Juneau Schools

Juneau-Douglas High School girls are the winners of the swimming and diving state championships held Friday and Saturday at the Dimond Park Aquatic Center. They edged Anchorage’s Dimond High School by three points.

On the boys’ side, Dimond High swimmers are repeat state champions, with Sitka High School coming in three points behind to take second.

Both competitions came down to the last race – the 400 freestyle relay.

More than 300 high school athletes, representing 25 high schools  competed in Juneau this weekend in the statewide championships for swimming and diving.

Juneau’s new 8-lane, Olympic-size pool at the Dimond Park Aquatic Center made it possible for the capital city to hold a state meet, traditionally held at Bartlett High School in Anchorage.

Isaiah Vreeman is the State Championships Director for the Alaska School Activities Association.

 Bartlett’s been the only facility in the state to be able to host state championship swimming ever, so to have another facility to come on line, being in Juneau, it’s very exciting.

Four Juneau teachers and a community program partner have been recognized by the Alaska Association for Career and Technical Education as 2013 Outstanding Teachers.

The awards came at the association’s annual conference in Anchorage on Oct. 30^th , according to Carin Smolin, Career and Technical Education Coordinator for the Juneau School District.

The association’s mission is to strengthen career and technical education and develop an Alaska workforce.

JDHS Health Sciences Teacher Kari Monagle is the Outstanding Health Services Teacher of the Year.

Monagle is a Juneau Douglas High School graduate and has been teaching science there for about 20 years.  Smolin says Monagle helped develop the health sciences curriculum.

“We have alignment with the university so students can earn dual credit with high school and university credits.  We know that health sciences is a high demand occupation in our state along with the country. And she’s been very dedicated and passionate about her work and her teaching, and students just love her as well,” Smolin says.

Colin Dukes has been teaching at JDHS for six years and has earned the Outstanding Industrial/Technology Teacher of the Year award for his classes in wood, construction, house building, and CAD, or computer-aided design.

Smolin calls Dukes’ classes a model of applied learning that incorporate literacy, math, and science skills in meaningful projects.

She reads from a letter supporting Dukes for the award:

“He customizes classroom learning to meet student needs and teams of colleagues to create classroom projects and build student engagement in meaningful learning.”

One of the most popular classes at Thunder Mountain High School is taught by Patrick Roach.  He’s received the Outstanding New CTE Teacher of the Year award for preparing and cooking food, otherwise known as culinary arts.

He’s also been teaching less than three years, an important part of the category for the new CTE teacher award.

Smolin says this is not the first award Roach has received in the short time he’s been teaching.

“This past spring he also was recognized by the state and he won the Alaska 2013 Teacher of the Year by the National Restaurant Association Education Foundation, and he won the Alaska Educators’ Excellence award,” she says.

The Community Contribution award has gone to Justin Fantasia,  a SAGA employee who is construction manager for the JDHS House Build Program.

Fantasia has been working with the program for five years.  Smolin says his award recognizes the connection between a school and a workplace.

“He has been a mentor for students and helps them transition  into the construction field following high school and he engages in class as well as on site with the work,” she says. “He’s truly dedicated to our students.”

The JDHS House Build program currently has a house for sale in the Lemon Creek area and is building another.

The Juneau teachers who won the awards competed with other career and technical education instructors from across the state.  Smolin says the applications are accompanied by letters of support, many from students and former students, and all are reviewed by an impartial committee of business leaders and the association.

“I practice sometimes,” he says. “But usually my dog eats up my hula hoops.”

Caden’s dog would’ve been in hoop heaven at Juneau’s Harborview Elementary School this past month. Students there got to make their own hula hoops out of PVC pipe and other material, all leading up to Saturday’s World Hoop Day.

Caden says he’s not sure what the hype’s all about, but it’s exciting nonetheless.

“Yeah, I think it’s cool that people do it,” he says. “I mean, I don’t know why they have a Hoop Day. But it’s cool that they do it.”

A few dedicated New York City hoopers started World Hoop Day in 2005 as a way of celebrating hoop culture. The exact date has changed every year since, but the idea is pretty simple: Get a bunch of people around the world hula hooping on the same day.

