I know some teachers come in with a different expectation and then they get out to a village and it's like, "Wow, we're really remote. We don't even know how to get groceries here. Um, how do I get fuel?" You know, they don't have that unless they're educated beforehand to connect with the community, connect with the city, connect with the Tribe, connect with the community members…they have to have a knowledge of what they're walking into. And if they know that, like I keep thinking, “If they know that they're housing, they're gonna feel safe and secure in their housing, they're gonna get the rest. They need protection. They feel the need and they can do a better job.”

Post colonization, we lost a lot of our traditional ways. Children aren't spoken to in the way that my mother was spoken to, or that my grandmother was spoken to…I feel like being able to teach parents how to both, how to raise their children in both the western world and our Yup'ik world will help us with this next generation of children.

When we're doing teacher trainings and really trying to go through training in a culturally responsive practice is that they're like, well, I'm not from here. I don't know anything about your community or your culture, therefore I know nothing about your values. And I'm like, hold up, wait a minute - although these are identified as Iñupiaq values, in all actuality, they're human values. And there are ways that you can tie it back to your own upbringing and your own culture and the traditions you have in your own family. Whether your family's big or small, whether you're from a city or a small town. And I think that really hits home for people who are not from here, and gives them a little bit better understanding. We practice these every day, whether you like to think about it or not.

I think respecting children is a very important thing. It's not a matter of I'm the teacher, I have more power than you. It's a matter of respect.

I can't believe that I’m 62 and this man still traumatizes me to this day when I talk about him. We walked into his classroom, it was October so it's getting dark and rainy and windy. And I know now that as an adult, he was going through his own mental health issues, living in a small place. But he walked into that. We walked into that classroom. He was on his desk, walking back and forth and just spouting off negative stuff about how terrible the community was, what a bad place to live, on and on. We didn't need to hear that. But then he turned to us and he said to us, he said, “and shame on you, shame on every one of your parents for letting you come to school dress the way you are.” He was a suit and tie guy. I was a kid. I loved American Indian Movement stuff. I was reading everything I could about the BIA building takeover and Alcatraz and Indian wars and the salmon wars. I wanted to get outta Wrangell and go. My mother was like, “you're not going anywhere.” She was probably glad we lived on an island. I couldn't run away. But when this man did this to us, I looked around and my classmates heads were down. This little girl who I loved dearly was sitting next to me and she had tears in her eyes and I thought, “I gotta defend these kids, I gotta defend her.” I shove my chair back. And I said, “Mr. D” that's not his real name. I said, “this is our town, this is our community. You don't belong here. This is our place. Pack your damn suitcase, take your shit and suit and tie and get the hell out of our community.” He jumped down off of his desk. I had long hair. Then he grabbed me by my hair and drug me out and threw me in the hallway and said, “you're out of my classroom for the entire week, get into the library” and I had to go through the principal and all that. I was actually, glad I wasn’t in his classroom, but afraid to go home because. Back then, those were the days, I graduated '78, which by the way was the last year you could legally sterilize Native girls in boarding schools. So things were different for us. I went home thinking I'm gonna get my ass beat and my dad will do it with belt because I was misbehaving in school and we were not to misbehave in school. I went home, my dad made me sit down and took my mother and him at dinner. I thought, “okay, this is coming now. I'm gonna get taken out to the back shed, and here it goes.” He asked me to tell him what happened. And then both my parents put their hands on my legs and they said, “thank you for defending us. Thank you for standing up to somebody who doesn't know who we are” and that was from my white parent and a Native mother. I think they unleashed the monster in me because at that point I thought, “I want to be a teacher.” I'm gonna make a difference for Alaskan Native children, for Alaskan children, period. No child - I don't care what race you are - should attend school and not feel worthy and not be allowed to flourish for who you are and so it's been my intent in education. That's why I wanted to do it and spent all these years doing it is to change what we do with our children. We have to, we have to let our children flourish and we're not doing it and by following the typical Western system, we think we're doing good. We really need to reexamine that. Look at our dropout rates. Look at our grad rates, look at our success rate, look for college rates, that whole thing and how much Nativeness are we losing in this system?

Another thing that I see is there are people that come into the community that can come from a place of, "I just want to do the best job that I can do. I want to put forward the best work that I can." And that's great…that meets goals. Then there are people that come in and say, "I want to do the best job that I can and everything in my power to serve your community." And that's kind of the next tier. It's like my achievement for the purpose of meeting your milestones. And then there are people that come to work and say, "I want to do the best job that I can to serve our community." And then it's an investment in us collectively and I have skin in the game too. And it's not just because I want to meet my high score. I want to see the best in a long term. And that might not mean that I can meet it, it might not mean that I can ever see it, but it's our investment together.

What if our schools have permanent year-round language and cultural positions that are paid competitive wages because it’s a unique skill set that you can’t really go to school for?

