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Lessons Taught, Lessons Learned Vol. II
A Letter from Idealogak,
Alaska
by Timothy Stathis
Lower Kuskokwim School District
March 21, 1992
Marshall Lind
Former Commissioner of Education
Dear Marshall:
I wanted to write to you about education as it
exists in our community and describe the changes that we made here at
the policy level that have greatly improved the structure of the
educational platform for this community and its people. I think the
fruit is now finally ripening as a result of your labors of so long
ago to put the definition of education and the direction it would
take into the hands of the people of each village. Since the creation
of the REAAs and through your terms as Commissioner of Education in
which you consciously avoided pre-defining the purpose of education
and school structure from the state level, we have seen much of the
value of a closer sense of community ownership of the schools through
the opportunities provided by your actions. However, the structure
and mold of education in Alaska has patterned itself too long on the
ways so established throughout the rest of America, so that the
organic development of local educational processes has had no place
to grow, and people have tended to work within this externally
defined mold, never really breaking free of the "old definitions" of
education - at
least not until this year with what we have done at our
school.
We have focused on the core of the problem that
has kept school personnel bound and restricted within a structure so
foreign to organic development that it has caused the Native people
to deem schooling as something very foreign to their own day-to-day
life. The school operates as a separate function apart from the
harmonious functions of other aspects of community life. After our
deliberations on this matter, we narrowed the problem down to two
major issues, two policies that needed altering, thereby creating a
new definition of the function of education in the community. The
whole structure of the school has naturally reshaped itself and is
much more aligned with community needs.
The two major changes we made are as follows.
First of all we completely dropped standardized testing from the
school and in its place made individual innovation the measure of
attainment. Secondly, we changed the structure and function of the
financing of the school, no longer seeing the funds allocated to our
school as being for the school alone, but as money for the community
to use for its entire educational agenda. We broadened our definition
of education for the village to include progressive development of
cultural imperatives through ongoing processes, engendered at the
school and continuing out into the community. I'll examine each of
these changes in turn, including the reasoning behind them, and see
what ramifications they have had as the year unfolded at the
school.
It was our perception that the mode of testing
itself created a form of education constrained to fit that which was
being tested. The very framework of thought required to meet testing
achievements formed a structure of educational practice intended to
fit the testings' inherent needs. This is a shocking realization when
one is ideally flying to meet the inherent needs of the people the
school is serving. The mark of testing achievement in schools is not
intended to meet the inherent needs of the people, but is a
structured form of institutional development designed in a manner
completely foreign to the needs of the village and its people. Upon
further examination, we saw how the elementary readers and even the
subject area textbooks are designed to fit this very alien structure
and to support the expectations of required standardized tests, which
in themselves have little to do with the perceived needs of the
people - the
proverbial serpent swallowing its own tail!
We therefore boxed up and banished all these
readers and textbooks from our school. This of course created the
need for our staff to develop their own teaching materials and/or
locate appropriate materials to use from the general store of
knowledge in the community and in the library. It is most interesting
to note that during this process of material development the teachers
were out in the village and many village people were in the school,
with the teachers asking the people for advice and ideas, so that
this material could be appropriately used in the teaching of their
children. The teachers drew from their professional ability to design
educational materials and devise methods of instruction, including
their knowledge of the outside world and research methods, and the
village people drew from their experiential realm of village culture
and especially advised on organic learning processes culturally
inherent in the people and in the village way of life.
If no standardized measurement of achievement
is used, then how can we be sure learning is occurring? But why judge
the children in comparison to others a thousand miles away? Anyone
who feels the need to measure their students in this way or who feels
this is justifiable for the students' own good is only showing their
own inability to judge educational achievement by independent
perceptions and locally developed modes of assessment. The so-called
local measures developed by many district are often misleading, for
while they may have localized achievement levels, it is still
achievement grading based on a foreign educational structure
- still
compared to others somewhere else in America. In other words, they
are still using the educational goals of others and not goals
developed according to the inherent needs of the local people. "Local
norms" based on testing requirements for a very different group of
people is an obvious false measure. The districts often fear dropping
the outer structures altogether and are reluctant to create a whole
new structure from within the village setting. How then, can we
promote community development through educational pursuits
appropriately situated in village life?
