By: Mitchell “Stitch” Stafford 

Natalie Slack has spent much of her life becoming. Becoming a wife. Becoming a mother. Becoming an entrepreneur. Becoming an advocate. Becoming an educator. And through each version of herself, Slack has maintained a fascination with the same thing she now gets to witness every day inside Rapid City Central High School: the complicated, beautiful process of figuring out who you are.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the way words and images move our emotions, hearts, decisions, and journeys onward, upward, forward, or back,” Slack said.

Slack describes herself as the second-born daughter of well-intentioned parents and someone who has spent much of adulthood deconstructing faith, her role as a woman, her identity as a mother and her desire to be a writer. But that’s only the beginning.

“I am a teenage bride, a child mother. An accidental entrepreneur. I am a storyteller,” she said. “I refuse to be defined by my day job, though the title of ‘teacher’ is the most dear I’ve known.”

And, she adds with a smile, she fancies herself a poet.

That combination of storyteller, mother, advocate and lifelong learner has ultimately found a home inside a classroom.

Becoming “Mrs. Slack”

Teaching may be a relatively new career for Slack, but the desire to impact young people has been there much longer. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a motivational speaker or youth pastor and briefly explored both before life took her somewhere else. She became a parent, dropped out of college and taught herself graphic design and web development, eventually building a career as an entrepreneur.

Still, the desire to teach and coach remained.

“Somewhere inside me was the desire to make meaning of my own lived experience, and teaching or coaching came naturally to me from an early age,” Slack said.

She eventually returned to school and completed an undergraduate degree, a four-year degree that took her 20 years to finish.

By then, Slack assumed she’d missed her chance to become a teacher. Central High School Principal Terry Lundeen told her otherwise. Lundeen explained there were alternative paths to teacher certification and a need for open-hearted teachers inside high school classrooms.

“All of the stars aligned and I was able to start the ‘Ms. Slack’ phase of my life three years ago, at the age of 39,” Slack said.

It has become one of her most meaningful chapters.

Teaching Kids How to Be Human

Slack teaches Freshman Seminar at Central, a class designed to help students learn the skills necessary to successfully navigate high school. But inside Slack’s classroom, the mission is bigger. She wants to help students learn how to navigate life.

“When I started teaching, I dumbly thought that since I’d had some success as the parent of teenagers, I’d naturally be able to lead other kids to success,” Slack said.

The classroom quickly taught her otherwise. She realized her greatest contribution might not be having all the answers. It might simply be being there.

“The best thing I can do for my students is to be a safe, trusted adult in a room where they may feel insecure, behind, frustrated, betrayed or forgotten,” she said.

Freshman Seminar focuses on “how to be a highschooler,” but Slack said it also teaches students “how to be a human being.” She wants students to recognize their own strengths, values and dreams while expanding their involvement in community, activities and academics. That mission takes on even greater importance to Slack as technology rapidly changes how students learn and communicate.

“In the age of AI, kids need to tap into the truest and deepest parts of being a person,” Slack said.

Her classroom is meant to create space for curiosity, depth, reflection and, as Slack puts it, “heart & soul.”

Why Advocacy Matters

Slack’s willingness to stand up for people who feel unseen or marginalized is rooted partly in knowing what it feels like to be outside the crowd herself. She was homeschooled and remembers often feeling like an outsider or the “weird kid.”

Then she became a teenage mother and experienced another kind of judgment. Those experiences created connections with others who have felt different, judged or pushed aside.

“My willingness to be vulnerable about the imperfect or trying parts of myself has opened the door to lots of people showing up and sharing out about their own lives,” Slack said.

Listening to those stories strengthened her resolve to advocate for others.

“When I get to know the struggles or truths about people who are like me or very different from me, I am fierce about honoring those unique qualities and protecting rights to live, love, and be happy and whole,” she said.

Slack also recognizes the position from which she advocates. She describes herself as a middle-class white woman in a long-term marriage and acknowledges that publicly speaking up often carries relatively little risk for her. That makes using her voice feel less like a burden and more like a responsibility.

“Where I’m able, I’m privileged to be a listening ear or a voice for the equality and rights of those who need an advocate,” Slack said.

Watching Teenagers Become

Ask Slack about teenagers, and her affection for the chaos of adolescence becomes immediately apparent.

