian Learning Center students will experience a safe and supportive environment through consistency in campus-wide experiences which will enable them to continue their learning and become successful individuals.

Applied Humanism

At PILC, we have a distinct care-giving culture based on instilling a sense of discipline within the child as opposed to imposing external controls. We accomplish this by implementing the following care giving qualities:

1. Ensuring Success: We value the child for the socially appropriate behaviors he/she typically demonstrates, and then we provide the support, the structure, and the recognition the child needs to consistently demonstrate these and other positive behaviors.
2. Independent Decision Making: Allowing the child to make a decision independently and then experience the natual consequence of that decision, be it good or bad, is the essence of an equitable relationship.
3. Teaching for Behavior Change: Teaching for behavior change is the proactive process of replacing problematic behaviors with appropriate behaviors. It is based upon having empathy for the child and is best accomplished by identifiying the underlying skill deficit, the misguided value system, or the lack of information and breaking it into teachable components and setting up positive learning experiences.
4. Gentle Interventions: When a child engages in behavior that threatens health, safety, property, or basic rights, educators should ONLY do what is neccessary to disrupt the behavior.
5. Logical Consequences: A consequence is the relationship between how a person behaves and what then happens, either naturally (natural consequence) or by neccessity (logical consequence). A logical consequence can be positive, such as when responsible behavior leads to an increase in privileges. A logical consequence can also be negative, such as when unacceptable behavior results in the loss of privileges to the extent necessary to protect people's health, safety, property, or basic rights.
6. No Punishment: Punishment is anything we do to a child to make the child feel so guilty, so humiliated, so remorseful, or so fearful that he/she will never do the behavior again.

Site News

2-28-05: Reminder to staff: check here to set up new printers and create a shortcut to the staff server.
1-27-05: New walkthrough to set up Outlook to use your PILC account.
12-07-04: New color scheme and some better HTML/CSS compliance added to the site. HTML 4.01 and CSS compliant! No calendar was posted for November due to the grading project.
11-21-04: Grades are finally done for Q1. Added information on the main page regarding PILC's philosophies.
9-27-04: October calendar posted to the Events page.
9-23-04: Staff directory online. Please double-check your own information to ensure Mr. Petersen didn't screw it up, since he used lots of cutting and pasting. E-mail him with confirmation your info is correct or he will start pestering you!
9-14-04: September calendars added to Events.
9-13-04: The entire website and e-mail system has been moved to a new server and restarted from scratch, hopefully taking care of the stability problems we had last week.