This story originally published in the Peninsula Clarion.

Nikiski, an industrial base for oil, gas, mining and fishing for decades, was once rich with industry money and a number of bars, restaurants, cafes, and independent video store and even an arcade. As oil prices plummeted and a fabrication plant and fertilizer producer closed, so did many of the area’s businesses. Now, community members are working to revitalize the area.

Todd Brigham grew up in Nikiski. He left for college and returned more than nine years ago with his wife to start his family. Last month, Brigham quit his job as an engineer for ConocoPhillips to give back to his hometown. Now, he said he’s working harder than he ever did as an engineer.

“We want to help our youth navigate life,” Brigham said. “The Compass is really about building relationships, and teaching practical life skills, and really getting the youth pointed in a healthy direction.”

Brigham and his wife Emily are starting the Compass, a youth center, they hope to open just in time for school to start. Currently under construction, the center will feature a lounge area, games, pool table, air hockey, foosball, computers for children to work on homework, a conference room where Brigham hopes to offer work sessions on personal finance, first aid and other practical knowledge, a shop area where kids can learn to make ceramics with the center’s donated wheels and kiln and a coffee house that community youth will help run in the morning. Brigham said the revenue made from the cafe will support the center and will be open to the public every morning.

A 1953 Willys pickup truck donated by Brigham will also offer youth an opportunity to learn about automotive restoration.

“We can paint it Compass colors and drive it in the Fourth of July parade next summer,” Brigham said.

The youth center is located next door to M &M Market, near Nikiski Middle/High School, and is geared towards children in that age range. Drop-in service will run from 2:15–3:30 p.m. on weekdays.

In the summer, Brigham hopes to offer outdoor programs where youth can go canoeing and hiking in the area.

“It’s actually surprising, a number of the youth around, even though we have it all around us, they’ve never been out,” Brigham said. “We want to get them out in creation and enjoy the rivers and the hills.”

Brigham has worked with many of the youth in Nikiski through his church, Lighthouse Community Church. He’s setting the Compass up as a faith-based organization, but the center is open to any youth in the area.

“I’ve met a lot of good kids, with a lot of ideas a lot of talent, but not a whole lot of direction,” Brigham said. “There’s a number of youth that I’ve run into or stopped by that aren’t really involved in anything and, or dropped out of school. I think we can really fill a gap where they can really have a place to belong and help some of them through the tough years of being a teenager. (Nikiski) is a place where there’s not a whole lot to do around here, (the Compass) is a place where they can come and hang out.”

Residents of Nikiski say they see a need for the Compass and more community centers, as well. Stacy Oliva, a co-vice chair of Citizens for Nikiski, Inc., a group petitioning the state to incorporate Nikiski as a city, and a member of the North Peninsula Recreation Service Area Board, said she loves the concept of the Compass.

“It’s definitely needed,” Oliva said. “It’s so needed in every community, and it’s neat they chose here.”

There were no community centers like there are now when Oliva was growing up in Nikiski in the 70s.

Both Oliva’s maternal and paternal grandparents homesteaded in Nikiski in the 1950s. She said she’s seen Nikiski change from a homestead area to a growing community.

“[Nikiski] lost its homestead feel,” Oliva said. “We always had really small family get-togethers and we relied on each other, shared things. It’s more commercialized now, and we don’t have neighborly gatherings like we used to, but now there are so many events where people are getting together here.”

She said she’s seen more families come to Nikiski in pursuit of a rural lifestyle, and a growth in agricultural enterprises, including marijuana.

“It’s still very industrial as an area, but it’s definitely very family-oriented,” Oliva said. “Nikiski is very unique and it has great families.”

While there is a growth in families, Oliva said Nikiski has also seen a growth in criminal activity, which she said is the community’s biggest drawback.

“Unfortunately, remoteness has left the door open for criminal activity, more so now than in the (Trans-Alaska Pipeline System) days,” Oliva said. “It’s just now it’s more unpredictable… You can stay under the radar here.”

Brigham is hoping to keep Nikiski’s youth out of trouble.

“We found that the youth that doesn’t have something to be part of or something to do, is getting in trouble, or are headed in a bad direction, so we really want to come alongside them and help them be set up for success,” Brigham said.

This is the first center dedicated to youth in Nikiski. The Nikiski Community Recreation Center, which was created after the Nikiski Elementary — housed in the same building — was shut down in 2004, also offers youth programs, a playground, a teen center that hosts monthly teen nights, youth sports programs and space for area-wide events.

