FOUR LIKE-MINDED TEACHERS GIVE THEIR ALL TO CREATE A SCHOOL FROM SCRATCH

FAIRBANKS, Alaska— Sunlight is sparse here in December, when darkness holds the stars for 20 hours before daybreak whispers across the horizon like a secret.

The previous day's bone-crackling 34-below temperature has yielded to a warming trend; the mercury nears zero and snow has begun falling. By midafternoon, two inches of fresh powder dust the landscape, a silvery mural of meadows and snow-sagged fir trees.

Inside the Chinook Charter School, children learn in a casual but focused environment created by four teachers who are living a dream. "I remember all of us years ago saying how incredible it would be if we all taught in the same school," says Janelle McCrackin, one of the founders of the Chinook Charter School. "Now we do, and it's been great."

But the road to creating the first charter school in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District has been filled with speed bumps, potholes, and soft shoulders. At times, notes Terri Austin, another of the school's founders, the exit signs looked awfully appealing. Fortunately, Austin adds, when the process wore her down, McCrackin would pick her up, brush her off, and get her back on track. The support was mutual among those working to begin a charter school in less than 12 months.

"It took a lot of work," Austin says. "It took a year of our lives to get this together. We were working 14 to 18 hours a day for a year."

"It was the toughest thing I've ever done," adds McCrackin, who has two young children at home. "It was so incredibly difficult."

cCrackin, Austin, and fellow Chinook teachers Annemarie Keep-Barnes and Barbara Smith were all full-time teachers while they were struggling to lay the foundation for the Chinook School. They had to write a charter, organize a nonprofit board of directors, find a school site that met building codes, bring prospective parents and students into their community, address concerns of the Fairbanks Education Association, and address state and district guidelines.

It was also costly, with McCrackin and Austin spending thousands of dollars of their own money to get the school going. The bulk of the money was spent on building inspections and architectural and legal fees, but printing, research, professional development, and other costs also mounted.

"We went through at least five potential sites—including a meat-packing plant—before landing where we are," Austin says. Each site had to be inspected to ensure that it met plumbing, electrical, structural, and other codes. All those costs had to be paid up front by the founders of the charter school. "We had to have an approved site before we could submit a charter," Austin says. "And we had to bear the costs of finding an approved site."

The search for a site continues. Chinook Charter School is tucked into a wing of the Tanana Satellite School on the Fort Wainwright Army installation in Fairbanks. But a bulge in student enrollment at the Tanana School next year could push Chinook out of the building. Austin, McCrackin, and Keep-Barnes have purchased land for a school, but constructing a new building is somewhere in the distant future.

The process of starting a charter school has been exhausting, exciting, educational, and, in the end, rewarding. "We were extremely naïve when we started," says Austin. "We didn't know how to write a charter, how to approach the school board, how to deal with building inspectors. We had to learn so much so fast. But now we have our own school."

McCrackin adds that while the process was tough, it also helped her and her colleagues focus on what they wanted for their school. "I wouldn't change a thing about the process we went through," she says. "It was a chance to turn the dream into reality."

And that process—actually creating a charter school—is a blur of memories for the teachers at Chinook. There were late-night meetings. Frequent philosophical discussions. Legal considerations. Community-building. Charter-writing marathons. Meetings with school board members, district administrators, union officials, state department representatives, legislators, and others.

In the summer of 1996, the four Chinook teachers also attended an education conference in East Sussex, England, then traveled in a van for three weeks together. "That was a turning point for all of us," Austin says. "We were able to spend three weeks together traveling and talking about our school."

Chinook teacher Barbara Smith agrees. "That was extremely significant," she says. "Four teachers spent four weeks together in England talking about their school. We knew that we already shared common philosophies about teaching and learning, so this allowed us to explore in detail how our visions would work on a day-to-day basis."

Ongoing communication and sharing a philosophical base has been part of the foundation for the Chinook Charter School, which serves 75 children in grades K-8 and has another 130 families on a waiting list. Students are selected by lottery, and there is a provision that allows siblings to attend. "We don't want to get bigger," Austin says. "We wouldn't be able to provide the individual attention to students and families if we had 120 or 130 students."

While the school was still in its formative stages, the founders used an apartment as a base for their work. Each Saturday for six weeks, the apartment served as a gathering place for prospective parents and founders of the school. About 20 parents participated in a series of topical discussions that helped them to understand, contribute to, and help shape Chinook. Participants read about and discussed issues such as multiage classrooms, teachers as change agents, cooperative learning, and ways to empower students. A second round of discussions drew an additional 35 families to the 8 a.m. Saturday meetings.

"The purpose," says Austin, "was to share our philosophy of Chinook and to hear the parents' ideas and expectations. It was a learning experience for everyone involved."

That type of communication and attention to detail has continued among teachers, parents, and students at Chinook. For example, each week, students write an open-topic letter home to their parents or other family members. Each teacher at Chinook also writes to each student's family weekly, and the families respond to the letters of students and teachers. The letters can be about how children are doing in school—what they're learning, how they're progressing, where they need additional attention—but they are not limited to school topics.

The letters are one piece of the family involvement component that Chinook founders feel is critical to the success of their school. Other evidence of the importance of family involvement is visible throughout the school, where photos of students and their families decorate bulletin boards in the hallways. In addition, two display cases in the school's common area prominently feature a different family each week. The family arranges an exhibit that tells something about themselves: where the parents work, what they do for entertainment, how they play together. Family artwork and other memorabilia are included, too. Families also sign up to provide daily snacks in the classrooms. And another bulletin board provides space for family members to sign up for short- or long-term volunteering, to thank a teacher or student, or for teachers and students to thank families or each other.

