Classrooms adapt to the needs of tomorrow

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

Student Katlian Nelson agrees to let her teacher project a piece of writing onto a screen for a writing subject review.

Her hands are the favorite part of herself, she wrote.

“They help me when I am working the hay fields. They help me when I move bales of hay into perfect pods,” she wrote.

Her hands write stories, and her hands wipe tears.

In Emily Putney’s fifth-grade class at West Homer Elementary, students are reviewing a writing assignment for lessons in transitions and “voice.”

They do this in a seemingly old-fashioned way, helped along by the latest in projection technology. The teachers have a “document camera,” a device that sits on a flat surface with a camera mounted to it. The teacher places a piece of paper (or an object) in the view of the camera that she wants to show the whole class and that camera sends the image to the projector mounted to the ceiling.

Nelson’s essay fills the screen, with underlined sentences to show her transitions. Everyone in class can view a single page with ease.

In an age of technology, students in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District are using these tools and many more-sophisticated ones as a matter of course. Blackboards, chalk and erasers don’t cut it anymore as the world turns on a new technological information age.

The challenge posed to school districts is whether they are integrating learning and new systems for learning — the Web — into their lesson plan to prepare students for future jobs.

The technology is certainly in the classrooms or schools.

Robert Porter is the technician serving 15 area schools extending from Chapman School at Anchor Point to Kachemak Selo and across Kachemak Bay to Seldovia, Port Graham and Nanwalek. In that area, there are around 1,500 computers to serve an estimated 2,000 students.

This is important because it means individual schools are in control of instructional tools — how much technology is exposed to which age groups.

Today, that includes desktop computers, but increasingly schools are choosing laptops instead. SmartBoards, the glitziest technology at $4,000 each, may end up in nearly every classroom of a school — as at Homer Middle School. Or, there might be only one, like in the library at West Homer.

The standard LCD protector in use by Emily Putney’s class, which costs less than a SmartBoard, is located in every school and every school uses them, Porter said. These allow the teacher’s computer screen to project onto the board for most any kind of demonstration, Powerpoint or project. They can also use it by simple document format.

The SmartBoard platform is a giant touch screen — picture an enormous iPad.

“What happens with a SmartBoard is that the projector acts like the computer monitor and displays it onto a big screen. Then the teacher or student can interact with the desktop like they normally would,” Porter said. But they use touch instead of a mouse or keyboard.

Straw’s hats, fuzzy feelings — Teacher creates warm connection with students

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Weekly Wild Wolf students in Shaya Straw’s class at Soldotna Elementary School show off the hats Straw made. By the end of the school year she will make a hat for each of her students. Clockwise from bottom are Austin Adlam, Marissa Griffin, Tyler Johnson, Nate Downs, Josh Pieh and Crystle Tapia.

Redoubt Reporter

Shaya Straw, a third-grade teacher at Soldotna Elementary School, spends her workdays trying to fill her students’ heads with math skills, vocabulary, science concepts, proper spelling, good behavior and the like.

“It’s great. They’re a fun age. They’re still excited about learning and seeing new things and not too cool for school,” Straw said.

When she embarked on her teaching career, Straw decided she would not only strive to fill those heads, but keep them insulated, too, and began a project hand-making a winter hat for each and every one of her students. Now in her fourth year teaching, she’s got 21 hats to make this year, and is nearing her 100th hat overall.

“It’s fun. It’s a hobby I enjoy, and I like to bring it into the classroom as my way of giving them something from me,” Straw said. “I’ve made hats for my whole family, and friends, and I sell them at the Birch Tree Gallery, but this takes over priority of my hat-making during the school year.”

Straw and her husband moved to Soldotna from an area not requiring much in the way of warm winter gear — Flagstaff, Ariz.

“I could use a little bit of Arizona weather right about now,” she joked last week, as the central Kenai Peninsula was in the grips of a prolonged minus subzero cold snap.

Schools practice lockdown drill after threat from jailed man

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

Students, staff and administrators participated in Level II lockdown and “hit the deck” drills last week after a jailed man voiced threats to the Kenai Peninsula School District.

On Jan. 3, Superintendent Steve Atwater was informed by the Homer Police Department that an incarcerated individual had allegedly threatened violence at a KPBSD school. No specific KPBSD school was named.

In response, and as part of ongoing emergency action plan drills designed for “prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” Atwater instructed all school administrators to hold a Level II lockdown drill and a “hit the deck” drill by the end of the day Friday. A Level II drill includes staff and students. All KPBSD schools reported participating; one school had already practiced before winter break. KPBSD thanked local police and troopers who were present at some schools.

