A Little Background

I'm sure I will be talking about the kids and the community a lot through out this blog so I wanted to share a little back ground information with you about the situations the people of Tuluksak face every day. For the most part these make this sound like a horrible place "on its way to hell in a hand basket" however, it isn't anything any other small town faces but because we are so isolated, so small, and the concept of hiding skeletons in your closet is lost up here everything is out in the open. These are wonderful people that just happen to face more trials each day than many of us are used to from getting food in to drinking and everything in between. As you read this please keep these people in your prayers and the teachers as well, honestly these people are great and 90% of the time everything is hunky-dory...well as hunky-dory as it can be :) but like anything you start listing the "trying" or "bad" qualities of something you can make anything sound bad! So just please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers and I know we will see a difference this year!!

So now brings the question where to begin...
-for the village there is no running water (only the teacher housing has running water and indoor plumbing)
-for the most part no vehicles only four wheeler and snow machines
-most houses are just one big room, a few have bed rooms but there are no doors
-drinking, drugs, and tobacco use is out of this world; parents give 3 year olds a watered down type of tobacco chew because they believe it has "healing powers" it is tobacco chew mixed with some kind of plant found up here (and they mix it in their mouths and pass it around so by the time it gets to little kids it is pretty "chewed" out) that is highly addictive and they will go through serious withdrawal symptoms if they don't have it, oh and they swallow instead of spitting it out. Drinking is a MAJOR problem up here, there is no social drinking just drinking till you pass out, there are not any "nice" drunks up here either and the drinking average age people start drinking is really young. While in the past drug use has not been a huge deal it is making itself known and is quickly becoming a big problem.
-dropout rate is astronomical, the highest in the country I believe
-absenteeism is second only to Hawaii and a very close second at that
-parent involvement is very minimal at best unless
-fetal alcohol syndrom is prevalent
-suicide rate is crazy high and suicides mostly occur in the high school to young adult age range

Most of these things you can find and read more about on the internet and I had looked up some of this stuff before I came but what really opened my eyes happened my first day of school. Here in Tuluksak within the first week of school the teacher go on a "walk about" and visit the homes of each of their students (for those of you that are teachers I really encourage you to try this sometime, it opens your eyes and helps you understand your students better and what makes them tick or why they do that thing they do that drives you crazy, it may be something at home. Anyway most of you probably already knew that but there you go!) and we go into each house meet the parents, see if they have any questions for us, any concerns and just generally let them know who we are and what classes their child has. I didn't really know what to expect but it was...interesting. It made me appreciate the students that came even more and helped me understand the situation of my students.

So in a very, very, very small nutshell there are a few of the things we are facing up here. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers and I know with all the support we teachers have and will continue to get we can help make a difference up here!!