Rachel Parra, the recreation director of the North Peninsula Recreation Service Area, said the Nikiski Community Recreation Center has been a work in progress, but that it’s central to community events. The list of programs and events is growing every year. Residents this summer can now enjoy Yoga in the Park for free at 10 a.m. on Wednesdays and next month, the Nikiski Pool is hosting its first ever cardboard and duct tape boat race.

“The primary industry out here is oil and gas and fishing, but it seems like we have a really growing desire to have a community out here and offer different things for teens to do,” Brigham said. “I know the rec center has been really trying to help get stuff like that going as well as (Challenge Martial Arts).”

Brigham said he sees a desire for community growth in Nikiski, and it’s because of a collaborative effort between the area’s organizations and businesses.

“We love Nikiski, we love being out here and we have the woods, and the ocean and a lot of things to enjoy, but we want to come together as a community of people as well,” Brigham said. “I see that happening out here as well. With oil and gas and fishing, it’s very seasonal. It ebbs and flows with oil prices, so we get little booms and slow periods. It seems right now we are headed in a new direction and I’m excited.”

The strip mall where M &M Market and the Compass are housed, has gradually added businesses in the past few years — what was once a nearly empty strip mall is now home to two restaurants, a martial arts studio, a ceramics shop and now the Compass youth center. Felix Martinez, owner of M &M Market, feels the ebbs and flows of Nikiski economy strongly. Last year, the hardware store closed and a community gas station stopped offering repairs, after which Martinez said his sales dropped between 12–14 percent.

“Our little community economy imploded last year,” Martinez said. “Though, Nikiski has been up and down since the beginning.”

Martinez has been an owner at M &M Market since 2003, but the store has been around since the 60s. He said in order for business to grow in Nikiski, people need to be willing to take risks.

“I don’t think I’ve seen someone take as big a chance as (Brigham),” Martinez said. “It almost brings a tear to my eye. When you see someone take a chance it makes you smile and you remember there are good people in the world. Our youth is our future, and if Todd next door is putting this much into our youth, it’s the least we could do to support him.”

The Compass is preparing to have an open house on Aug. 11 where the community can come and learn about the center’s goals.

This story was originally published in the Peninsula Clarion.

Goat hobby herds are becoming more and more popular on the Kenai Peninsula.

While some farmers sell their excess milk through herdshare programs — in which a shareholder invests in an animal and retains a proportionate amount of the animal’s production — others are using their surplus to craft specialty soaps.

When Deanna O’Connor isn’t milking her 11 goats — which she does twice a day on her lakeside property in Nikiski — she’s making goat milk cheese, ice cream and soap.

She shares her recipes and writes about her eight years of experience as a goat owner on her blog If you give a girl a goat…. Taking care of the goats started out as a hobby, but has recently grown into something more, she said.

“I think people are more aware of the products that they are putting on their skin and what they’re consuming,” O’Connor said. “I think particularly people in Alaska are hyper-aware because we are more connected to our environment.”

O’Connor sells her soap through her blog and at Alaska Herbal Solution’s Soldotna Wednesday Market booth. She plays with fragrances, exfoliants and oils to meet the needs of a broad range of people. She said, in general, goat milk soap is great for anyone who has issues with their skin. For acne, O’Connor would recommend her Tipsy Goat soap. It’s made with the amber beer from Alaska Brewing Company. Her favorite though is a new one she’s calling Farm Morning, which contains beef tallow, pork lard, black coffee, honey, oatmeal and more.

“It’s a good creamy bar,” she said.

Meg Wright of Wise and Right Farms also makes goat milk soap in Nikiski. She started three years ago as a way of making unique Christmas gifts for her family.

“My friend, who had made soap lots of times before, came over to my house and taught me how to make hot process goat milk soap,” Wright said. “From that day on I have been hooked on making and using it.”

Wright said she likes to be creative with her soap making, whether it would be adding basic colors, layering and swirling them or adding exfoliants such as pumice, clays or seeds. When it comes to fragrance, she goes by what her family likes. Like O’Connor, she also has unscented soaps for people who may be allergic.

O’Connor and Wright are not alone. At the Soldotna Wednesday Market, Wright sells her soap alongside five other soapmakers and two people selling goat milk soap. Despite the saturation in the market, Wright said she doesn’t try to compete.

“Everyone’s soaps are going to be different, so while everyone might use goat milk, the oils and other ingredients will and could be different,” Wright said. “It’s a pretty friendly market. We all have different spins on our soap, so there’s something for everyone. There seems to be enough variety for all the visitors.”

Wright also makes body butter and beard oil, with plans to expand to goat milk lotion and lip balm.

This story was originally published on Education Week.

