UAF Secondary Teacher Interns Head for LYSD on Rural Practicum

Submitted by Daphne Hofschulte
Phone: 474-6817
03/23/04

Sixteen UAF secondary teacher interns and four instructors leave Fairbanks on Saturday, March 27 for a week in the Lower Yukon School District. Each group of four interns with one instructor will overnight in Bethel before continuing on to Mountain Village, Pilot Station, Marshall, or Russian Mission.

Each year teacher interns from the University of Alaska Fairbanks spend a week in a rural school to get first hand experience with rural education. Each intern has a host faculty partner in his/her teaching field. Curricular lessons and activities have been prepared for presentation in the faculty partner’s classroom.

This is the first time many of the interns have been in rural Alaska so the trip to LYSD is an important one in several ways. Interns will camp out in the schools, fixing meals and sleeping dormitory style. They will spend their days in classrooms with local teachers and students, and their evenings participating in community events.

The Practicum is funded through a Recruitment and Retention Grant, which is Federal money authorized by Alaska DEED. Purposes of the grant are twofold:

* To recruit teachers for rural Alaska. The experience is intended to raise awareness of diverse cultural settings, dispel myths, and give all interns a context for working with rural students.

* To improve instruction by faculty. The experience is intended to help faculty understand rural context, to gather correct information about rural schools, and to incorporate this knowledge into their university classes

Upon their return, interns and instructors will prepare a video presentation that includes their prior knowledge of small Alaska rural villages and schools, a description of the their experiences in the villages, personal and professional reflection on those experiences, and recommendations for how to better prepare interns for teaching in rural Alaska.

Traveling UAF instructors are Dr. Roger Norris-Tull, SOE Dean; Dr. Diane Noble, Secondary Licensure Chairman; Maida Buckley and Daphne Hofschulte.

Participating interns are Sarah Garland, Nancy King, Suze Nolan, Sid Kelley, Matt Casort, Stephanie Firman, Kim Williamson, Nancy Boyer, Tim Murphrey, Angela Larson, Karina Selby, Mike Shay, Roy Flynn, Barb Santora, Tammi Rego, and Suzanne Jacobson.