Stephen Bell (Lumbee), 34, Educator and Social Worker

Sometimes, you grow up to be the person you needed when you were a kid.

For Stephen Bell that is one of the ways he thinks about his job leading the American Indian Education Program in Guilford County Schools, where he celebrates and explores students’ Native American cultures and supports them on their academic and personal journeys.

“The work I do today is not only helping the Native students who are here, but also helping his inner child. I try to be the adult I wish I had had in the school system,” he says.

Stephen was born and raised in Greensboro, the oldest of three brothers and  a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Growing up, Stephen was able to learn about his culture through visiting  family in Pembroke (the homelands of the Lumbee Tribe), attending Guilford Native American Powwow, and learning about Native American health through his father’s public health work.

At school , there were few Native American children and little awareness of his Tribe. “I was trying to navigate who I knew I was but also getting a lot of questions about, ‘Why don’t you live in a teepee? Why don’t you wear feathers? Why don’t you have long hair?”

Each year before Thanksgiving, his school had a tradition where you had to dress as a Native American or a pilgrim to be counted present. One year , his class made Pilgrim hats and fake Native American feather headdresses from paper to celebrate. He asked, “an I just go as myself? I am Lumbee. I don’t want to wear these paper feathers.” His teacher told him “No. You have to go in costume.” So he went dressed as a turkey.

It wasn’t until he left for college that he really started to learn more about his Lumbee heritage. He studied architecture at NC State University. One spring break, he took a service learning trip that changed his trajectory.

He traveled to the Navajo Nation and spent the week working in schools, meeting elders and community members. “I just loved getting to work with kids.”

After graduation, he joined Teach for America’s Native Alliance Initiative, which aims to get more Native Americans teachers teaching Native American children in urban and tribal schools. He got a position teaching seventh and eighth grade science in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where many of his students were Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, and Osage.

He didn’t love the business part of being an educator. But he loved the students. He’d often spend his planning period talking with kids or having lunch with students so they could just be themselves or vent him about what they were going through.

“I found myself really enjoying being able to help kids navigate their own story.” The last year as a teacher , his school had a school social worker. When he realized he could get to have that connection with students without all the lesson planning, he decided to go back to school.

He got his MSW at Washington University in St. Louis’s Buder Center for American Indian Studies with a small cohort of Native Americans working toward social work and public health degrees. At first, he wondered if he belonged with this group.

“There was only one other east coast Native in the cohort. A lot of folks could introduce themselves in their language or have been powwow dancers. It took me a little bit for me to work through some anxiety and really feel like I fit in there,” he said.

When Stephen began to connect with the other Native (Buder) students… “it was really a personal healing moment.”

After completing his master’s, he moved back home to North Carolina to take a job at a Wake County K-8 school that had never had a school social worker before. He helped develop the program in conjunction with the school counselor Mrs. Jordan. He taught mental health and suicide prevention lessons, led one on one and group counseling sessions, facilitated professional learning sessions, and helped create a new social justice elective with another teacher, Mrs Drew. He was working there at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he spent a lot of time figuring out how to get families the resources they needed.

Meanwhile, he was doing volunteer work back home in Guilford County with the former Indian Ed Coordinator. When she announced she was leaving her position, Stephen jumped at the chance to come home to “give back to the many people who supported me throughout my years.”

Stephen has led Guilford County School’s federally-funded American Indian Education program since 2020. Founded to help close the vast disparity gap in graduation rates among Native American students, the program offers everything from career support to mentoring to family advocacy. Stephen works with a parent advisory board that sets goals for the year and plans how to use the approximately $30,000 in federal funds.

The program hosts weekly culture classes in partnership with the Guilford Native American Association. They also plan college tours, host talking circles, hold culture camp, and send students to the North Carolina Native American Youth Organization’s (NCNAYO) annual leadership conference.

Stephen has been working to develop a Native Youth  leadership council. This year he saw the high schoolers blossom during the summer camp program, when they took the lead in running activities.

“It gave me the opportunity to get out of the way and let our youth shine. It let our younger kids be more successful. They were so invested in their other peers helping them,” he says. “I had much more energy at the end of the day and it was a much more successful and enriching experience for the kids as well.”

Some days are tough — like when a family comes to him facing a difficult barrier, be it academic, mental health or even communication, and he isn’t sure he can help. Still, he tries to meet children where they are.

“Whether I am doing a home visit for a child who doesn’t want to go to school, meeting with a student in their counselors office because they are struggling with some social or friendship situations, whether they are coming to culture class and they are nervous about participating in our dance class or being afraid to even walk into the room, I think, as a social worker, I am able to identify where that fear comes from,” he says.

Last year, Stephen was honored as the National Indian Education Association’s National Educator of the Year. He was shocked, and grateful for everyone who has pushed him to be where he is today and for the platform that it has given him.

“I have been blessed now to be able to talk about my kids outside of Guilford County Schools….because they are our leaders of today.