Teacher Opens Educational Niche for Natives
By Katie Pesznecker, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Mar. 12–Martha Gould-Lehe understands difficulties facing Alaska Native students.
She is Athabascan and had her own struggles in the public education system, growing up in the Interior. Later, after raising children, Gould-Lehe became a teacher and has spent the past 19 years working in Anchorage schools, where she’s immersed in a world that too often sees Native children academically staggering behind white classmates.
Gould-Lehe had an idea: Why not create a charter school custom-crafted to serve these kids? The idea grew into a proposal that the School Board approved in December. Like all alternative programs, enrollment in the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School will be decided by lottery. Children can sign up through Wednesday.
Earlier this month, GOULD-LEHE SAT DOWN IN HER COLORFUL CLASSROOM AT MULDOON ELEMENTARY WITH REPORTER KATIE PESZNECKER:
QUESTION: Describe your childhood.
ANSWER: I was born in the Interior in a little log cabin on the Kuskokwim River right in Medfra. No doctors, nothing. This was in the days of state-operated schools, so I went to high school at Dillingham High School and graduated from there. Then I got married and lived in (King Cove and Unalaska in) the Aleutians for 14 years. I decided to finish up my degree, moved to Anchorage.
Q: What was school like?
A: I think (the teacher) probably was culturally in shock and didn’t know what to do with a lot of us. … I remember her beating a blackboard with a ruler and shouting, and then she would start throwing books and we would run back and hide under our desks. … I’m sure she was a good teacher because I did learn. But not in a culturally responsible way. … School wasn’t a place anybody felt comfortable visiting and hanging around.
We were always tardy and late. We didn’t have clocks and … you went on your own little natural clock. She made us stand in front of the room and tell everyone why we were late. Well, who’s going to stand up there and say “I was sleeping in?” And you know, we didn’t have furnaces, it was cold, and somebody had to get up and start the fire and all that. … One little boy finally came up with the answer that it was so cold, his door had frozen shut so he couldn’t get out. After that, all of our doors were frozen shut and she had to let us sit down because we had an answer.
Q: Why become a teacher?
A: I went to a year of college and I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I started a family. Having children, I started helping in the schools. Plus my foster parents growing up — well I shouldn’t call them foster parents because they didn’t receive a dime for keeping me. But my parents had divorced. I’d spent a year in a children’s home, and a couple took an interest in me and my family. I ended up staying with them through my high school years. They were both teachers. … They really influenced me.
Q: How did the idea for this charter school come to you?
A: I was getting ready to retire and I really didn’t feel I was leaving anything in place to make the road smoother. I would have been a body that moved through the system, did my part and left. So I was thinking of this, vacuuming my floor, and it just came to me: “You need to start a charter school.” And I turned off the vacuum, sat down, and said, “OK, Lord, I don’t know anything about a charter school.” … But I just felt a real prompting. It was a big idea, a big hit on the head.
Q: Why does Anchorage needs this charter school?
A: This school is badly needed. … I think it’s a voice for Native people. It’s validating their existence in this district. We are the largest village in Alaska and yet very little is done to accommodate us.
Q: What issues did you see facing your Native students?
A: Well, Native students especially are called a silent minority because they’re just not really verbal. If you walk into a room and there’s a discussion going on and somebody says, “Well, here’s a problem, (solve it),” and you’ve got Caucasians in the room and Natives, usually the Native person will sit back and listen because it’s very rude for us to jump in and interrupt you. We need time to think about things and observe things. Then we decide if we want to participate or not. … Native kids learn much better with hands-on, inquiry based projects. To sit a kid down and ask them to stay there all day and open a book and turn from one page to the next, it very often disengages students. …
Q: What are some methods for teaching Native kids that will be used at the charter school?
A: We’re looking at smaller learning groups so it’s not individuals pitted against individuals. It’s collaborative learning. We will have storytelling, we will have elders in who will help establish who we are as a people and … who we will be in the future. Our students will learn their Alaska history. … They will know who they are as Alaska Native people, with that strong sense of self-identity.
LEARN MORE: The committee forming the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School is in the process of leasing the old Sadler’s Home Furnishings building in Mountain View at 161 Klevin St. For more information on the school, contact Martha Gould-Lehe at 338-4469 or 727-3078, or Elizabeth Hancock at 338-0220. Applications are available on the district Web site at www.asdk12.org
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