Anchorage Daily News

Around a South Anchorage dinner table on a recent night, a group of students takes a moment before eating.

Girls in ponytails and boys in baseball caps who come from points all over the Alaska map -- Crooked Creek, Pilot Point, Teller and Chignik Lagoon -- go around the table, saying what they're thankful for.

One by one, each says, "Opportunities."

The students were in Anchorage as part of the Chugach School District's Voyage to Excellence program, which brings rural, primarily Alaska Native students from across the state, to Anchorage for weeks at a time to learn firsthand about big-city life, plan their futures and prepare for the high school graduation qualifying exam.

The program, in its 10th year, has a striking success rate: 98 percent of its students graduate from high school.

Compare that to 45 percent, the 2006 statewide graduation rate for Alaska Native students -- the lowest of any minority here, according to the state Department of Education. Or Alaska's overall graduation rate, which is 60 percent.

The secret: teaching social skills and tying what happens in the classroom to the work world.

THE REAL WORLD

VTE's recipe is a little bit like the old MTV reality show "Real World": take a group of kids from all over the state, put them together in a fashionable house, give them a set of rules and watch what happens.

On a recent night, seven students filled the five-bedroom house in a subdivision off Elmore, lounging on couches, clicking away at laptops before dinner. The house is fashionably decorated with contemporary paint colors, overstuffed furniture, and a big kitchen with marble counter-tops and commercial appliances. They sleep in bedrooms, dormitory-style. The girls have the upstairs, the boys the basement.

The program is run by the Prince William Sound-based Chugach district, but it accepts students from the Lake and Peninsula, Kuspuk and Bering Strait districts, as well as Nome's Northwestern Alaska Career and Technical Center.

About 150 participate each year. There's a waiting list and other rural districts would like to take part, but right now the program -- which is funded with a combination of state money and grants -- can't handle any more.

Students begin as early as junior high school. The program works in phases -- most last a week or two though some can be longer.

The kids learn things they don't learn in the village, like how to talk to strangers, how to find an address they've never been to, how to dress for a job interview. They look at different career possibilities and make a plan for after high school. There's also lots of prep for the high school graduation qualifying exam.

In the village, students are used to knowing everyone, to having a network of support. Coming to Anchorage for training or school can be very frightening.

"You don't have the bus system, even the amount of people is intimidating," said Billijo Mills, one of the directors.

Working from their family-like home base, students learn the basics of setting up a life: renting an apartment, opening a bank account, looking for a job, being interviewed by a prospective employer.

"We set them up with a network of resources," Mills said.

Studies show that the more practical daily-living skills students have, the better their performance in school, she said.

"That's why we start in junior high. We start working on handshakes, eye contact, communication," she said.

Sometimes in tiny villages where there are only a handful of students in each class, isolation can make it hard for children to imagine a career, said Carol Wilson, the program's other director. VTE is focused on future employment, taking students to visit workplaces so they can see what happens on the job and what employers expect.

The program is an alternative to a boarding school. It doesn't take students out of their community for long. The idea is to broaden their horizons and give them skills they can use both in the city and back at home.

Once students pick a career field, teachers construct lessons to demonstrate how writing or math gets used in the commercial kitchen, or construction job site, or office.

"What makes it so successful is we are able to take what kids learn in a classroom and apply it to real life," Wilson said.

FUTURE

The Carrs at Abbott Loop is mostly quiet at 8 p.m. as Gwen Vlasoff, 17, studies her grocery list. Half a dozen others buzz about, carrying items from the aisles. The students are in "Phase 3." In that phase, they function mostly independently, setting up job shadows with people in fields they are interested in and visiting vocational programs and UAA.

One of their tasks is to develop a menu for the week, shop using a budget, and then cook for each other. The selections aren't complicated. There's frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, fried rice and lasagna.

But in the vast grocery store, the questions stack up. One pizza seems cheaper than the other, but it's also slightly smaller. Which is the best deal? How many "servings" does a normal person eat? Less than $3 a pound seems good for oranges compared to village prices but eight pounds of them still aren't cheap. Should they buy them?

Vlasoff, from the Prince William Sound village of Tatitlek, is one of the most focused and outgoing in the group. Kids commonly drop out of her high school, she said. Her sister just left school because she's having a baby. VTE keeps her thinking about graduating, she said. After several years in the program, she's decided she wants to be an elementary school teacher. She plans to go back to her village to teach.

VTE helps students get used to the city's sprawling stores and traffic and lines of strangers, said Jamie Ablowaluk, 16, who lives in the Bering Sea village of Teller. She spent a little time in Anchorage a few years ago, attending East High. The school is four times the size of her whole village, she said and she never settled in. It was too "rushy."

The program introduced her to vocational education classes. She discovered welding and is building up hours for a certification. Some kids in her village end up living with their parents practically forever, not ever building a life of their own. She doesn't want to be that way, she said.

"I'm thinking about the North Slope."

PASSING THE EXAM

Lewis Phillips, 18, is from Crooked Creek, a village of 140 or so on the Kuskokwim River. He plans to be a heavy-equipment operator, but first he's got to pass the high school graduation qualifying exam to get his diploma. He already took it, and he's studying to take it again.

"I got to pass the writing," he said.

The exam can be a major hurdle for some students, Mills said. Students who complete all four years of high school but fail the exam get a certificate, but not a diploma. Last year, only one of 40 seniors in the state's five largest districts got a certificate instead of a diploma, while in the smaller districts one in 16 students did, according to state numbers.

"(It's) a high-stakes exam; there's always going to be issues with it," Mills said.

After they're done with high school, the students can come for test prep if they don't have a diploma, either staying for a session in the house or coming for a month for a test-prep summer camp, she said.

Sometimes students have to take the test several times, she said. But, they always take it again.

"We had one student take it, the math, six times. He stayed until he was 21," she said. But, in the end he finally passed. Now he has a job in the mining industry.

"He sent us a picture of him in his cap and gown," she said. "It was huge."

Because students in the program have plans for the future, they're motivated both to finish high school and to pass the test.

"We hear from teachers and parents," she said. "We get notes: 'What did you do to our son? He's getting up and going to school.' "

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.

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