The dock that leads to the Nunapitchuk school sits in early evening light on October 12, 2023. Social workers from the Lower Kuskokwim School District visit village schools by small plane and boat to deliver counseling services and state-mandated lessons about healthy relationships.
He is part of a group of itinerant social workers employed by the Lower Kuskokwim School District that travel to the district’s 22 villages, none of which are on the road system. They fly, boat and snowmachine across a region about the size of West Virginia to bring lessons like this one, as well as counseling and support, to some of the hardest to reach parts of Alaska.
He said the curriculum “definitely” makes a difference. The students get it: over the course of the presentation, which covered topics from gossip to manipulation and gaslighting, they only got one question wrong. And he knows the material is sinking in because of feedback he gets from the students later: “I had a few students this morning from the seventh and eighth graders come in to say ‘You better talk to my sister. Did you do this when my sister was here?’” he said.
Four wheelers and bicycles sit outside the Anna Tobeluk Memorial School on a frosty morning in Nunapitchuk. October 12, 2023. Mollie Rosier, a manager with Alaska’s Division of Public Health, sat among the materials for various state curricula and programs to support healthy relationships in her Anchorage office on September 25, 2023.
“We hear teachers saying, ‘This is so great. And I’m being measured on my reading scores. I can’t add this to my curriculum,’” she said. She said she hopes future policy will support the Safe Children’s Act with staff time and financial support. Rosier said the state’s curriculum is just one way to help students build healthy lives. She said that often the same factors that prevent interpersonal violence also protect against other types of risk.