“At no time were our schools in immediate danger by the individual who made the alleged threat,” Atwater said in a press release.  “I am pleased with the good response by our schools when practicing a lockdown drill and by the close cooperation with the four city police departments and Alaska State Troopers.”

Almanac: Kenai with class — Class of 1961 graduated in momentous times

Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part story concerning the recent 50-year reunion of the class of 1961 from Kenai High School. Part one involves the reunion itself and an overview of the class. Part two, next week, concerns the story of the oldest graduate in the class. Part three will discuss the history of the Kenai school system before Kenai Central High School, and the emergence of Kenai varsity sports.

By Clark Fair

Redoubt Reporter

On the spine of the 2011 Kenai Central High School yearbook — and nowhere else in or on the publication — is the word “Kaknu,” a variant of a Dena’ina name “Kahtnu” for the Kenai River. It is also the lone remnant of the name given to the first-ever high school yearbook in Kenai 50 years ago.

In 1961, “Kaknu” linked the language of a once-dominant culture to an educational tradition of the present time. Simultaneously, it united two eras via a symbol of the central Kenai Peninsula’s lifeblood — the river itself — and implied with that symbolism the flow or passage of time.

How fitting it was, then, that on July 8 and 9 the woman who came up with the name for the first yearbook jetted across country from her home in western New York to join other members of the Kenai High School Class of 1961 for a 50-year reunion.

At a Friday dinner at Paradisos Restaurant in Kenai and a Saturday picnic on the old Cotton Moore homestead in Sterling, class members, now mostly in their late 60s, united to celebrate old times and catch up on more recent ones.

Almanac: Learning through doing

By Clark Fair

Photos courtesy of the Soldotna Historical Society. This is the Slikok Valley School as it appears today. It stands near Damon Hall on the grounds of the Soldotna Historical Society’s homesteading museum near Centennial Park.

Redoubt Reporter

Tommye Jo Corr was accustomed to seeing moose tracks in the snow when she walked to and from work, but one day when she came across the tracks of a pack of dogs, she decided she needed protection.

Corr used to walk regularly between her home, on what was then called Kalifonsky Beach Road, and the Slikok Valley School, where she was the lone teacher during the school’s two-year tenure, from 1958 to 1960. After she saw the dog tracks, she said, “I started packing a pistol. The Department of Education didn’t mind, just as long as the gun was unloaded during school hours.”

Corr’s quote is part of Slikok Valley School history recorded in a scrapbook and kept available for viewing in the main building at the Soldotna Historical Museum, which opens for summer business May 15 every year.

What is now called Kalifornsky Beach Road was opened as little more than a Cat trail in 1956, but by 1958 several families were living along the roadway and were finding it difficult to get their children to the nearest available school — all the way over in Kenai.

Plans were being discussed to build a school in Soldotna, but Soldotna Elementary would not be completed and ready for students until the fall of 1960. Going to Kenai via Soldotna was the only option in the winter, since the Warren Ames bridge would not be completed until the mid-1970s, and the ice over the river was too treacherous to cross safely.

Consequently, depending on where their homes were located, parents were forced to have their children walk — typically three to eight miles — to the Sterling Highway near the Kenai River bridge in Soldotna, where they could be picked up by a school bus and driven the remaining 14 miles to Kenai. They would, of course, have to reverse that journey once school was over.

In addition to the distance, the conditions for the children’s walks were often difficult, at best, and hazardous, at worst. During the winter months, temperatures were usually below freezing and sometimes below zero. In the warmer periods of spring and autumn, thick mud, washed-out trails or melting snow prevailed, and the route also included a calving ground for moose, which drew in bears, wolves and stray dogs.

Light up the screen — Kenai students breaking in to newscasting

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Kenai Middle School teacher Tyler Schlung runs the computer program that produces his studio class’s “Northern Lights” newscast-style program. Joseph Vicere and Andi Reilly practice reading the day’s announcements.

Redoubt Reporter

Reading the day’s announcements is a routine chore of necessity at many schools — important but not exciting, more informative than educational, certainly not a highlight of anyone’s day.

But at Kenai Middle School, rather than teachers having to tell their classes to pipe down and listen up to get the daily task over with, teachers instead hear a chorus of complaints if the announcements aren’t given the attention they deserve.

“You hear comments from the other teachers, ‘Wow. My students look forward to this every day,’” said Tyler Schlung, a special education teacher at Kenai Middle School.

This response is as atypical as the format of the daily bulletin at Kenai Middle. Instead of an administrator or staff member rattling off dates for field trips, reminders about permission slips and schedules for upcoming events over the public-address speakers, the information is packaged with movie reviews, quotes from famous figures, explanations of wacky phrases and jokes about “Star Wars,” presented visually rather than just read aloud, and created by students, for students.

