Alternative Schools | NW Education

WASILLA, Alaska—Dawn comes slowly here in late winter. Fingers of light stretch across a gray sky that holds the promise of turning blue. A school bus rolls to a stop, snow crunching under its tires, and a group of teenagers steps off the bus in a collage of denim, plaid flannel, baseball caps, backpacks, and headphones. Two toddlers link hands with their moms and follow the others through the glass doors into Mat-Su Alternative School.

Inside the heart of the school, a packed, multipurpose room pulses with activity. At small round tables students hunch over textbooks with notebooks open and pencils in hand. A steady rhythm of fingers punching keyboards comes from the computer lab along one wall. Roving students mingle with friends or help themselves to breakfast. From his desk by the front door principal Peter Burchell takes it all in, mentally noting who is absent and what he needs to take care of today, while bantering with students and answering the phone.

When a boy hands him a slip of paper, Burchell looks at it and booms, "Kevin Whitney. Thank you, Jesus! U.S. History, grade B." The room breaks into applause and cheers as Kevin takes back his credit slip with a grin. Each time a student earns half a credit or completes a course, Burchell performs what he calls a "ta-dah" before the entire school. Every achievement at Mat-Su, no matter how small, is recognized.

All of the students at this alternative school 45 miles north of Anchorage have failed in—or feel failed by—mainstream schools. Mat-Su accepts students between the ages of 15 and 21 who have dropped out of school, are behind in credits for their age, and are committed to earning a high school diploma and acquiring work skills. Students find in the school the direction and resources they need to get back on the education track. In the process, they discover how to become successful, contributing members of society.

Burchell—Mr. B. to everyone at the school—is principal, boss, teacher, caseworker, and friend to his students. He relishes every role. "The number one criterion for school policy is what's going to help kids the most," Burchell says. He uses the analogy of a three-legged stool, the strongest piece of furniture you can build, to explain his definition of success. Academic skills, social skills, and vocational skills are the three legs. Kids need a balance of all three to develop a strong, stable foundation for the future.

For most of Burchell's students, social skills are the weakest leg, the reason they have failed in traditional schools. Of the 175 students at Mat-Su, almost a third don't live with their parents, a quarter are parents themselves, and nearly as many have spent time in juvenile detention or jail. Many students have been abused, addicted to drugs or alcohol, or homeless.

In educating these kids, the school has to first remove the barriers that keep them from getting an education. Mat-Su helps students overcome their challenging backgrounds by offering diverse programs, including an onsite day care center, food and clothing banks, an Alcoholics Anonymous program, and a full-time work-study coordinator. Perhaps most important, the school gives them a place where they belong.

A Place of Their Own

Beside Burchell's desk, a boy rifles through a box of snacks that sell for a quarter, and finally decides on some potato chips. When a lone coin drops into the box with a plink, Burchell looks up from his work and questions, "A dime, Todd?" Todd, who is fishing in his jeans pocket for the rest of the change, protests, "I don't want to rip you off, Mr. B. I'd just be ripping off myself."

The kids at Mat-Su have developed a sense of ownership in the school and their pride is evident. No graffiti decorates the bathroom walls or covers the tabletops. No cans or cigarette butts litter the parking lot. The school has had only five fights in 10 years, which is remarkable considering the behavior problems many kids have when they first walk through the doors.

"I won't tolerate graffiti or stealing," says student Steven Humphreys. "All the other schools, I didn't care. I would have burned them down myself. But this one, I won't let anybody (mess) with this one." Steven started using drugs when he was 11 and was in juvenile detention six times before he was 16. Three years ago Steven decided to get sober, and he credits the school for helping him work through his addictions. "If I told them to go away, they wouldn't," he says. "When you screw up, they don't get on your case. They tell you what you did wrong and how to fix it."

The teachers at Mat-Su have changed Steven's approach to schoolwork because, for the first time, he was expected to succeed. "I disrespected the teachers at first," Steven says. "But the more I screwed up, the harder they tried. I never expected it in a million years. I expected to be kicked out in a few months."

Earning the trust of a student like Steven can take time, and teachers here have learned to balance optimism and realism with persistence. The school is open 12 months a year, 14½ hours a day. Lydia Wirkus, who teaches English, writing, and government, says: "I think most of the kids come here not trusting, not believing in themselves, and with few appropriate social skills. They are usually way behind in academics. All we can do is meet them where they are and accept them for who they are—look past the weird hair and clothes, look past the anger. They may not have a clue how to change, but we give them ideas and let them do it."

