Characteristics of Successful Boarding Home Parents of Eskimo and Athabascan Indian Students

The State of Alask

Sources of Parental Ambivalence Toward Education in an Aleut Community

The State of Alask

Intellectual Strength in Culturally Different Groups: An Eskimo Illustration

The State of Alask

Achievement Profiles of Native Ninth Graders

The secondary schools of many Alaskan communities are enrolling large numbers of rural Native students through the Boarding Home Program. Village teachers often have not sent student records that would provide a basis for placing students in appropriate academic programs. In the absence of past achievement records, secondary school personnel often rural Native students to lower achievement level classes because has shown them that these students generally need supplementary instruction. An analysis of the achievement test profile of ninth grade Native Boarding Home Program students entering the Fairbanks area schools suggests the dangers of this academic placement method.1 Rural Native students appear to vary widely in their achievement levels, and many are capable of more advanced academic work. Academic placement for rural Native students in the secondary schools should be based on the particular strengths and weaknesses of individuals rather than on group generalizations. The current general placement practice is especially likely to retard the academic progress of the group of rural Native students that the schools should carefully nurture-the academically talented. In many cases, these students are too shy to aggressively demonstrate their competence, and the placement error may not be discovered. Moreover, the teacher's mistakenly low expectations about the student's ability may depress his level of performance. Achievement testing with culturally different children has many well-known weaknesses, and these weaknesses have led to justifiable suspicions about their use. However, it is far more serious not to test and to assume that rural Native students fall into the lowest category.The State of Alask

Cognitive Strengths of Eskimos and Implications for Education

The State of Alask

Some Instructional Strategies for the Cross-Cultural Classroom

Based on questionnaire data, 64% (114 respondents) return from all teachers in small village schools operated by the State of Alaska and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, This paper describes instructional strategies for new teachers entering the Alaskan cross-cultural community classroom. The paper also suggests how the instructional methods harmonize with village students' learning styles in regard to (1) personalism (experiment with ways to harmonize personal teaching style with students* learning styles) (2) competitiveness (devise teaching methods to cope with passive students), (3) joking (use this native method of correction in a two-sided manner), (4) project-reward work rhythm (assign concentrated work followed by material rewards and relaxation), (5) observational learning (use image-based instruction), (6) village-based anchoring ideas (relate instructional material to students' village experiences), and (7) parental involvement (inform parents as to the school's why's and how's). The appendix shows a copy of the questionnaire sent at the end of the 1969-70 school year. (MJBThe State of Alask

Effective Teachers of Indian and Eskimo High School Students

The focus of this study is upon analyzing effective and ineffective teachers in terms of their behavior in the classroom, not in terms of their personalities or attitudes. It is suggested that 2 fundamental characteristics distinguish effective from ineffective teachers of American Indian and Eskimo students: (1) a high level of personal warmth, especially warmth communicated nonverbally through facial expression, body distance, and touch; and (2) a high level of active demandingness in the classroom--demandingness expressed as an aspect of the teacher's personal concern for the student, rather than a concern for subject matter. This study also suggests the need for pre-service and in-service training for teachers to acquire the type of interpersonal behavior that facilitates learning among the Indian and Eskimo students. Teachers of Indian and Eskimo students were observed in 2 boarding schools and in 5 integrated urban high schools during the 1970-71 school year. The focus was on teachers of 9th grade Indian and Eskimo students. The teachers were videotaped to permit a more intensive analysis and interviewed to discuss problems of village students and effective teaching methods. The "Supportive Gadflies," who exhibited personal warmth and active demandingness, appeared to be successful with the Indian and Eskimo students as compared to the other types of teachers (traditionalists, sophisticates, and sentimentalists). (FFthe state of Alask

Alaska's Urban Boarding Home Program

In Alaska's Boarding Home Program, rural students from small villages without high schools attend secondary school by living with a boarding home family. Most rural students in this program are Eskimo or Athabascan Indian, and the majority are placed with white families in urban areas. This study attempts to describe the subtle interpersonal tensions that develop in the boarding home parent-student relationship. It also attempts to identify the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful boarding home parents and ways of matching parents to students in a manner that maximizes mutual satisfaction. The focus on the characteristics of boarding home parents who develop satisfactory relationships with students, rather than a focus on the characteristics of rural students who successfully adjust to the urban environment, was chosen because it seemed likely to be most useful to the program staff. Since the program accepts almost all applicants and other options are unavailable, little selection of students can occur. Selection of parents, however, is a major and routine program activity. It should be underscored, however, that rural students differ widely in their capacity to adjust to an urban boarding home, and some students have severe psychological problems that probably would prevent them from adapting to any urban home. The method of obtaining information consisted primarily of interviewing boarding home parents and students. A detailed description of the methodology may be found in Appendix II.The State of Alask

Instructional Style and the Intellectual Performance of Indian and Eskimo Students

Three 1970-71 studies concerning the styles of instruction that lead to higher intellectual performance among village American Indian and Eskimo high school students are presented in this final report of observations of teachers and students in several Native boarding schools and/or integrated urban high schools in Alaska. The first study, an ethnography, describes the problems of these students and their teachers, and suggests a typology differentiating effective and ineffective teachers. This ethnography suggests that the teachers degree of personal warmth versus professional distance, and degree of active demandingness versus passive understanding, are fundamental dimensions separating successful from unsuccessful teachers. The second study, empirically j a major hypothesis derived from the ethnography, found that socioemotional climate of the integrated classroom is significantly related to the verbal participation of the village students, who are typically silent and withdrawn. The third study found that teacher warmth, communicated through nonverbal channels, leads to higher intellectual performance among village Indians and Eskimo students. Suggestions are made for implementing the secondary school instruction of Indian and Eskimo students through teacher selection methods and training programs which take into account the importance of personal -4armth and active demandingness in cross-cultural teaching success. A bibliography and copies of the Teacher and student questionnaires used in the studies are includedThe State of Alask