Every day this spring semester at Kenai Middle, school starts with classes watching the latest installment of “Northern Lights” — a video newscast-style program put together by students in Schlung’s eighth-grade studio class.

A pair of students sit in front of the camera and present the day’s announcements and a feature segment they write themselves in TV-newscaster style, complete with images and text showing up behind and below them onscreen. Each classroom at Kenai Middle is equipped with a SMART board — an interactive, computer-linked, video- and audio-capable device — that plays the “Northern Lights” videos every morning.

“I see how awesome it is for the kids. They learn to present information in a way that’s interesting and fun and not boring,” Schlung said of hisstudio class students. Meanwhile, the rest of the school gets to actually enjoy the announcements. “The students get excited about it. If a teacher forgets to play it, they’ll hear about it.”

Cross-cultural cross country — Ski teams have international flair

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter. Sam Werthmuller, from Switzerland, skis for Skyview High School at the Lynx Loppet meet in Anchorage in December. Kenai Peninsula high school ski teams have a bumper crop of international skiers this year.

Redoubt Reporter

In the classroom, walking through the hallways or hanging out at lunchtime, they may seem a little different from most their schoolmates, with music in various languages pumping from their MP3 players, some clothing brands that didn’t come from Fred Meyer or Old Navy, the occasional rolled “r” or “t” that softens to an “f” sound, and mystification at the existence of Pop-Tarts.

But get them in their school’s Lycra uniforms, click them into skis and send them out on the trails and they become fully integrated members of their cross-country teams — doing the same drills, learning the same skills, every bit at home cheering on their teammates as their teammates are cheering for them. Even if their homes are thousands of miles away, where they may not have ever even seen snow before, much less skied on it.

High school Nordic ski teams on the Kenai Peninsula have had their ranks swelled by skiers from afar this year, with far and away more international students participating than in recent years, all from far, far away — Mexico, Costa Rica, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Japan, Kenya, Indonesia, Egypt and Thailand.

“As a coach, I love it. It brings a great element to the team. I think it’s a very positive

Tavo De La Torre, a KCHS skier from Mexico, crashes then recovers at a meet in Homer. Many international skiers go from zero skiing experience at the start of the season to being at least decent by the end of the year, with some becoming quite accomplished.

aspect and it helps the other athletes see a larger picture. They bring some very unique qualities and it’s always a plus,” said Dan Harbison, coach of the Soldotna High School Nordic ski team.

Area high schools typically have two to four international skiers each season. This year, Kenai Central High School has five, Skyview has four, Homer has five, Seward has two and SoHi has eight. Some are from regions that at least have a passing familiarity with winter’s white stuff, but other than a few who have tried downhill skiing, they aren’t necessarily experienced schussing through the snow.

“This year I finally have a Norwegian that actually knew how to ski, but that’s not the norm. And I’ve had Scandinavians in the past who had never been on skis before and I was like, ‘What? Is that possible in your country?’” Harbison said. “I always hold out for that ringer that shows up one day, but so far that hasn’t happened.”

The international students more often are new to it all — Nordic skiing, snow and cold — at least, to the degree they exist in Alaska. The cold snap over Christmas was the chilliest temperatures most of Harbison’s international skiers had ever experienced, he said.

“Typically we’re taking them from scratch, and some of them actually have never seen snow before,” he said. “That, too, is always interesting. On the first snowfall we’ve had them do everything from run out and roll around in the snow to want to have a snowball fight because they saw it in a movie or something like that, to the reaction of, ‘It’s really, really cold.’”

Learning to lead — Native Youth Council fosters links between in teens, communities

By Joseph Robertia

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Bill Holt assists Jordanne Wilson with the correct knot before Wilson climbed the rock wall at Skyview High School on Friday. Wilson was one of several members of newly formed Kenai Peninsula Native Youth Council, and the rock wall exercise was a bonding activity for them on their first meeting.

Redoubt Reporter

As Dyann Lauret-Wik clung to the rock wall at Skyview High School on Friday, she may have been the only one suspended vertically, dozens of feet from the ground. But she was not alone.

The climb was difficult, she admitted she was frightened, and more than once she lost her grip and slipped. But, motivated by the words of encouragement from the other teens she had only recently met, she kept on trying until she succeeded in making her way to the top.

“I always wanted to try,” Lauret-Wik said.

In many ways her experience, meant to bond her and her fellow teens, mirrored the goals of the larger activity of which it was part, the newly formed Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Native Youth Council.