The school's informal environment allows Wirkus and the rest of the staff to relate to students in ways that would be difficult in a larger school. Classes at Mat-Su are small, never more than 15 students, because these kids demand individual attention. Here, they receive it. Faculty "offices" are desks in the main room where the students spend much of the day, and teachers take breaks and eat lunch with the students. Kids call teachers by their first names and often sit with them at their desks, where they catch up on their classes and their lives. The atmosphere is deliberate and designed to make students feel comfortable approaching teachers. Sometimes this is half the battle, because if a student doesn't feel comfortable approaching a teacher, chances are good that student will be too intimidated to ask for help.

The close quarters allow students to keep an eye on teachers in the same way teachers check on students. Many of these kids have never had positive relationships with adults and lack adult role models, so watching the teachers do their jobs, interact, and handle stress in constructive ways is often as crucial to the students' education as anything the curriculum provides. At Mat-Su, nobody cares whether a student is a sophomore or a senior —it's all about credits and individual progress toward graduation. "The growth I see in them is the growth they choose to make," Wirkus says. "We can facilitate that growth, but we are in no way responsible for it."

Growing with the Students

The school has come a long way from its humble beginnings with a single $35,000 grant and five students in a neglected portable classroom behind Wasilla High School. Two and a half years ago Mat-Su moved to its present location in a former Chevrolet dealership, a 20,000-square-foot building on seven acres. In its 10-year history, Mat-Su has received more than $6 million in grants and gifts. The majority of the school's funding now comes from the Mat-Su Borough School District, but that wasn't always the case.

Every room of the school bulges with evidence of Burchell's creative fund-raising techniques. The initial furniture and toys in the day care center were made by prisoners and donated to the school. Computers, furniture, and soda machines came from a closing military school. Grow lamps and shelves in the greenhouse are compliments of the police department. Seized from marijuana growers in a drug bust, the equipment now helps lobelia seedlings survive the long Alaska winter.

"I have kneepads on underneath my pants. I have no pride left," Burchell jokes. "Most people don't tell you 'no' more than once when they know you are right."

Science teacher Tim Lundt has learned from Burchell what grants bring to the classroom. His students have been tracking ruffed-spruce grouse, a popular sport- hunting bird in the valley, in a project with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that is funded by grants Lundt wrote. Every Friday three students traipse through bear country, supervised by Lundt, in search of the grouse. The students humanely capture the birds with snare poles and equip them with a nickel-sized radio collar. The class then tracks the grouse and looks for patterns. In Lundt's classes, traditional science skills are taught through unconventional projects that challenge students and hold their interest. A road-kill moose sparked another project—and stocked the food bank—when students butchered the moose and canned the meat. Now Lundt's biology class is reconstructing the skeleton.

"The kids enjoy what we are doing," Lundt says. "A student once said, 'This is what I wanted —not book work, but hands-on stuff.' I try to come up with projects that keep kids involved. To show them that they can go to college and do science."

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Learning to Believe

One of the first lessons kids at Mat-Su learn is to believe in themselves. They have all heard the put-downs and know that some people think their school is a place for losers. Some kids have even believed it themselves. These students may come to Mat-Su confident only in their ability to fail, but they walk down the aisle at graduation certain of their ability to succeed. "It's okay not to be the best at everything. Just focus on what you are good at," Burchell tells his students. "Most of all please yourself. Succeed according to your own definition of success, not anyone else's." More than 300 students have graduated from Mat-Su, and 75 have gone on to college. If college isn't a goal, then the school prepares students for jobs that pay more than minimum wage.

"Kids need to learn how to learn, set goals, and develop real skills. We want to teach kids how to be dependent on themselves, not to depend on other people or on handouts," Burchell says.

Student Carolynn Laliberte has learned to depend on herself in her three years at Mat-Su. "In normal high school I learned nothing. All I remember are two words: facetious and enigma," Carolynn says. "Here, instead of teaching you who the third president was, they show you how to fill out tax forms." Jacob, her 20-month-old son, spends his time in the school's day care center chasing soap bubbles and bouncing on knees while his mom is in class.

Next year Carolynn will be attending the University of Alaska in Anchorage, and tears well in her eyes when she talks about graduating. Her biggest worry is Jacob being in a new day care center. The fact that the day care at Mat-Su is onsite makes it easier for students like Carolynn to leave their babies.

Carolynn thinks teen parents at Mat-Su have a better chance of succeeding than kids in mainstream schools, which is good because the school has close to 50 teen parents right now. "Don't sigh when you hear this," Carolynn says. "You should applaud because these are teen parents who go to school and have jobs and are parents."

Pregnant students and those with children are required to take parenting and life skills classes.

An updated version of home economics, life skills teaches students how to manage a house, a car, and a job. In parenting class students learn the different behavioral and developmental stages of a child's life, but the atmosphere is informal, often more support group than traditional class. Sheri Lehman, who teaches parenting and life skills, often finds herself asking, "Is it more important to stay on Chapter 9 or to talk with a student who is tired because the baby was up all night?"

