Rural schools have a teacher shortage. Why don’t people who live there, teach there?

For the past six years, Shari Daniels has tried to be the person she wishes she had in her life as a student.

Daniels grew up on the Fort Peck Reservation, home to about 6,000 members of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, in northeast Montana. Now 48, she struggles to remember the name of even one of her teachers, and she has no memory of making a personal connection with any of them.

“They always treated us like we were another number, especially the Native American students,” said Daniels, who...