Glennallen, Alaska

This town of 500 people sits at the end of the Glenn Highway, 180 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city. It’s a hub for travelers headed to the Copper River Valley, or farther, to Canada and the lower 48 states, and has much to offer in mountainscapes and a quiet way of life. For gifted students like Aric Cox, though, specialized educational resources are limited.

“I encourage him and his sister to make the most of what you got here. Yeah, it’s not as wonderful as … some other place, but we make the most of it,” Sherri Cox, Aric’s mother, said.

When it comes to providing advanced academic services, Glennallen shares many challenges with other rural schools across the country: too few specialized teachers, spotty internet access, underfunded districts, a lack of access to rigorous academic content.

Carolyn Callahan, a professor in the department of curriculum, instruction, and special education at the University of Virginia, said that rural gifted students have a particular disadvantage in schooling and that Alaska may be an extreme case because of its remoteness.

“Finding gifted kids in rural schools is difficult because personnel, and trained personnel, is limited,” she said. “In a rural school of 100 elementary students, you’d only have maybe five gifted kids, maybe one for every grade level. The opportunity for a teacher to create a whole enriched curriculum for one child becomes limited.”

Callahan said Aric is lucky in one respect: His academic ability, at least, was identified. Identifying gifted students in rural communities in the first place, she said, can be just as challenging as providing advanced content to that student when resources of all kinds are low.

 

Aric, who graduated from high school last month, has been living in Glennallen nearly his entire life and has attended Glennallen School since kindergarten. The K-12 school serves 286 students in all.

This year, the graduating class numbered 14.

Personalized Learning

And Glennallen School is the largest of the three schools in the Copper River school district, which serves fewer than 450 students in an area nearly the size of Ohio.

“I feel like larger schools would offer more variety of opportunities, but at the same time, in classes here, you get to know your teachers more,” Aric said. “In a bigger school, I don’t know if that would have been possible.”

That sentiment is shared by his school’s principal, Nick Schumacher, who said the small class sizes allow for more one-on-one attention.

“I feel like in smaller communities, you have to sort of take more initiative and go look for the opportunities,” Aric said.

On his own search for opportunities, Aric discovered a passion for computer technology and helping people. He has been volunteering at the community library for the past seven years, where he sets up computers, puts books away, checks books in and out, and signs residents up for library cards, among other tasks.

 

After the local job center closed, Aric began working on a project to create a job-search database on one of the library’s computers. He also served as a student intern at Cross Road Clinic, the main medical facility in Glennallen where his parents both work. There, he installed TVs and a teleconference center, and helped with general information-technology work.

Aric burned through his school’s most challenging courses well before he was ready to graduate. Then he took online classes and video-teleconference classes to supplement the courses the district couldn’t offer him. Those classes were often based out of Prince William Sound College, which has an office in Glennallen, schools in Anchorage, and an online school on the U.S. East Coast, called the Potter’s School.

That ability to take online courses means Cox has been luckier than many of his peers in other parts of rural Alaska.

“The internet has been a boon in many, many cases because kids like Aric have access to it,” Callahan said. “Some schools don’t even have that option.”

Downside of Online Classes

But it’s also not been an ideal option, Aric noted.

“I’ve tried to take classes from teachers in school if I can, but if not, I would look at the online options and pick what was best,” he said. “[Online classes are] very impersonal. You get the content still, but you have to decide what you’re going to do with it. You don’t have a teacher to guide you along.”

Callahan agreed that the e-learning structure can be isolating for many students.

“You’re one student online, you’re not in a community. Nationally, it’s a problem and it’s something we’ve been dealing with by trying to get more gifted students identified,” she said.

The Copper River district is a member of the League of Innovative Schools, a nationwide coalition of more than 93 schools that focus on building opportunities for students through technology. Copper River and the Sitka school system are the only two Alaskan districts in the league. This coalition recognizes the districts for their use of a video-teleconferencing system that allows students to remotely take classes that are being offered at other schools in the district.

“If a teacher in our Kenny Lake School, which is 45 miles down the road, is offering a class in, let’s say, oceanography, a student in Glennallen that wants to take it can have access to it,” Copper River schools Superintendent Tamara Van Wyhe said.

The Copper River district offers e-learning options for gifted students like Cox through various partnerships with online education portals. In all, Van Wyhe said, the district is able to offer more 300 e-learning classes. Copper River students can also receive college credits and dual credit through a partnership with Prince William Sound College.

Moreover, independent study is an option for students who want to study something the district can’t provide.