Burchell thinks of the school as life challenging. Because the majority of Mat-Su students leave high school and go straight to work, the curriculum concentrates on vocational skills as much as academics. Students are required to work at least 15 hours a week in addition to their classes, and the school accommodates work schedules by staying open until 9:30 p.m. World of Work is one of the few required courses at Mat-Su, and students in this self-directed class write resumes and use a computer program called AKCIS to explore career paths and determine the types of work they are best-suited for.

"The job experience is great. They push you, but not to the point where your head is going to explode," says Tamara Tabor. Tamara is one of the students involved in the "Teen Power Hour," a show produced by a local radio station under the supervision of the school's work-study coordinator.

"On the first day of the radio show, you had an hour to prepare —write the opening, read it, write the closing, read it. I didn't even know I knew how to do it," Tamara says. "I found that if I don't know how to do something, or I'm not prepared, I pretend I know what I'm doing. So I pretended I was a DJ. I faked the whole thing, and it turned out fine."

Tamara, who was homeless from May to October of last year, has gained confidence since coming to Mat-Su, and her work with the show reflects this. "I've seen a lot of growth in myself. It's not all the school," Tamara says. "I've thought it would be fun to be a DJ. Maybe I can do it."

John House-Myers runs the vocational construction program at the school, and his students are involved in their biggest project yet, building a portable classroom for next year's science classes. Seven students gather around House-Myers in the field behind the school as he impresses on them the importance of measuring five times and cutting only once.

"Do you guys know how much this beam, times two, and this beam, times two, costs?" he asks the students.

"A lot of money," one boy quips.

"I want a dollar amount," House-Myers persists.

"A hundred dollars?" another boy guesses.

"Try $1,430," House-Myers tells them.

The class splits into two groups to measure a support beam that will be the foundation of the classroom. By the end of the hour a few of the students are worried about their progress. "It's all right. It's gonna work out," House-Myers tells them. "Trust me. It's gonna work out."

The construction projects are good for the students because they are tangible, House-Myers says. "You can stand back at the end of the day and say, 'This is what I did today.' It's real for them." The kids don't get paid for their work on the projects, but they do get school credit. House-Myers believes that for these students, success builds on success. "If we can hold on to you long enough, we will change your life," he says, and then corrects himself: "We will help you change your life."

Students at Mat-Su get out of the school what they put into it. They are given the resources and support to succeed, but they have to do the work.

Mat-Su is not required to accept referrals from mainstream schools. Prospective students are interviewed by a panel of students and teachers, and they must complete a detailed questionnaire about their specific goals, both immediate and long-term, to be admitted. Students must attend school on the closed campus for at least three hours each day, and missed time must be made up within two weeks. If an absence is not called in by

11 a.m., students double their make-up time. Students keep planners with daily, weekly, and long-term goals, and faculty advisors meet with them weekly to check their progress and give them a nudge when needed.

The school is good at giving second chances—and sometimes third and fourth chances as well. When a student doesn't show up for school, the faculty advisor calls. If the student still doesn't return, Burchell makes the call. Mat-Su always has a waiting list, so students who aren't willing to work lose their place to someone who is.

When kids don't work out and are suspended from the school, Burchell tells them, "We'll never stop loving you, but we'll never change the rules." Students are welcome to come back to the school when they are ready to follow the rules.

Burchell connects with most of his students, but has learned that it is impossible to reach everyone. For Burchell, the only thing harder than a student who drops out and doesn't return is when a student dies.

Eleven young trees line the front of the school, barely noticeable without their leaves. One has been planted for each student the school has lost in its 10-year history. Four more trees wait to be planted when the ground thaws in the spring. Some of the deaths were the result of accidents, but half were suicides. Burchell is silent as he thinks about the students who have slipped away. He has a theory that you have to either hug kids or harass them. "The only way to lose them is to ignore them," he says. "Silence is always approval."

"I was six-foot-five when I started this job, now I'm five-foot-six," Burchell jokes. "My body can't take much more of this."

Burchell plans to retire August 15, but he is confident that the school will continue to succeed. "I'm afraid for me personally leaving. I'm not afraid for the school. I've got a great staff," Burchell says. "I don't know a person who has a better job in the state of Alaska. I really don't."

The staff seems to feel the same way. "He's given us the opportunity to change a lot of kids lives. And it's changed our lives in the process," says House-Myers.

Two students lead toddlers, bundled in coats and caps, from the day care center to the front door to meet the bus. The toddlers make a beeline for Burchell's desk. Burchell —now Grandpa B.—takes a tin milk jug filled with candy from beneath his desk and trades lollipops for hugs. This is his favorite part of the day.

Some people may look at his school and see only misfits and dropouts. He sees opportunities and bright futures. As Burchell replaces the lid on his candy tin, his student calls out to her son, "Tell Mr. B thank you." n

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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01
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