“Our elders have told us that we need to document their knowledge. But not just that, we need to find ways of imparting their knowledge through the schools,” said Jana Harcharek, director of Inupiaq education with the district.

To help do that, the district brought up consultant Jay McTighe, who specializes in the field of curriculum mapping and alignment and co-authored several books on the topic.

For the rest of the article, go to North Slope educators plan Inupiaq curriculum

As in 2008-2009, six schools in the North Slope School District met the standards and five did not. In the Northwest Arctic Borough School District, five schools met the target, an increase over the four that did the year before, and seven did not.

That’s a cause for celebration, said Northwest Arctic School District Superintendant Norman Eck.

For the rest of the article, go to 11 North Slope and Northwest Arctic schools pass federal test

“For me, every student that I can help them see a way to get through, whether it’s their G.E.D., or high school completion, I want to do that,” she said, “so they don’t have the same sort of climb that I did.”

To that end, Delta/Greely schools runs what it calls a “cyberschool” – a statewide correspondence charter school of about 450 students.

Ford Slack says it employs certified Alaska teachers, many of them out of Delta.

“We tend to work with students that have dropped out two and three times to try and transition them and get them through high school,” she said.

So when she gets to Sitka High School, Ford Slack says she wants to help teachers integrate technology into curriculum. Some of us might remember taking a computer class in school. But Ford Slack says technology is not a specific class or a credit anymore. She says it’s something that needs to be part of all education.

For the rest of the article, go to Profile: Career in education comes from own time in school