“It provides an opportunity for Native student leaders to work together to help solve community problems,” said Teresa Kiffmeyer, KPBSD Native youth coordinator.

“Young people who are involved with youth councils learn to accept responsibility. They grow through achievement and in the knowledge that they are making a real contribution to their community and to Native America,” she said.

Mentoring motivation — High school, college students team up for life skills, community involvement

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. In front from left, Kenai Alternative High School seniors Faith McKinnon and Stuart Martinez sit with their mentors, Heather Rasch and Kristina Goolsby, at a dinner Saturday to celebrate a community challenge mentorship program.

Redoubt Reporter

Sometimes a candy bar isn’t just a candy bar, it’s a way to prevent crime and substance abuse. A $5 gift card to Blockbuster can encourage a student to finish high school and go to college. An hour a week can create a sense of connectedness within an entire community. And a cupcake can hold the key to a kid’s future, just from having an adult tell them it’s a sweet idea.

For teenagers who feel disconnected or overlooked by the community in which they live, small gestures can have a huge impact when they represent the idea that, yes, the community does care about them, values their efforts and wants them to find success.

That concept, which is the premise behind the Community Challenge presented by the Kenai Peninsula Community Action Coalition, is easy. In practice, developing a project that forges a new partnership between the coalition, Kenai Peninsula College, Kenai Alternative High School and various community businesses, churches and nonprofit organizations, is anything but simple. It took two years of planning for the idea to become reality, involving a steering committee, research and surveys, training, coordination, a mouthful of clinical-sounding terminology, and solicitations of local business and organizational support.

The result is a seven-week program implemented this fall in which psychology students from KPC’s Kenai River Campus are paired with seniors at Kenai Alternative High School, meet for an hour once a week, hang out, get to know each other, work on incremental steps toward achieving a goal the high school student had set for themselves — and, oh yeah, change the world.

Well, maybe not the entire world. Not quite yet, anyway. But as the concept goes, one small gesture of community outreach to one teen can change his or her world, and that change can grow from there.

“The idea is that we all have goals kind of stuck on the shelf somewhere or thrown away. Well, we want to dust those off and really — for a set, short period of time — make a daily, focused effort to do something about them. It may be something you can accomplish in that time frame, or it may be something you can just get rolling. But the idea is if you get it rolling, the momentum will keep it moving,” said Dale Gillilan, director of the Community Action Coalition.

In the Community Challenge program, the KPC psychology students act as mentors to the high school seniors, helping the seniors set a goal and work toward it. The goal could be anything the senior wanted, from completing a senior project to getting caught up on credits. But whatever the goal, Loren Reese, principal of Kenai Alternative, said he hoped that just interacting with the college students would encourage his seniors to pursue higher education, or at least get them thinking more about life after high school.

“My hope was getting kids connected with the community, and building a better connection with KPC,” Reese said. “What I was hoping to see was that each kid would ask questions about what goes on at KPC, ‘How do I get enrolled, what are some of the things I need to consider to get in there?’ It was a good experience. Anytime you can put positive adults in front of our kids, or any kids in the community, good things happen.”

Food for thought — School meals dish up healthy challenges

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Mackenzie Elsey eats a fruit pop during lunch at Redoubt Elementary School on Aug. 26.

Redoubt Reporter

First-graders at Redoubt Elementary School worked their way through the lunch line on the second day of school Aug. 25, oblivious to the considerable amount of nutritional research, economic budgeting, staff training and overall planning, consideration and preparation that went into the experience.

The meal that awaited them, teriyaki meatballs with whole-grain rice and a choice of up to three sides — corn, chilled pineapple, a fruit juice bar, 100 percent fruit juice and milk — had been carefully planned to meet U.S. Department of Agriculture standards for nutrition. The meals provide a proper amount of vitamins, minerals, nutrients, fiber, whole grains and protein while limiting fat, sodium, sugar, calories and the percentage of calories from fat.

The methods and means by which lunch would be served had been designed to maximize the appetizing appeal of the food while limiting packaging waste and expense. The staff serving the meal had been trained in food safety protocols, nutritional standards and efficiency.

Even the rate and time at which the kids got their lunch had been orchestrated. Students cycle through every five minutes, the theory being that eliminating long lines eliminates opportunities for goofing off.

All these factors are critically important to USDA student nutrition administrators and Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Student Nutrition Services personnel, teachers, administrators and school staff, parents and school board members. These factors can have serious impacts on budgets, the functionality of the nationwide and worldwide web of food vendors and transporters, and, most importantly, on students’ health and ability to focus and learn.