It is not hard to measure attainment through
the observation of the joy of learning experienced by our students
throughout their educational pursuits in the village. "Final tests" are demonstrations
of individual or group innovation in educational projects. Who needs Mr. SRA's
or Mrs. CTBS's opinion? The children,
school personnel and community members of all ages are doing projects
of real value in the community. Inspiration
for learning isn't for some false "grade" of their ability to perform
in a walled-in facility -the inspiration of my students comes
through a natural desire to produce something that is recognized by
the people of their community. We have discovered that their wanting
to serve their community is an innate desire and therefore a natural
motivator in educational pursuits. It naturally carries over to the
desire to serve their community or their own family by going to
college or in seeing themselves as a natural asset to their community
upon their graduation.
Because the educational mode is based on the
inherent needs of the community, we are finding a tremendous amount
of involvement in educational projects and even in the basic learning
processes of reading and math at the first and second grade levels.
Because the people took part in the development of the materials and
in ideas for community projects, they are by their own desires taking
part in activities. Many of these activities, because they have a
real value for the everyday life of the people, are happening outside
the school building. And because so many who have already "graduated" are involved,
we feel we truly have developed the school-without-walls. The new mode of our
financing policy reinforces
this realization.
As I mentioned, we no longer see the funds
allocated to us by the state for education as money for the school
facility to use for education within its walls only, but have
developed an attitude that this money is for the community to be used
for its broader educational purposes. So instead of serving the
children all within our walled structure, we base the allocation of
money for projects on perceived community desires and needs that
children themselves can participate in identifying. Coupled with the
development of our own educational materials based on community
development input, this has opened up a whole new world of wondrous
accomplishments for the school to facilitate for the people of our
village.
Our school day never stops; does learning ever
cease at a special hour in the day? By reallocation of our funds, we
have made the school facility available from very early in the
morning to late at night (teachers being hired to cover certain of
those hours rather than only daytime hours). Teachers are often
running projects in the evening out in the village as well. We
haven't received any more money for the extended hours, but have
redefined priorities, no longer putting such great emphasis on the
8:00 to 4:00 time zone.
Most of the basic reading skills, math skills,
and library research, as well as studies and discussions of current
events, are done in regular hours, but in this too there is a great
change. Much of the instruction and guidance is done by recent "graduates" as
tutors and by parents. This has freed up some of our regular teachers to offer
programs after school and at night. In the
evenings we have the greatest natural integration of young and old in
the learning process, and, I might add, the greatest meeting and
integration of cultures. Local people are sponsored (financially) to
offer educational programs on their knowledge of arts, crafts, and
dancing, and alternate to this are our professional teachers offering
programs in their abilities in the arts, crafts and international
dancing.
Each evening of the week is scheduled for a
particular learning and sharing environment. Monday evenings: visual
arts, Native and from our teachers; Tuesday evenings: crafts, Native
and from our teachers; Wednesday evenings: to the stage - plays of
Native stories and legends, and international folk tales and theater;
Thursday evenings: dancing, Native and international; and Friday
evenings: talking circles - usually with an agenda of topics to
discuss at the start, which leads to many other topics. Working
around church schedules, we sometimes have Potlatches or show movies
on Saturdays and Sundays whenever sports events aren't happening
(they usually do on weekends). And it goes without saying that all
ages, young and old, are together sharing in these events. Some come
some nights and others come other nights. Some come every
night!
One question that might arise in your mind is
what about graduation requirements? If we are indeed removing the
walls between school and community and all ages seem to be getting
involved, when is there a grand exit from the program, based on
completion of formal "schooling."