"Family involvement is very important," notes Smith. "But what's extremely important is that we all be talking together. We talk with kids. We talk with parents. We talk with each other."

That openness also helped Chinook founders in their efforts to establish their school. They worked cooperatively with district administrators and with the Fairbanks Education Association (FEA), the union that represents the more than 1,000 certified staff in the district. Bill Bjork, president of the association, says the relationship with Chinook teachers has been excellent. "These are four master teachers who have put together a charter proposal that is the blueprint for charter schools across Alaska," he says. "We worked very amicably with them to identify areas of our contract that presented concerns."

One of the primary concerns was that of hiring teachers as openings occur at Chinook. The FEA waived a provision of its contract with the district that requires that schools hire from within the district before opening the process to new candidates. At Chinook, openings are posted districtwide, but the school is permitted to hire from outside if it does not find the right candidate from within the district. "At Chinook, they want somebody who is going to fit into the philosophy of their school," Bjork says. "You have to understand, this is a charter that we really want to see work."

hinook is built on a foundation that respects children as learners and demands that all who participate be a part of their learning community. And the school's four teachers—Austin, McCrackin, Smith, and Keep-Barnes—are conscientious practitioners who draw from research, professional experiences, group discussions, and their intuitions about effective teaching and learning. "We discuss minute details of philosophy," McCrackin says. "Nothing is done by rote. Everything we do relates to a vision for our school. We even discuss recess and how it fits in with our philosophy."

A photo that appeared in a Fairbanks newspaper when Chinook was about to open exemplifies the school's nontraditional approach. The photo showed teacher Keep-Barnes standing in a sea of individual student desks stacked floor to ceiling. "The irony," she notes, "is that we don't use desks here. So they all had to be moved out."

Chinook Charter School stretches the traditional concept of public schooling, then reaches beyond even the nontraditional to create a unique approach to learning in kindergarten through eighth grade. There are no textbooks at Chinook, and students take only those standardized tests that are required by the state. Instead, students learn through literature-based activities, hands-on exploration, group and individual projects, and reading and writing activities. Assessment is ongoing and involves portfolios, individual work reviews between teachers and students, teacher anecdotal records, student performances, oral presentations, written exams, and art projects.

Students are divided into three "family groups"—novice (K-2), apprentice (3-5), and pioneer (6-8). Children work on literacy and math lessons in the morning, then shift to learning labs in science, social studies, arts, and math in the afternoon. Multiage groupings in the learning labs unite children from all age levels.

After school, parent-led classes permit students to explore lessons in Russian, field biology, cross-country running, arts and crafts, and other areas. "At Chinook, we are concerned with the total development of the child," the school's founders note in a written statement. "We believe that academic growth is positively influenced by a warm, caring, and nurturing environment. We are committed to individualized education which provides varying degrees of challenge."

Students are aware of the special place they hold in their school. The day often begins with teacher Annie Keep-Barnes strumming her guitar while children raise their voices in song. "What I really like about this school," says fifth-grader Vivian Taves, "is that we learn in fun ways. And another thing: You get to choose what you want to learn. I do the work that I feel I'm ready for, and so does everybody else. Some kids in my group are doing pre-algebra, but I feel like I need more work on fractions. So that's what I'm doing. I'll move on when I feel ready."

There are things that some students miss at Chinook that were available to them at other schools they attended. Ten-year-old Eden Koko says she misses physical education class and participating in orchestra. "But I also know that if I was going to my old school, I wouldn't get the things that I'm getting here," she says while answering phones in the office one day. "I'm able to learn at my own pace and to be responsible for my own learning. If I don't understand something, I can spend more time on it, and I like that. The teachers give us a lot of freedom, but they still make sure we're doing things and that we're learning."

Students, note teachers at Chinook, are capable of setting their own timetable for learning. "We're not measuring the kids against each other or some external criteria," says Keep-Barnes. "It's OK for them to go ahead with their learning when they feel they're ready, and it's OK for them to continue learning where they are."

Austin says that traditional schools too often are governed by clocks and strict timetables that push children to new lessons before they have mastered the materials in front of them. "Right now," Austin says, "we've got a student who is developmentally younger than the others. I'm not worried about that. We've got time. These are my kids, and I'm going to see them year after year. I am committed to them and to their families."

The Chinook Charter School has given four teachers a rare opportunity: to practice their profession in the ways that they believe are most beneficial to children. "There is a tremendous sense of strength and stability that comes from sharing a common philosophy," McCrackin says. And while it is not unheard of for individual teachers to share a common philosophy in a traditional school, it is uncommon for them to be able to put together those views in a schoolwide approach to learning.

"In a traditional school," says Smith, "you might find two or three teachers out of 30 who truly share a philosophy. But it's really impossible for them to get together because of time constraints, class schedules, grade structures, or a lack of administrative support. Here, we all share our philosophy and have been involved in establishing a vision."

Austin sees charter schools as a way of empowering teachers and communities. "The idea behind a charter school," she says, "is that your community comes together to define a need. The idea of having a choice of where to send your child to school, I think, is very important. Some school districts are very good at providing choices. Some are not.

"But if a school district wants to truly invigorate its teachers, then it should offer them a school of their own," Austin says. "This experience has taught me that nothing is impossible, that when things get most difficult, you can set your jaw and keep on going."

—TONY KNEIDEK

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