“Kids are SO interesting,” she said. “They’re wild and anxious, insecure at times and stupidly confident at others. They’re weird and entertaining, ever changing and willing to try new things.”

Slack believes young people have a relatively short period of their lives to experiment with identities and ideas before society begins attempting to define them. She wants them to have that space.

“All of the colors and expressions and ideas they share, staying curious about themselves and others, and operating in the temporary and the joy of the moment while recognizing their place in a big world brings me both challenge and delight,” Slack said.

Her philosophy is simple.

“There’s so much room for so many ways of being, but the best way of being is being yourself,” she said. “I love getting to see teenagers become.”

Three Boys, Three Different Journeys

Long before Slack had a classroom filled with teenagers, she and her husband, Brandon, had three boys of their own. And those boys taught their parents an important lesson about raising children. You can raise kids similarly and still watch them become completely different people.

“Oh my god, they’re the best,” Slack said. “You could not raise three kids more similarly and then end up with three more different results!”

Their talents, careers, relationships and interests differ, but Slack sees common threads running through all three. Confidence. Creativity. Open-hearted living. She jokes that it took her and Brandon until their mid-30s to become “really decent parents,” meaning their sons endured plenty of learning along the way. But now, Natalie and Brandon get to watch their children build lives on their own terms.

Their sons have traveled independently to places including China and South America, designed and sold software solutions, found success through social media and moved across the country in pursuit of education and opportunities.

Slack doesn’t take credit.

“The fact that all three sons call us, ask our advice, and also do their own thing with courage … is testament to them, not really us,” she said.

Instead, she feels fortunate that she and Brandon became parents young enough to now experience adulthood alongside their sons.

“We feel lucky to be young parents who get to see this phase of our kids’ lives and cheer them on, while hopefully always being a safe place to land should they ever need to come home,” Slack said.

From Mother to Trusted Guide

Motherhood inevitably followed Slack into the classroom. She remembers the teachers who saw something in her own sons and invested more than just classroom time in them. They led clubs. Had conversations. Created opportunities. Traveled with students. Encouraged advanced learning.

Slack remains grateful for those educators because she saw firsthand what their investment helped her children become. Now she gets to be that person for someone else’s child.

“I see myself as a teacher, yes, but also as a coach or a ‘trusted guide’ that is a little farther down the road than my own kids or my students, but still doesn’t totally have it figured out,” Slack said.

That last part matters. Slack doesn’t believe being an adult means pretending to be perfect. She believes students notice something much more meaningful: whether an adult is willing to admit when they’re wrong, apologize, learn and return the next day.

“I think that flexibility and willingness to be wrong, ask for forgiveness, try again, and keep showing up is probably the thing that sticks with kids,” she said.

Slack wants her students to know who she is, too. Her values. Her interests. Her family. Her dreams. After all, she estimates she spends roughly 180 hours with each student during a school year.

That’s 180 hours of opportunity.

“I have an opportunity to help them learn how to be good friends, good community members, and good adults someday,” Slack said.

Making Room at the Table

Several years ago, Slack participated in a writing seminar led by a published author and friend. One assignment was unusual. Write your own obituary. The exercise forced Slack to consider two things: what an obituary written about her today would say and what she hopes it could say someday. Her answer reveals perhaps more about Natalie Slack than any job title ever could.

“I hope it says I lived my life with curiosity and not judgement, that I kept learning my whole life long — from my elders but from my students, mostly, too — and that I was a faithful friend,” Slack said.

She hopes for a life marked by loving deeply and taking chances.

“I hope I leave this earthly experience stretch-marked from holding love past capacity, and scar-riddled from risk and reward,” she said.

She wants to keep noticing the little things. Smelling flowers. Holding doors. Learning. Listening. Loving. And making room at her table.

“I plan to keep turning over boxes to add more seating around my table, feeding friends and family and adding new friends and family from everywhere, all of the time.”

Maybe that’s the thread connecting all the versions of Natalie Slack.

The teenage bride and young mother. The entrepreneur. The storyteller. The advocate. The teacher. The mother watching three sons build lives of their own. She’s still learning. Still becoming. Still helping other people become.

And whenever someone needs a place to belong, Slack plans to find another seat at the table.