Working part-time, Byington entered UW-Madison.

“I had shifted my thinking from being a classroom teacher to thinking about setting up an inter-tribal community center,” Byington said. “I felt that we really needed a community center here. ‘How do you do that? What do you need to know?’ I spoke to Aaron Bird Bear and told him about my dreams. And so he mentioned the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology. I ended up going there to learn about their program. And they had a program called Community Leadership. I was like, ‘This is it! This is what I am going to do.’ The major back them was called Family, Consumer and Community Education. And there was an option for Community Leadership.”

As Byington was working towards a degree in community leadership and teacher certification, a job opening at MMSD was too good to resist.

“My supervisor, Joni Theobald, was getting ready to leave MMSD,” Byington recalled. “She said, ‘You should apply for my job. If you do, you will need to get your licensing.’ I felt very motivated. But I also felt, ‘Joni does so much. I don’t know if I have the skills and the knowledge to be able to do that coordinator position.’ And so I finished my degree with both of those options in May 2008. They posted the position. I applied for the position. I wasn’t really sure about what was going on because MMSD at that time interviewed late. They hired late. I wasn’t sure what was going on. But I did get an interview. George Swamp who with the district and Jan Saiz, a respected community member, were both on my interview panel as well as others from MMSD. I was hired the same day, I think I was interviewed. I was working part-time doing the work that I was hired for. So then they told me I was hired. That was really nice and started me in my career working with MMSD as the Title VII coordinator supporting Native students in a broader way instead of those two part-time ways.”

The Title VII coordinator position was right up Byington’s alley. She was working to improve conditions for Native students in MMSD and was advocating on their behalf.

“I think it worked out just as it was supposed to,” Byington said. “I felt very fortunate to have a job that I could have an impact with. There really wasn’t any training program. I knew some of the things that my boss Joni had done. I really wanted to dig in, but it is only one person in the position. You don’t have anyone who can say, ‘Here is what you need to do.’ I figured it out. I loved it. There was a parent committee. There were meetings where I could hear from the parents and what the kids needed. How could I support them? I found myself in a good fit both with my skills and my knowledge and just being a student. I didn’t actually graduate from MMSD even though I attended. I actually dropped out. So I had that first-hand experience of what it was like for Native students in a school district that wasn’t placing emphasis on representing Native people accurately and authentically. Often I heard about the problems. I advocated for better programs, better resources, better practices and a lot of professional development. I wanted to hear from kids and build relationships with kids. I went out to the schools and tried to meet with them, hear what was going on so that I could provide better support and programming for them.”

ACT 31 specifies that curriculum about Wisconsin’s 11 tribes must be included at several grade levels during Wisconsin students’ k-12 career, an outgrowth of the spearing controversies in Wisconsin during the 1980s. But on some levels, left to themselves, some teachers used inappropriate materials. And there were times when ACT 31 wasn’t being followed at all. Byington felt she could be a resource while improving how ACT 31 is implemented in Madison’s schools.

“There were teachers who were not teaching anything,” Byington recalled. “Professional development wasn’t actually written into my job description, but I made it a part of my job. I couldn’t support the students all by myself. I needed teachers to be helping in the process. There were some schools where I was invited in to do more professional development. And there were some schools that I really didn’t have a connection with. Madison is interesting in that Native students aren’t in one school. When you look at elementary schools, there weren’t Native kids in all of the schools. That doesn’t matter because ACT 31 doesn’t say that you implement ACT 31 if you have Native kids in the building. ACT 31 requires that public schools teach about the history, culture and sovereignty of the tribes here in Wisconsin. It didn’t matter whether there was a Native student or not. Some schools I didn’t have a connection with. The ones that were inviting me and I spent a lot of time trying to help, I could really see a difference when I would go in and see what was going on. I could really see where I had an impact with what the teachers were doing.”

By 2013, Byington was ready to take her education and took a leave of absence from MMSD to pursue a master’s degree. Through a suggestion by one of her professors,  Marla Handy, to try research. Byington enrolled in the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology’s  Civil Society and Community Studies program.

“With my master’s, what I focused on was understanding how programs such as American Indian Science and Engineering Society support Native students. TI wanted to really get an understanding of the benefits, values and maybe I would find that it really wasn’t as beneficial as I thought. I really wanted that classical knowledge of improving programming. When I was Title VII coordinator, I hired Denise Thomas who was the AISES coordinator for about 10 years. She was really doing a wonderful job. I wanted to study programs such as that to see how out-of-school programming specifically for Native students support Native students and their identity. I wanted my knowledge to directly be with the work that I was involved in.”

While she was earning her master’s, she did an internship funded by the Native American Research Center for Health out of Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council during the summer. That second summer, she again got an internship working with Earth Partnerships in their Indigenous Arts and Sciences program.

“The director, Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong, asked me, ‘We are applying for this National Science Foundation grant,’” Byington said. “And we would like to write you in as a project assistant. If we get it, you could work on your Ph.D. and you would work for us as a project assistant about 20 hours per week.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t really think about what had just happened. I went back to MMSD and worked there for two years. The Partnership was awarded. Cheryl called me and said, ‘Hey we were awarded.’ I said, ‘Well I just came back to work in 2015. Let me work one more year and see if I can get another leave of absence.’ Well there was no opportunity of getting another one. I had this opportunity to go for my Ph.D. I have a job. Let’s do it. I went into that same program, Civil Society and Community Studies. I did my coursework and with my dissertation, I looked at what Native youth’s experience was with learning about Native people. That’s what I wanted to know. That’s what I focused my dissertation on.”

Byington’s relationship with MMSD’s Title VII program was just the vehicle she need to do the research for her Ph.D.

“I had my Title VII Parent Committee,” Byington said. “We had this relationship. They would tell me what they wanted for their young people and what was going on. It was a great way to hear from families and young people, which was a requirement of the grant. When I was getting ready for my dissertation, I had fully left MMSD. But I went to them and told them I would like to do this research. I got their input and their blessing moving forward. I wanted to interview young people. For my dissertation, students could be in seventh grade through within two years of graduation. And I interviewed young people and parents. The parents and kids could decide if they would do their interviews together or separately. I got lots and lots of information what the parent knows about their child experiences learning about Native people. I wrote my dissertation. It was very emotional because a lot of times, I think young people don’t necessarily tell their parents what is going on in school. Sometimes they do. The parents who were together with their children and they were hearing about it, some of the parents were hearing about the reality of what was going on for the first time. It was really hard and it was really emotional because the children are really upset. Parents are upset rightfully so. There were pockets of excellence, but those were pretty few and far in between. One thing that the children said in my research — it was very emotional — was they wanted to share their information because they wanted something to happen with the information.”