The drive to Chiniak from Kodiak takes about an hour, and about a third of that is on gravel roads. The village is on the eastern end of Kodiak’s road system. There’s only 10 kids enrolled in the secondary school this year, and they’re the only ones in the building for the first day of class.
The students are led by Teresa Hedges, the only teacher for the secondary school. They’re easing into the year and teaching how to record data, like tides or earthquake information.
“Data recording is something we’re going to be doing daily and graphing,” Hedges said. “We’re going to have visual graphs in the halls to share with everyone.”
It’s her first time teaching in Chiniak, but it’s not her first year in a rural school. Hedges got her start with the Kodiak Island Borough School District in a village when she first arrived to the archipelago. She then moved to town and taught in Kodiak for just about 20 years before she retired.
Hedges substitute taught for a while, and did specific programs, but said she’s back this year because she missed being a full time teacher with students.
“Then the Chiniak job came up and I was like, ‘I need to get back into this,’” she said. “I haven’t done multiple grades like this, self contained, one classroom, except that one year in Larsen Bay. And it was really hard, but I just thought that it felt right. It felt right and I get so much joy from working with kids so I just jumped into it.”
She moved to Chiniak and got set up just days before school started, but she said she’s up to the challenge of working with such a broad age across grades 6 through 12.
“I’ve always been a small group, kind of floating from group to group kind of teacher,” Hedges said. “I’m not a lecturer, I’m not a listen-to-my-voice kind of teacher – I prefer not to talk. And one of the best lessons I learned as a teacher was that the person who’s doing the talking is the person who’s doing the learning, so I want the kids to talk to each other.”
On the first day, she had students looking at the tsunami and earthquake resources, and already had students sharing graphs and data with each other.
Students looked at each other’s houses on maps online, public buildings like the library, and told each other about their tsunami evacuation routes.
Hedges said for now though she’s just focused on establishing her connections both with the kids, and the people of Chiniak overall.
“I want as much community connection as possible,” she said. “These isolated, hard-walled, no connection schools are completely unnatural. We need to be in the community and have the community come in.”
Elementary students got started on Sept. 4, and Kindergarteners start Sept. 9.
