Adaptation Isn’t Just for the Tundra: Rethinking Teaching and Schooling in Alaska’s Arctic

Abstract

In Alaska, schools as structured do not work for far too many of Alaska’s students, especially Indigenous students. This chapter raises issues that are not being addressed in most discussions on the schooling and teacher crisis in Alaska. We call out the failure of the existing system of teacher preparation. We then move into a critical discussion around what is missing from the current deliberations around improving schooling outcomes in rural Alaska: how the history of colonization and assimilation efforts in Alaska has created and propagated the current situation. We explore recent proposals to transfer more authority over rural schools to tribes and local communities and ask whether tribes should rethink the entire enterprise of education in rural Alaska, by fully enacting tribal control and self-determination in education.