Alaska stint was an education for teacher

By KRISTI ALBERTSON/Daily Inter Lake

To a young woman armed with a degree in education and a lust for adventure, teaching in the Alaskan bush seemed like the perfect job.

Alison Disque envisioned weekdays spent in a classroom with eager young learners and weekends exploring the Alaskan wilderness. After working the last several summers in Glacier National Park, she was thrilled with the opportunity to explore new terrain and conquer new peaks.

Instead, Disque found an Eskimo village full of plywood houses swaying slightly on stilts above the permafrost, not a peak or tree in sight. Her fifth-grade classroom was full of students who mistrusted and refused to listen to their teacher. She was a minority and an outsider in a community determined to resist outside influences.

So after three weeks, Disque packed up and returned to Montana.

Now, more than 10 years after her brief stint in Alaska, Disque has written a book about her experience there. She published The Real People under the pen name A.D. Winslow her middle name this fall.

Disque, who teaches first grade at Fair-Mont-Egan, said she wrote the book to let other teachers know what they might be getting into.

She had no such guide when she went to Alaska in 1997. She was 24, fresh out of college and looking for adventure and a steady paycheck.

Disque had grown up in Connecticut and attended college in Michigan, but she had fallen in love with Northwest Montana and hoped to find a teaching position there. There was nothing available, however, so Disque, desperate for employment, took a friends advice and called the Alaska Board of Education.

They said, Yeah, come on up. When can you get here? Disque said.

Although grateful for a job, she remembers the interview as unusual. After a few minutes discussing Disques education background, the Board of Education interviewer abruptly switched his line of inquiry.

It wasnt my education philosophy. It was, Have you lived without plumbing? she said.

After two summers as a boat captain on Lake McDonald, Disque wasnt afraid of life without a toilet. She also had lived through a grizzly encounter in the park, which made her think she was tough enough to get through at least one school year in the Alaskan bush.

The more she thought about the job, the more excited she became.

She always had wanted to see Denali National Park and maybe visit Kodiak Island. She also would be making about $10,000 more a year than she would in Montana.

It seemed like an ideal situation, so Disque accepted a job teaching fifth grade in a small Eskimo village on the Bering Sea.

The school, which housed students in kindergarten through 12th grade, looked like any other Lower 48 school, Disque said, but it didnt fit among the stilted plywood buildings in the rest of the village.

It looked very out of place there, like a big barge among little fishing boats, she said. The Yupiks [native people]) didnt like it.

The people resisted outside influences, Disque said. They wanted their children to learn to speak and write their native language. Certain subjects, such as science, were taboo.

From the first, Disques students were suspicious of their new teacher, a Gusuk, or outsider. Their parents and other villagers did not want Disque teaching their children, although they were friendly and hospitable outside school.

Disque was invited to take evening steam baths with the women in the village.

One family went out of its way to welcome her into their home and cook her meals.

They introduced her to duck stew, complete with heads and feathers, and the Crisco-sugar-and-berries concoction known to Gusuks as Eskimo ice cream.

But even that family wasnt entirely supportive of Disque as a teacher.

Their attitude was, Well make you one of us, but dont even think about trying to get your ways here, Disque said.

Some teachers at the school were encouraging including the Yupik teacher in the classroom next door.

Youre managing them. Thats half the battle, he would tell her.

But Disque hadnt planned on managing students. She wanted to teach, and she was afraid shed never be able to in that environment. Happily, a Yupik woman was nearly finished with her training and could take over the classroom right away.

So Disque packed her bags, bid goodbye to the villagers who had befriended her outside the classroom and headed home to Montana.

The money she made in Alaska covered her rent there and her plane ticket home.

Disque started writing her book shortly after her return but ended up putting it away for about a decade. She pulled it out again last winter and spent many nights curled up in her house with her wood stove and a computer.

After writing, rewriting and rewriting again, I finally got to the point where it didnt make me cringe, Disque said.

She sent her manuscript and $500 to iUniverse, an Indiana-based self-publishing company. In September, her book arrived in the mail.

I was excited. I was rocking it like a little baby, Disque said.

Now with a finished book and 10 years between her and her experience with the Yupiks, Disque has gained a little more perspective than she had as a new teacher. She appreciates her brief time in Alaska, which she says helped her figure out her place in the world as a student.

Even though they rejected me as a teacher, they accepted me as a student, she said.

The Real People is available at Amazon.com and locally at Borders.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com