Kodiak Youth and Adults at an ICE Workshop

The Future is Bright for Kodiak's Youth

One of the Many Colorful Booths at the Kodiak Assets Festival

Even Kodiak's Youngest Children are a Part of the Action!

Let us SMILE when we greet children--they're our most important gift.
Give them joy, and lots of laughter
Help them see life’s possibilities.
They deserve "happy ever-afters"
Living life successfully.

*From Kodiak Song by Peri Pinto, adapted for the 2004 Assets Festival with the help of her 2003/2004 Main Elementary sixth grade class.

As Main Elementary teacher Peri Pinto can tell you, the support for children celebrated in these lyrics is not uncommon on Kodiak island. With the help of her sixth grade class, she adapted her Kodiak Song to reflect the spirit of their island home and the hopes its communities hold for their young people.

Peri’s class performed Kodiak Song at the 2004 annual island-wide Assets Festival where they were one of many student performance groups from across the island that joined adults in promoting healthy activities and services available for young people. The festival has become a widely attended event and is an important element of the community engagement plan being developed by the Kodiak Island Borough School District (KIBSD), with help from the Association of Alaska School Boards (AASB) and its Alaska Initiative for Community Engagement (Alaska ICE), as part of AASB's Quality Schools / Quality Students (QS2) service.

QS2 assists school districts in developing, implementing, and sustaining system-wide strategies for improving schools and raising students’ achievement levels to meet or exceed state standards. With support from AASB, schools are working with their personnel and communities to assess, refine, and apply successful practices in the areas of: leadership; programs and staff; community, parents, and students; and resources. With focused teamwork and commitment, districts hope to build stronger, healthier schools in which students are actively engaged, and their communities are committed to building assets with young people.

Now in its third year of the project, KIBSD has made strides towards achieving its QS2 aims of high student achievement, ensuring a high-performing workforce and work environment, and ensuring efficient and effective communication. To help achieve these objectives, the district has adopted a variety of measures and embraced a growth model in which students’ strengths and academic levels are developed individually.

Through the KIBSD growth model, students work with school personnel to set short-term academic goals. They are supported in pursuing those goals through continual progress monitoring, and celebration of their accomplishments along the way. Bill Watkins, KIBSD Director of Instruction and the QS2 coordinator notes, “In schools that have truly put a lot of effort into adopting the growth model…those kids have made terrific progress.”

The district’s strength-based perspective has promoted a welcoming climate in KIBSD, and has helped increase parent involvement. In conferences, teachers now focus on sharing students’ strengths and successes with parents, rather than concentrating on weaknesses. They commend parents for successful practices at home, and offer ideas to encourage student successes.

Parents are responding enthusiastically and the successes are building. Sylvia Furman, KIBSD Community Engagement Coordinator and mother of four, observes that the district’s efforts “help create a positive environment for (parents) to become involved in their students’ lives.”

For the development of healthy young people, parent participation goes hand-in-hand with a community’s support for its children. Alaska ICE helps facilitate the community engagement component for each QS2 district by providing training and working closely with citizens and district personnel to develop sustainable, community-specific strategies. Those strategies are based upon existing efforts and the strengths identified through QS2 assessments.

Bill and Sylvia partner to facilitate Kodiak’s QS2 community engagement strategy with the support of AASB/Alaska ICE staff members. One of the primary tools used in this strategy is to give Training of Promoters and Storytellers (TOPS) workshops around the island to bring community members, youths, and school personnel together to learn about building supportive, healthy relationships with young people, and with each other. Each two-day TOPS workshop highlights the importance of the assets framework in children’s lives, which provides a map for building relationships, as well as a strong body of research supporting the importance of strength-based interaction. Participants learn to identify asset building endeavors already in place in their communities, and discuss ways to network support for such efforts and build upon them.

Marcella Amodo and her mother, Linda attended a TOPS workshop in Kodiak and were pleased to learn that their village of Akhiok was already aligned with the assets framework. Linda, a teacher’s aide and president of the Akhiok Tribal Council recalls, “We were aware of what it takes to have a healthy community, to have healthy families…we just never called it assets before!”

Over 10 years ago, Akhiok citizens embraced a wellness focus that has strengthened their village and helped provide healthy foundations for their young people. Those bonds are renewed through a variety of village-wide activities, including youth/adult collaboration to build a teen center; an inter-generational cultural performance group, Kasukuak (Akhiok in Alutiiq) Dancers; and Annual Alutiiq Week during which the community’s culture, language, and traditions are taught and celebrated with guidance from Elders.

Monthly potlucks at the school also join Akhiok citizens together, and have become forums for announcements and for recognizing the contributions and accomplishments of fellow community members of all ages. Linda and Marcella shared their TOPS experience at one such potluck. There they led their community through team-building activities learned at the workshop, and reinforced the asset building efforts the community had been nurturing for years.

Clearly Kodiak has been building, as Bill Watkins puts it, “assets by accident” for years. The annual Assets Festival is a showcase for some of those efforts. After returning from an assets workshop at the Search Institute in Minnesota, public health nurse Ann Ellingson and her colleague Mindy Pruitt of Kodiak Island Housing Authority were inspired to “bring assets back into the community,” recalls Ann. Bill Watkins of KIBSD had the same idea and the three joined forces to create Kodiak’s first annual Assets Festival to celebrate and spread the word about the many positive, strength-based efforts already occurring throughout their community. The event was a success and attracted nearly 300 students and adults.

Sylvia Furman now coordinates the festival which, in 2004 —only its second year of existence— grew to become an island-wide event, drawing over 500 community members of all ages. To help orchestrate festival logistics and information, Sylvia enlisted the help of the youth assets club, a group of elementary, middle, and high school students committed to building assets. “They had a lot of input, a lot of great ideas…to make it a big success,” said Sylvia.

Perennially scheduled for the last Friday of April, the public event shares information about assets and celebrates organizations and businesses that support young people through services and activities. Last year over 50 organizations were represented by information booths at the 2004 event, including Native Youth Olympics, the Alutiiq Museum, a soap box derby group, and Kodiak’s Head Start, youth services center, police DARE program, housing authority, public health center, public library, teen court, and Arts Council.

Every island school is invited to participate in the festival and is represented by either an information booth or group performance. Fifteen performance groups were slated for the 2004 event, including Akhiok’s Kasukuak Dancers, Kodiak Russian Balalaika Players accompanied by Main Elementary third grade student dancers, Ouzinkie Alutiiq Dancers, gymnastics and fencing demonstrations, North Stars Jump Rope Team, and Peri Pinto’s sixth grade class, who gave a PowerPoint presentation celebrating Kodiak asset-builders and performed the Kodiak Song. “The positive flow of energy in that room was contagious!” recalled Sylvia Furman. Her son, Chris, a sophomore and assets club member, shared his mother’s enthusiasm, and after the festival told her, “This was probably the most fun I’ve had all year!”

As KIBSD continues its QS2 journey, AASB and Alaska ICE will continue to walk alongside the district and foster its community engagement efforts. The youth of Kodiak are eager to move forward - Akhiok’s teens have nearly completed their youth center, and Kodiak’s assets youth club have plans for a sidewalk mural highlighting each of the 40 assets that will greet Main Elementary students each day as they enter the building. Chris sums up the motivation of he and his peers saying, “It’s important to show the community about assets and what’s available to them… It’s good to recognize the assets for what they do.”