Well, this is probably the most difficult to
believe, but this is how we have worked it out. First of all there
are only two reasons one would need to define a "graduation" date: 1)
because of the state-allocated funds based on student "enrollment;"
and 2) college readiness. Let's start with the latter. We have found
that those who have developed an inner desire to go to college are
tending to ask the question of their readiness on their own. Instead
of some stale list of requirements imposed on the student body to
define when they are "ready for college," they develop a sense of
what they themselves need to know in order to make that step. And
when they start to pursue this idea, they start building a momentum
of inspiration and self-motivation to pursue the necessary studies
(guided by our teachers) in this direction. They themselves know when
they are nearing readiness for college and it's at that time that we
help them achieve mastery in all necessary preparations to reach that
goal. You see, in this way, never having a cut-off date or pushing
them to graduate, we don't lose them from the educational facility,
as is done elsewhere when a student "graduates," but doesn't at that
time want to go to college. With us the educational process remains
in a continuum. Even those who never chose to try college remain in
the community continuum of educational endeavors, because as I have
shown, the whole community is involved in the educational program.
All are helping educate even as all are being educated. As far as the
financing from the state is concerned, that is a simple matter - we
base it on age. We tell the state officials we have so many children
ages 5 to 18 and that's that!
Well, Marshall, founder of decentralized
education in Alaska, I hope I have given you a picture of the
educational circumstances established in our community that has
carried the momentum forward from state structures of educational
ideology to the ideology you intended from the beginning, i.e. an
inherent growth of progressive cultural regeneration through an
institution that would become as much a part of the community life as
the land itself. We are carrying onward the torch you lit.
Yours Truly,
Timothy Stathis
Foreword
Ray Barnhardt
Part I *
Rural School Ideals
"My
Goodness, People Come and Go So Quickly Around
Here"
Lance C. Blackwood
Parental Involvement
in a Cross-Cultural Environment
Monte Boston
Teachers and
Administrators for Rural Alaska
Claudia Caffee
The Mentor Teacher
Program
Judy Charles
Building
Networks
Helen Eckelman
Ideal Curriculum and
Teaching Approaches for a School in Rural
Alaska
Teresa McConnell
Some Observations
Concerning Excellent Rural Alaskan Schools
Bob Moore
The Ideal Rural
Alaska Village School
Samuel Moses
From Then To Now:
The Value of Experiential Learning
Clara Carol Potterville
The Ideal
School
Jane Seaton
Toward an Integrated,
Nonlinear, Community-Oriented Curriculum
Unit
Mary Short
A Letter from
Idealogak, Alaska
Timothy Stathis
Preparing
Rural Students for the Future
Michael Stockburger
The Ideal
Rural School
Dawn Weyiouanna
Alternative
Approaches to the High School Curriculum
Mark J. Zintek
Part II *
Rural Curriculum Ideas
"Masking" the
Curriculum
Irene Bowie
On Punks and
Culture
Louise J. Britton
Literature to Meet
the Needs of Rural Students
Debra Buchanan
Reaching the Gifted
Student Via the Regular Classroom
Patricia S. Caldwell
Early Childhood Special
Education in Rural Alaska
Colleen Chinn
Technically
Speaking
Wayne Day
Process Learning
Through the School Newspaper
Marilyn Harmon
Glacier Bay
History: A Unit in Cultural Education
David Jaynes
Principals of
Technology
Brian Marsh
Here's Looking
at You and Whole Language
Susan Nugent
Inside, Outside and
all-Around: Learning to Read and Write
Mary L. Olsen
Science Across
the Curriculum
Alice Porter
Here's Looking at
You 2000 Workshop
Cheryl Severns
School-Based
Enterprises
Gerald Sheehan
King Island
Christmas: A Language Arts Unit
Christine Pearsall Villano
Using Student-Produced
Dialogues
Michael A. Wilson
We-Search and
Curriculum Integration in the Community
Sally Young
Artist's
Credits
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