Harborview Gym Teacher Zach Stenson says one of his friends has taken part in past World Hoop Days.

“She gave me the idea a couple years ago, and said ‘Oh, what a neat thing if you could have all the kids do something at the same time that kids all over the world are doing a similar activity,'” he says.

Harborview teachers started a Humanities program this year, and Stenson says they decided to make the hula hoop project their kickoff activity. They hope to hold similar events every month or so, focused on building community.

“Bringing our school a little bit more together,” Stenson says. “Helping the kids make friends, that sort of thing.”

One lesson Stenson hopes the kids take from the hula hoop project is that they don’t always have to buy their toys. With the right materials, they can make them at home.

While teachers and parents use hair dryers to heat up roughly 10-foot sections of plastic pipe, the kids bend them into a circular shape.

Ten-year-old Kiana Potter made the project’s first hula hoop.

“When Mr. Stenson first started talking about it, he asked me to make an example hoop,” she says. “So, I could show the other kids what it was going to be.”

Kiana’s not sure why she was chosen to make the example hoop, but says maybe it’s because she has a lot of hula hooping experience.

“I can do a lot of tricks with a hula hoop,” she says. “I can do it around my neck and my hands and my arms, and I recently figured out how to do it around one foot while hopping up and down.”

Local businesses donated money or materials, and many parents volunteered to help with the project. Harborview PTA President Bruce Franklin says the kids at first have no idea how plastic pipe will turn into a hula hoop. But that changes once they see it start taking shape.

“Then they can’t keep their hands off it, and everybody wants to hula hoop,” Franklin says. “So, it’s kind of a rapid particle accelerator machine of excitement, because they just get super psyched up. And then, you know, we have to kind of keep them from hula hooping each other to death out here.”

Friday afternoon, the entire school except kindergarten files into the gym at the Marie Drake building for the project’s culmination, a school-wide hoop off.

Each class holds a competition to see who will represent them. Then Mr. Stenson explains how the hoop off will work.

“We have ten minutes for our hoop off,” he says. “That means, be careful not to bump into anybody, and see how long you can hula hoop.”

By the end of ten minutes several kids are still hula hooping, with no sign of letting up. Third grader Florian Wade says he had fun, but he’s exhausted.

“Yeah it was hard,” he says. “My belly hurts.”

Stenson says it’ll be tough to decide who deserves a prize for best hula hooper.

“I think the idea is they all are winners here as a group. They all did a great job. I don’t think we could pick one person.”

It’s no secret that Alaska has one of the highest rates of suicide in the country.

While it strikes some populations more than others, just one suicide often results in another. According to the Centers for Disease Control, youth who are exposed to suicide or suicidal behaviors are more at-risk for attempting suicide.

The Juneau School District is implementing a new program, called Sources of Strength, which helps connect students with trusted adults as well as build multiple sources of support for youth.

Training started last week for middle and high school students, with Executive Director of the program, Mark LoMurray.

“How many of you have had a friend that’s been suicidal?” he asked the teenagers and adults sitting in a big circle on the JDHS auditorium stage. About half the hands went up.

“I’m just going to have you break out into some groups and I want you to put down all the stuff that gives you strength,” LoMurray said, as he handed out poster-sized sheets of white paper to the groups.

Students spent a few minutes brainstorming then compared notes. Many were similar to this list:

“We have friends and family, and traveling and writing; journaling is sometimes helpful. And reading, drawing, eating food, watching TV, exercising.”

The exercise is one of several used this day to start students thinking about factors that could lead to suicide and the strengths they have to guard against it. Life skills, LoMurray said.

Sources of Strength began when he was working on rural North Dakota Indian Reservations, where the suicide rate was high.

“And one of the things we found is we need to have peer leaders involved and we also need to have a strength-focused approach,” he said.

Now Sources of Strength is in schools, universities and communities throughout the U.S. and Canada. It’s been adopted by the Tanana Chiefs Conference and is being used in some Interior Alaska villages.

LoMurray said teens can spread a positive message with their peers in a way adults can’t, whether it’s on Facebook, going into a classroom, or just hanging out.

That’s one of the reasons JDHS principal Ryan Alsup has embraced the program.

