Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Teaching in rural Alaska
This week our village traditional council had a village meeting. One thing they discussed was interesting because I wanted to see how other communities in rural Alaska would handle the situation. They were discussing transfer students from surrounding villages that may have decided to attend from another village besides the village where they were born and raised. The traditional council of this village wanted any students coming into the village to register as becoming members of this community. They were not sure how long the student would have had to stay before registering. They had different times as to how long the student was to have stayed before registering. But one thing they were clear on was that the principal of the school had to notify the traditional council before excepting the student. Since a lot of communities have a lot of turnovers of principals, whenever the new principal would change they would come in not knowing the wishes of the traditional council towards transferring students. An elder at the meeting thought it was not a good idea for excepting students from other communities for several reasons. One reason was that the student may bring in bad influences, or the student may pick up bad influences from the community they chose to move into. Another reason she stated was that the parents of any student should be the first teachers of such a student and made a point that parents should be involved in the students education. If a student chose to attend in another village, that village was sort of like a host, becoming responsible for the students welfare as well as the students education. She stated that if the student went home and became a bad influence, the host village would naturally be the blame. I guess different communities would have different views on the situation but I was curious to what the majority thoughts would be. I, myself have been to boarding school, two of my children have been to boarding school, three of my children have stayed home and attended school here and when I think about it, I would rather be involved in my children's education. What would you have said if your son or daughter wanted to attend a school in another rural village?
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3 comments:
Wow. You have raised several very important issues with this post. I hope you get some responses from other 429ers with regard to how different village councils handle these situations. It's not something I know much about.
I do have some questions, though. Why would a student choose to go to school in a different community? For better schools? To escape bad influences? To be near family members? And what would happen if a principal wanted to (or had to) accept a new student but the village council did not? How would that get resolved? Finally, does this (students moving from village to village for schools) happen very often? It sounds like a pretty major concern in Chefornak.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Hey Margret, I guess it's pretty different here in Kotzebue. The community seems to be very transient, with kids going from village to village to Kotzebue and back. Part of that is kids who are in foster care bouncing back and forth, and families who just seem to move back and forth alot. Our district has tried to address this problem by making the curriculum the same in every school so that a kid who is bounced around alot can at least have some continuity in what they are learning at school.
Margaret, I am not sure what you are asking, but I think you and others may have the opportunity to make a difference in a child's life. It sounds like your community is functioning well, and perhaps others want a piece of that. I do :). If the student doesn't they will go back home, but if they do, then you grab them and perhaps doors open for that child. Not sure I am making sense, we don't have that problem here, as our school wants students, but we are probably taking our out next year.
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