Sharing The Powerful Ideas of the Founders With Native Alaskans

When Rachel Kohl graduated from one of the many teaching certification programs at Michigan colleges, jobs were scarce. Kohl taught in a program for at-risk teens while looking for a position in social studies, her real love. At a job fair, she heard a recruiter promoting teaching jobs in Alaska. He spoke of tundra roamed by moose and caribou, streams traversed by migrating salmon, and the hunting and fishing traditions of Alaskan natives living in small rural villages. As he described tribal dances and folktales passed down in an indigenous language, job applicants drifted away. “By the time he said, ‘You may or may not have running water,’ I was the last one still listening,” Kohl recalls.  

Daughter of a Marine, Kohl had moved with him to bases around the country and watched him deploy overseas. She accepted an interview, thinking, “I could do this for a year.” A week later, she was offered a job. Her mother advised her to go for it while she was young. So Kohl moved to the small Southwest Alaskan village of Kwethluk, population 750, on the Kuskokwim River, to live among the Yupik. 

Fourteen years later, she’s still there. At the kindergarten through 12th-grade community school, Ket’acik and Aapalluk Memorial, Kohl provides all the social studies education for the youth of the village. She covers required high school courses in world history, American history, government, and Alaska studies, sometimes adding American history for eighth graders or a “Literacy through World Geography” course she designed, using novels to convey geographical settings. She has married the school’s special education teacher, who came to Alaska from Idaho and also stayed. Back in Michigan, her mother sighs, “You’ll be there forever.” 

Not entirely. Awarded a James Madison Foundation Fellowship to fund Masters work in a program emphasizing Constitutional studies, Kohl spent several summers studying in Ashbrook’s Master of Arts in American History and Government (MAHG). “I would go to Michigan, stay with my Mom, and take three classes a summer.”

How MAHG Opens Possibilities for Teachers and Students at Small, Remote Schools 

For teachers at small schools, MAHG provides colleagues from throughout the country. In the summer residence program, teachers discuss primary documents from America’s past, guided by scholars from universities across the country. Professors and teachers discuss historical evidence together. During breaks and meals, teachers trade ideas on putting the documents they are studying to use in their home classrooms. Even after graduating, teachers continue to talk through the Internet. “Since I am the whole social studies department here, it’s really good to have friends online to network with to get ideas,” Kohl says.  

As Kohl worked through the program, she shared primary sources she’d studied with her students. “We talked about it in a scientific way: ‘We’re going to dissect documents today,’” she’d say, knowing that the often complex sentences of older texts would challenge her students. 

“It was good to show them I was studying, just as they were,” Kohl remarks. Students watched her completing her Masters coursework in the interactive online program. If the professor for a course lived on the east coast, in a time zone four hours ahead, she logged into the WebEx portal as soon as the last bell rang.  Wearing headphones, she sat at her desk, taking notes or commenting in the discussion. “My students would come over, look at my screen, and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ I’d jot a note, ‘I’m taking a class.’” This showed students that “you never stop learning”—and that a person in Alaska could join in an online class discussion with teachers in the “lower 48.” 

Helping Native Alaskan Students Feel Part of America’s Story 

Seeing their tribal lands as suffering invasion by Russian trappers and then by Americans, Yupik students think of national life as happening elsewhere and controlled by others. “When it comes to the founders’ belief in government by consent, my students think, ‘We never gave consent.’ But I spent much of my time in the MAHG program on the founding, and I’m passionate about it. So I go into class and tell students, ‘Today’s going to be a great day, because we’re working on the Declaration of Independence, and it’s the best document you’ll ever read!’ I want them to be excited, to feel that these powerful ideas belong to them.”  

MAHG study gave Kohl a confident grasp of American history, making her “more passionate about what I do”— helping Yupik students feel they are part of the American story. Through MAHG, Kohl gained a deep familiarity with American historical documents not unlike her students’ familiarity with the folktales told by their elders. “To me, each document has a life of its own—it is like a person in history who still speaks to us.”  

To help her students feel this, Kohl paints a portrait of the person behind the historical voice. Since her students practice the traditional dances of the Yupik, she tells them George Washington was endowed with muscular calves and danced well. When she says he also wore wooden false teeth, his humanness becomes complete. Similarly, “when I describe how awkwardly Abraham Lincoln sat a horse, because his legs were so long,” students form the visual image they need to make Lincoln real. 

Height matters to Yupik youth, whose favorite sport is basketball. Recently they searched the Internet for the heights of other presidents. They were pleased that Theodore Roosevelt managed five feet, nine inches. “They like Teddy because he hunted and preserved land for hunting, and because they can imagine showing him how to hunt caribou. They can make a personal connection.” 

Equipping Students with the Knowledge to Defend Their Rights 

Helping students take ownership of American history helps them also to own their rights and duties as citizens. Kohl sees this as her primary task. While she prepares students planning for college, she knows that most of those who leave for the university in Anchorage will eventually return home. Loyal to their families and ancestral way of life, they return to “help their grandparents cut firewood, help their families hunt and fish for food, and eat their traditional dried salmon, which you can’t find anywhere else.” This family upbringing does not point students toward higher education, yet it draws on “skills and intelligence no standardized test could measure,” Kohl says, and it is a workable way of life.  

Hence Kohl tells students, “My goal is to make sure you know your rights, and recognize when they are threatened.” Study of the founding is fundamental here; students also need knowledge of how government works and the ability to understand town ordinances and state ballot initiatives. Before the last election, Kohl collected a stack of state-issued voter information guides and distributed them in class. After students interpreted the text of each proposal, they voted on them as a class, later comparing their decisions to those voters made on Election Day. 

Yupik hunting and fishing rights face threats, in part because of federal restrictions aimed at species conservation. The Yupik understand this, yet question why commercial groups who fish for halibut are allowed to toss overboard the dying salmon caught in their nets. They also worry that federal restrictions on gun ownership could threaten hunting. 

“My father fought overseas with the Marines to preserve rights” like those of the Yupik people, Kohl says. She teaches so that her students will know how to fight for their rights in the political arena at home.