“They see things in the hallway that we as adults don’t necessarily see. They also see kids in a social setting and they’re also the first to notice when somebody becomes more withdrawn from their group,” Alsup said. “To me the beauty of the Sources of Strength program is that it’s student centered and not adult centered. We can do a lot of talking at kids, but kids talk amongst themselves.”

The youth and teachers train together. They were selected by school staff and represent a cross-section of the student bodies from Dzantiki Heeni Middle School as well as Juneau-Douglas, Thunder Mountain and Yaakoosge Daakahidi high schools.

JDHS English teacher Tonya Mosher has taught for 16 years. She said it was easy to agree to take part.

“As an adult that kids come to, I’m often trying to get them connected with other people to help, so this just seemed like a natural fit,” Mosher said.

Dressed in a pressed blue shirt, tie and argyle vest, freshman Brian Holst says he wants to help students who need a hand up, “so they know where to go to find those people that want to help them.”

While it’s dress-up day for Holst and his friends, Makelini Mausia looks more comfortable in sweatshirt and jeans. The JDHS freshman has Tongan roots and knows the value of family as a source of strength.

“I’m kind of proud that I was recommended because I do kind of try to help people that are in trouble and I do have some friends that are,” she said.

Ati Nasiah will serve as an adult advisor from Juneau’s AWARE Shelter. She said AWARE will bring in experts on teen dating violence, domestic violence and other issues. The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is also involved.

Nasiah calls Sources of Strength an empowerment program for teens “providing opportunities for youth to know they’re powerful agents of change to really change the school climate.”

JDHS senior Esra Siddeek has just a couple of months left in high school. She knows the program will help equip her for college next year, where life will be even more complicated.

“It’s definitely a huge thing we could do for our community and school,” she said.

It will take about three years to implement the Sources of Strength program in the Juneau School District, with new students trained every year.

Hilary Young will head it up. She works for Juneau Youth Services, which already offers the Signs of Suicide educational curriculum in the high schools.

Young says Sources of Strength doesn’t stop at school; to be successful youth must hear “the same message when they go to soccer practice with (CBJ) Parks and Rec, you know, or when they are playing baseball, or whether they’re at youth group, or culture club, or whatever it is, these messages are getting reinforced across the community.”

Blinking lights and pink umbrellas will be on display Thursday night at the Goldtown Nickelodeon as students in the Juneau School District’s CARES program show off their work.

CARES allows students who have fallen behind on graduation credits to take alternative classes after school.

It often partners with the Juneau Economic Development Council’s STEM education program, short for Science Technology Engineering and Math.

It’s 5 o’ clock on a weekday afternoon, and about a dozen students are spread out at workstations in a large classroom at the Marie Drake building. Some are soldering wires together. Others are using hot glue guns to attach LED lights to their projects. A few more sit at laptop computers writing code that will make the lights blink on and off.

Yaakoosge Daakahidi Alternative High School sophomore Lexi Nelson works with a bright pink umbrella adorned with various shades of electro luminescent wire.

“I’m zip tie-ing my battery pack on the inside of my umbrella, so when I twirl it and stuff it doesn’t fall out,” Nelson says.

Her partner, Alexa Adelmeyer, sews the brightly colored EL wire to her umbrella. They plan to use them in a dance routine as part of the final project presentation.

A junior at Juneau Douglas High School, Adelmeyer admits she used to struggle in class.

“I just wasn’t motivated,” she says. “But this year has been a lot better. I have a 4.0 [GPA].”

Adelmeyer says the CARES program has improved her study habits. The classes are also more hands on and project oriented than regular school.

“Not all in the book and a bunch of homework and a teacher just blabbing at you,” Adelmeyer says.

Students can only get into CARES when they fall behind on their regular coursework. The program acronym stands for Credit Achievement Recovery & Employability Skills. Josh Deutsch is a Student Advocate with the Juneau School District. He’s part instructor, part CARES program recruiter.

“These are students that for one reason or another haven’t succeeded completely in their regular school classes,” Deutsch says. “So we like to give a little extra engagement, a little extra support if they need it in getting re-engaged. That’s our key goal is getting these kids re-engaged in regular school.”

