Teaching on the last frontier

The Daily Mining Gazette - Published: Tuesday, January 08, 2008

CAPTION: Photo courtesy Beth Williams

Nikki Lishinski, back row, left, with the Little Sea Parrots cheerleading team she coaches at St. Paul School. In addition to teaching, the school’s staff takes on a variety of responsibilities.

By DAN SCHNEIDER, DMG Writer

HOUGHTON — A group of local teachers is making their mark on one of the most remote school districts in the country.

Melissa Grego, Steve Lishinski, Nikki Lishinski, Benny Veale and Beth Williams, all Houghton natives, comprise half the teaching staff at St. Paul School.

“We have an entire teaching staff of 10 teachers, which I think is unique in itself, and five of them are from Houghton,” Steve Lishinski said.

St. Paul School is located on St. Paul Island, one of two islands (the other is St. George) collectively known as the Pribilofs at the western extreme of Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. The islands are a 750-mile airplane trip from Anchorage.

Nikki and Steve Lishinski are in the middle of their second year teaching at St. Paul School. They contacted the school after becoming frustrated with the scarcity of full-time teaching jobs locally and were quickly offered jobs at St. Paul.

Once they got their foot in the door, it was easy for the others to get jobs on St. Paul, where qualified teaching candidates are in short supply.

“Not too many people will want to go to a place that’s this isolated,” Steve Lishinski said. “When the administration comes across people who know other teachers, it’s very fortunate for the administrators.”

Since it is such a small staff, all of the teachers wear multiple hats at the school. Steve Lishinski, for example, is assistant principal and special education director in addition to being a science teacher at the school.

Other jobs the teachers take on are less glamorous.

“Where most teachers don’t have to stay around until 9 p.m. sweeping the gym after a basketball game, (at St. Paul) there’s no one else to do it,” Grego said.

Nikki Lishinski said the range of jobs they perform is good experience for new teachers. She also said the small school gives them a student-focused environment in which to start their teaching careers.

“Any student’s needs come first,” she said. “Because we are so small, we can really do whatever the kids need.”

Teaching at the school has been a cultural experience for the Houghton natives, as well.

“It’s very much based on their culture, the Aleut culture,” Williams said.

There’s not a lot going on in town. No movie theater. No restaurants. Definitely no fast food.

So the school is the center of town.

“Literally it is right in the middle, but it’s also where people go for their recreation,” Nikki Lishinski said.

Movies are shown there. School carnivals are a big draw.

Sometimes, the school has Pizza Hut pizzas flown in for fundraiser and these command hefty prices.

“People will pay $25 for a pizza, easily,” Williams said.

High school basketball games draw big crowds, though the Sea Parrots have to be creative to find opponents so far from the mainland.

“The high school basketball team will play the Coast Guard, they’ll play the teachers,” Steve Lishinski said.

The big rivalry is with the Seal Pups, the team from St. George.

“The competitive spirit is definitely there,” Steve Lishinski said. “St. Paul always wants to beat St. George, so that is definitely not lacking.”

School, like other aspects of life on the island, has to adapt to accommodate commercial fishing, which is just about the only industry on St. Paul.

“Our school calendar is based on the Halibut season,” Nikki Lishinski said.

The school has Saturday classes once per month so school can let out in mid-May in time for students to go to work for the fishery.

“A lot of the older kids will do baiting and prep work for the Halibut boats,” Nikki Lishinski said.

The islands of St. Paul and St. George are probably best known in the lower 48 as the setting for the Discovery Channel series “Deadliest Catch,” which documents the islands’ often-dangerous fishing industry.

The landscape of the islands is rocky and there are no large plants. Still, some visitors compare it to Ireland in the summer, when bright green grass blankets the hills.

The landscape creates some difficulties for lessons.

“It was hard for me to tell the kids about fall and teach about fall because there are no trees,” Grego said.

Williams said her parents sent them fall leaves to help in that regard.

The island also has more dramatic seasonal variation of day length than the U.P. Nikki Lishinski said on the shortest days, it is only light out for about five and a half hours.

That means during much of winter, it is still dark out when elementary students go out for morning recess at 10 a.m.

Nikki Lishinski said the teachers are working to establish a partnership with Michigan Technological University to bring some students from the school to Tech’s Summer Youth program. She said many of the students at St. Paul have never been to the lower 48 states.

Dan Schneider can be reached at dschneider@mininggazette.com