To the kids, though, all that matters is the food deposited on their trays and what they thought of it. On this particular day, many students didn’t think much of lunch.

Rickey Fiebelkorn, a student helper, serves corn during lunch at Redoubt Elementary School.

“Meatballs?” said first-grader Faith-Lynn Rose Gattenby as she left the food line with her tray.

“I don’t like them. Do I have to eat the meatballs?” she asked. Her question was answered by an older student passing by, who imparted a kernel of wisdom that strikes frustration in the hearts of all the professionals who put so much work into the meal, yet is universally known by picky eaters through the district:

“No. You have to take it, but you don’t have to eat it,” the older student said.

With that, Faith-Lynn sat at her table, drank her milk, poked at her pineapple chunks and happily devoured her frozen fruit juice bar, leaving the meatballs and rice barely touched and bound for the trash.

So goes the school food battle, waged between 70 KPBSD Student Nutrition Services personnel who will serve about 900,000 student meals in the 2010-11 school year, and students trained to want grease, fat, sugar and carbohydrates, in a state where 27 percent of high school students are overweight and 11 percent obese, and 42 percent of adults don’t meet physical activity guidelines and 76 percent don’t consume the recommended five servings of fruits and veggies each day.

5-kilometer run funds Tustumena School fun

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

Feet beating the pavement, arms rhythmically swinging and controlled breaths coming in through the nose and out through the mouth. There is a routine to running for pleasure, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of exercise is it allows the mind to wander. Problems can be mulled over and solved.

For Kasilof resident Carolyn Roush, her thoughts while running a few years ago revolved around her kids and the other children who attended Tustumena Elementary School.

Extracurricular activities were in jeopardy of being lost due to tightening educational budgets, and she mulled a solution while out for her daily jog.

“I was looking for a way to help,” she said. “And as a runner myself I thought it would be a good idea to have an event where people could be active while also raising money.”

Roush suggested a Tustumena five-kilometer fun run, and the inaugural event was such a success it has come back every year since.

Now in its fourth year, the fun run will be held Saturday.

“It’s been growing and growing. Last year we had 61 participants, which is up from the 30 to 40 we had the first few years,” Roush said.

Honored chorus — High schoolers to sing in Washington, D.C.

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Greg Daniels. Kenai Central High School Choir students, from left, Dante Diaz, Natalie Kurzendoerfer, Kyle Dougherty, Faren Calix and Cole Chase-Cochrane, will travel to Washington, D.C., to participate in a national honor choir in June.

Redoubt Reporter

If Renee Henderson, choir director at Kenai Central High School, had any doubts about Kyle Dougherty’s lung capacity when she submitted his audition recording for national honor choir, he amply dispelled them by his reaction when she told him he had been chosen to participate.

“You could hear him probably for — I’m serious — at least a block and a half,” Henderson said.

Dougherty, who just finished his sophomore year, and four other KCHS choir students will travel to Washington, D.C., on June 23 to participate in the Music Educators National Conference’s Music Education Week from June 24 to 28, including performances by a mixed choir, orchestra, concert band and jazz band made up of musicians and singers selected out of student auditions from around the country. The choir’s program includes “Until I Found The Lord,” by the honor choir’s director, Andre Thomas of Florida State University, who was in Kenai in October 2007 to conduct borough honor choir.

While KCHS routinely sends participants to the All-State and All-Northwest honor music festivals, only one other student in KCHS history, Synneva Hagen-Lillevik, has participated in a national honor choir. Henderson had two of her current students, Natalie Kurzendoerfer and Cole Chase-Cochrane, seniors next year, asked to send audition recordings to national honor choir, and she chose to enter three others whom she thought had a shot at it — Dougherty; Dante Diaz, a senior next year; and Faren Calix, a junior next year, without telling them she was doing so.

Given how challenging the audition process is for national honor choir — “like shooting a bird in the dark,” as Dougherty put it — acceptance came as a surprise to all five singers and Henderson.

“I didn’t want to open it because I knew it would say none of them made it,” Henderson said of an e-mail she got from MENC. “And I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got to look at it sometime, might as well look now.’”

It was doubly a shock to the three who didn’t even know they had been entered. Dougherty, though, shouldn’t have been quite so surprised, since he had been planning on attending since middle school.

“He came in as an eighth-grader, I’d never seem him before,” Henderson said. “He came in with (Rosemary Bird, Kenai Middle School choir teacher) and he said to me, ‘I plan on making national honor choir when I’m in high school.’ And I said, ‘Well, that would be nice. I only know one other person in the history of Kenai Central to do that.’ It was a strange introduction to a student, which is why I remembered it.”