Deutsch says the Juneau Economic Development Council’s STEM education programs are a near perfect fit for CARES’ mission. The students in this class are trying to recover physical science credits needed to graduate. But rather than focus solely on science, Deutsch says they tweaked it slightly.

“We added an ‘A’ in it like some people do. So, it’s STEAM education and that just adds Arts in there,” he says.

Thunder Mountain High School Arts Teacher Heather Ridgway is assisting with the CARES class. She says it’s important for the students to learn about electricity and other physics concepts. But it’s equally important for them to produce something that shows what they learned.

“They get an idea, and then they have to figure out how to make it work,” Ridgway says. “They get to apply what they learn about circuitry to a direct ambition and come out with an end product that they’re proud of.”

Luis Lamas is a junior at JDHS, who’s about a semester behind in science credits for graduation. He says he learned about ohms and resistance and other electrical concepts in previous physics classes. But they didn’t stick until he had to learn them for the CARES project.

“Some of the things I’ve learned in this class, I’ve kind of flashed back that I could have learned in my other physical science class,” says Lamas. “Having to be here the whole time from 4-7:30 p.m. just kind of made me want to pay attention so I wouldn’t have retake any more classes.”

Lamas and his partner are making a backdrop for the final project presentations. It’s a model of a circuit board mounted on a giant piece of cardboard, with LED lights and EL wire that will light up throughout the show.

“It kind of represents what we were doing in this class by using electricity and art to show other people what we do,” he says.

The CARES class project presentations are open to the public Thursday from 5 to 6:15 at the Goldtown Nickelodeon.

Sixty historical world figures recently visited Auke Bay Elementary School to tell their stories. From Cleopatra to Barack Obama, they were brought to life by fifth grade students, in what’s called the Auke Bay Wax Museum. The favorite activity has been going for about a decade.

Press an imaginary button on a shoulder and a motionless figure comes to life.

“Hi, I’m Jackie Robinson, I was the first black major league baseball player…”

Auke Bay fifth grade students spend nearly a month researching the person of their choice who has made a positive impact on the world. They read books, surf the Internet, put together a bibliography, and write a script about their character. They must come up with a costume and other props, and deliver their story during the annual living museum.

Teacher JoAnn Jones says her students get passionate about their characters.

“They learn how to research, the writing aspect is huge and they really get to know somebody” beyond their accomplishments, Jones says.

Take Neil Armstrong, for example; the first person on the moon.

“I played the Baritone horn. I went to Gates Elementary School, but even before that I became interested in planes at the age of two,” says 11-year Ryan Marx, who plays Armstrong.

The famous astronaut is credited for the phrase: “… one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” But from his research, Ryan especially liked this line:

“After I landed on the moon, it suddenly struck me that the tiny pea, tiny and blue, was the earth. I stuck out my thumb and closed one eye and my thumb blotted out the earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

Some of the students had a personal relationship with their character. Ten-year-old Emma Douglas played Susanna Hutchinson, who in 1643 survived an Indian attack in the area that is now the New York Bronx. Hutchinson was taken captive, raised by the Indians, then traded to the English.

“She’s my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandma,” Douglas says.

Most of the students have memorized their story and though there may be a few stumbles, they learn to keep their cool. Teacher Jones says the activity is accessible to all students.

“For some kids that have struggled in school, they do this,” Jones says. “I had a student once that didn’t have a lot of language and her speech therapist recorded her word by word and put it on a tape and it just brought tears to your eyes. It does me thinking right now about her. And you just go,‘Oh my gosh, look what she’s able to do.’”

Kamron Falls was Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. In a top hat and black beard, he easily delivered Lincoln’s story. His dad, John Falls, said Kamron worked on the project for at least three weeks. He was especially proud of his son’s memorization. Falls calls the wax museum activity “outstanding. I think it’s a good thing for kids. They learn an awful lot and they take time.”

Kamron says he chose President Lincoln because “He freed the slaves.” He recalls one of Lincoln’s most famous quotes:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside, but if we falter and lose or freedom it will be because we have destroyed ourselves.”

Once a year, the Auke Bay Elementary School hallways become a living museum worth visiting. As teacher Jones puts it:

“You just can’t believe they are only fifth graders that have done this.”