Instead of only having master's level educators, we also want to bring in the strengths of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, consider them as educators, teachers.

We would be utilizing the resources that we have. Like a lot of organizations and communities spent a lot of time on their Alaska Cultural Standards and there was no implementation plan. Like no one's really focusing on utilizing that as a tool. I think that's important. So we have guidance, we have resources available, but what efforts and funding are we putting into them to help support the outcomes?

My plan is to go back to my own village and teach…I really want, on top of my own learning, on top of teaching the students the classroom. I really want to be able to be an asset in the community that teaches them how they can also teach their children. Because parents are children's first teachers.

They show up with those nice new gear and they've never worn that gear before and they don't even know how to begin to be in the environment that requires that more warmer gear or more waterproof gear. And yeah, it's too much of a rude awakening for them...We've heard stories of, you know, teachers flying in looking around and saying, "I can’t, I’m getting out." And then I mean, they leave the school high and dry. Yeah. You can't really blame them either though. Cause they had, they had no idea what they're getting into. And so yeah. Who dropped the ball there? You know, that's gotta be a priority - being transparent with your applicant. This is what our community is like. Can you adapt to our community? We don't want to adapt to you.

So I think our, I think kind of what you're getting at, if we were to shift our current system is that ensuring that our current system is grounded in place and people, which includes integrating our cultural calendar and events and really letting all of that drive the system. Not letting the system and its constraints drive education.

Our teachers will be Iñupiaq so that students could say I could do this too. And this is one generation from now. Our people would be at peace. They would be healed from trauma, trauma from abuse and alcoholism and substances. They would be, quviasuktuq, happy. This would be multi-generational. So even with teachers who are there teaching the younger students…the whaling crew would be there as well. And you would learn just like you would learn when you, when you're new at a whaling camp, you know, the first thing you do is - you're not immediately going into the boat, but you're washing dishes or you're on polar bear patrol or you are making coffee or delivering coffee or whatever it is that you're doing on the ice. Everyone is working together and learning together. And so this is just one generation from now. And a lot, some of this is happening already, you know, especially in the whaling camps. They're teaching them already. Like…Justina's son and how young he was when he started learning and now he could probably go out by himself. So a lot, I mean, this is happening and we're in the process, but to have our schools be outside in the nuna during the summer with families, but also on the ice in the winters even.

When I was going to school through getting the college degree through UAF, as an adult, they invited an Elder to be in every one of our classes. They didn't interact with us unless they felt they needed to and wanted to share something, but they were there. And they were keeping their hands busy. They were just, and sometimes it just, it was an emotional day or, and you would just go sit by them. Didn't need to talk, didn't need to interact...and it made a huge difference in my willingness to work harder in the class, whatever I was doing.

The Elders expected them to learn a song maybe in three or four times when they listened to the composer. But my brother's generation, they had to use cassette tapes. And she said in Inupiaq, “I wonder why they have to do those cassette tapes. They don't even learn well.” Cause they're expected to memorize everything. I've only watched it in one young person, from Little Diomede who was able to do that. And it was amazing to watch it in person, of my mother's expectation that she didn't get from that generation. So we're, we're observed, we're taught, we're guided by our own people. We have certain expectations we have to meet. And there's also certain expectations at work, in a Western sense. So we're always walking in two places all the time. So memory is very important cause you remember most things that are important to you.

...it's about relationships again, right? There's so many other relationships that need to be fostered, but the relationships need to be fostered is the point, right? So how are we right now building relationships with people who are traditional knowledge keepers and bringing them into the classrooms, number one. And how do we then, number two, use our already-invested one-hour per week of professional development to help foster that out?

Having an understanding of the culture, you know, of the cultures that are included in your classroom and in your community, but also choosing, like being very intentional in the teaching strategies that you're choosing to use with your students. Not just the strategies, but the resources and the texts and all the different curriculum pieces that you're using. You're being very intentional to make sure that what you're teaching reflects your students and the world that they live in and the place that they live in and going outside of their comfort zone and learning about the place that they are in, if it's not their place, you know. So taking advantage of the resources that are available to them and the people and the partners, the community partners. That they have to help support them, you know, cause they're basically learning alongside their students and being open and willing to do that.

When I think of learning from my grandparents, nobody yelled at me. They didn't scold me. They were super, super gentle with the way I would learn. And I think about going to school in Anchorage, where I still have the report card, sixth grade report card, where a non-Native teacher, I think I was the only Native in the class, wrote on my report card that I would never graduate from high school. I would never go to college and I would never amount to anything. And so I did all those things and it was having the support of my mom and my dad really fighting for me. A lot of our Native students don't have that and the ones who do are really lucky to have those advocates. But I would say, you know, if we're gonna reflective of our community and culture, I just remember the gentleness that they actually taught me with.