That benefited Aric when he found an Advanced Placement Calculus class at an online school that wasn’t partnered with Copper River. His district offered financial support for the class, as well as a teacher to proctor the exam.

Teacher-Hiring Challenges

While the internet has helped make finding advanced classes for students like Cox less of a challenge, recruiting teachers who are skilled at meeting the needs of gifted students—and well-qualified educators in general—has become increasingly more difficult, Van Wyhe said.

“Ten years ago or more, it was pretty easy because all we had to say was, ‘Hey, we’re on the road system.’ People wanted to come here, but the pool of candidates has been declining so dramatically over the last five years,” Van Wyhe said. “There are not as many people interested in working in rural Alaska, so our road system draw isn’t quite what it used to be.”

Van Wyhe said it can be difficult for teachers to commit to wear all the hats required in a rural district.

“If you’re a high school English teacher, you’re not going to come to a rural district and just teach high school English. You’re going to teach English and social studies, and you might have a science class, and you might be asked to teach an art class, and you might coach cross-country, and be the adviser for student council and National Honor Society and a hundred other things,” Van Wyhe said.

Van Wyhe was a teacher in and around Anchorage for a couple of years before teaching in Copper River. While a small district in rural Alaska has its challenges, Van Wyhe said it’s the social and emotional benefits that have kept her there for more than 21 years.

“We have over 400 students in our school district, and I know every single one of them,” Van Wyhe said.

Meanwhile, in Quinhagak, a small, even more remote village on Alaska’s southwestern Bering Sea coast, Robby Strunk, a high school junior and gifted student, takes most of his classes online. His favorite subject is math, but his school’s most difficult math class is Algebra 2, which Strunk took as a freshman. Strunk said there are no teachers at his school who are trained to work with gifted children. He also said that because of budget reductions last year, his school had to cut a teacher position, leaving only two teachers at his 227-student high school.

College Transition

Strunk, however, has an opportunity to further his education through the Rural Alaska Honors Institute, an intensive college-preparatory program that brings rural, Alaskan Native high school juniors and seniors from across the state to the University of Alaska Fairbanks for six weeks.

Students can earn anywhere from eight to 11 college credits in one summer through the all-expenses-paid program.

Started in 1983, it is the oldest, continuously run program for academically promising rural students in Alaska.

The program was created in partnership with the University of Alaska and the Alaska Federation of Natives, with the goal of helping students ease the transition from village to town as they gear up for college.

The program, which nearly 1,800 students have attended since its inception, receives an average of 125 applicants each year and accepts 40 to 50 of them, according to RAHI program manager Denise Waters. Students must have a 3.0 GPA and have lived in Alaska most of their lives.

Strunk has been hearing about RAHI his whole life. His four older siblings went through it, and he was accepted to attend this summer, along with 41 other students from across the state. He said he is hoping to have similar experiences, and that the program will give him a jumpstart on college.

Over six weeks, students take classes from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and then work in a mandatory study hall from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., five days a week.

“This is not a walk in the park,” Waters said.

Students choose from two course-study options. For those with an interest in the sciences, there is RAHI Research. Students must have taken some basic biology or chemistry classes and write two essays. This summer, six students will join university researchers, and, depending on the nature of the research the university is conducting, the students will be required to go into the field, collect data, assist with research, write a research paper, and give a final presentation about their findings.

Hard Work and Opportunity

The other track, the more traditional path, gears students up for managing college life. Those students take classes in college writing, library sciences, and study skills. In the afternoon, they choose from among four different classes: an appropriate level math class, chemistry, business, and a class that teaches the process and operations of refinery, chemical, and other industry manufacturing. In the evening, a physical education class is required; Alaska Native dance, karate, and yoga are the options.

The university and the Alaska Federation of Natives were able to entirely fund the program on their own when it began in the 1980s.

“This was during the [oil] pipeline days, and there was more money,” Waters said.

But in the last 10 years, external funding and partnerships were needed to continue the program.

The state of Alaska is grappling with a recession that has left districts, schools, and students with few resources, especially for the advanced content required to challenge gifted students.

This summer, while Strunk is attending RAHI, Aric will continue volunteering at the library and at Cross Road Clinic, as well as working with his school district to put together technology guides for teachers and students to work with the devices the school plans to start using next school year. In the fall, Aric will be leaving Glennallen, and Alaska, to study computer technology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

Strunk’s longterm goal? He hopes to return to Quinhagak after college and possibly teach math at this local high school.

Coverage of the experiences of low-income, high-achieving students is supported in part by a grant from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, at www.jkcf.org. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

Victoria Petersen is an Alaskan journalist, working as the education reporter for the

Photos by Young Kim