To Foster Community Support in Alaska, add ICE (continued)
Topics: Alaska
“We have such a unique population here,” says AASB’s Young, “we wanted to acknowledge and honor the traditional ways, including Alaska Native people.”
Dillingham, an isolated commercial fishing hub on Alaska’s southwestern edge, draws on its Yu’pik Eskimo heritage. Dillingham schools are about 80 percent Alaska Native. With a population around 2,500, there’s no movie theater or mall here. On the other hand, in how many communities in the lower-forty-eight do teenagers get to hunt caribou in winter or watch dog-sled races in March?
“One of our goals is to create a cultural activity for kids once a month,” says Kathy McLinn, Dillingham’s ICE community engagement advocate. One September, thirty-five eighth graders piled on a bus with community members and Yu’pik elders to go berry-picking in the tundra. After collecting plump blueberries, cranberries, and blackberries, “We came back to the home ec room and the parents and grandmas helped us learn how to do jam,” says fourteen year-old Jacob Nelson. “We cleaned the berries in big pots of water, then smushed them up with potato smashers and added sugar.”
Bearing gift jars of jam, the teenagers then visited Grandma’s House, a group home for the elderly, to sit and talk with Yu’pik elders. The encounter across generations was awkward for some at first, but it helped to break the ice when the elders told stories of “old times, when they didn’t have stores or technology,” recalls Chelsey Kasayulie, thirteen. “We learn to show respect for the culture.”
Dillingham became a QS2/ICE partner in 2005. To boost community awareness, kids nominated adults who had gone above-and-beyond for them. These everyday heroes—neighbors, coaches, a man who helped with the rifle club—were celebrated in the newspaper and on radio station KDLG.
“We’re hoping to see kids more involved with significant adults,” says Dillingham superintendent Arne Watland. That, in turn, should help to improve student achievement, starting with attendance that has been “soft."
"[Attendance is] enthusiastic in elementary school, but wears off in middle school. [Thanks to QS2/ICE] we know how much it helps to bring the community into the school and the school out into the community,” says Watland.
*Source: Attitudes and Behaviors Survey
Contact information:
Sally Rue
Director
Alaska Initiative for Community Engagement
1111 W. 9th St.
Juneau, AK 99801
Phone: 907-586-1486
Email: alaskaice@aasb.org
Web site: www.alaskaice.org/
Related articles
Swimming with the salmon: Kids learn through community engagement
Reprinted with the permission of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding. © 2007, Center for Parent/Youth Understanding
Take Action
- this article with friends and family.
- Have a question about Alaska? Ask it here.
- Publish your work on education.com.
