Making neighbors feel right at home — Old-time club helps make new bonds

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Saturday morning at the Kenai Peninsula Association for Family and Community Education retreat was ostensibly spent learning crafts.

The ladies attending, from Homer, Willow and the Nikiski area, did learn how to create an Alaska pin ribbon and an Alaska flag beaded pin, in line with the retreat’s theme celebrating Alaska’s 50th anniversary of statehood. But they learned a lot more about each other in the process.

As they sewed, cut, beaded and glued, they chatted, renewing old bonds established at prior years’ retreats, and cementing new friendships.

A list of trivia of what things cost 50 years ago set Rieta Walker, of Homer, off on a few stories.

“I paid $72 a quarter in Montana University (compared to $1,250 to attend Harvard University for a year a half century ago). Now you’re lucky if you can buy a book for 72 bucks. I’m so old I remember when a penny postcard actually cost a penny,” she said.

Margaret Dubber, of North Kenai, had a tale of costs of her own to share, about her move to Alaska from Oklahoma after marrying her husband, Rodger.

“He didn’t introduce me as his wife. He said I was his Okie souvenir. I said I’m the most expensive souvenir he ever bought. And he’s been paying for it for 35 years,” she said.

The retreat Friday and Saturday at the Aspen Hotel in Soldotna hit on a little of everything that the Family and Community Education program is about — creating crafts, sharing knowledge, raising money for charitable projects and socializing in order to form and maintain a net of ties that bind a community.

The program has been around since the 1930s in the United States, though groups used to be called homemakers clubs. Farmers wives would gather to work on craft projects, share information — about sewing techniques, home health remedies and the like — and organize efforts toward a greater cause, like pushing for child immunizations.

The original Nikiski club, the Redoubt Homemakers, has been around since the 1960s, and was responsible for raising enough money to get Nikiski’s first ambulance.

Since then membership has waxed and waned, as members aged, moved or got caught up in the increasingly hectic pace of life and new modern conveniences that conveniently contribute to people being more isolated. For one four-year stretch, Joy Carew, who’s been a member for 45 years, held every post in the club because there wasn’t anyone else to do it.

Nowadays the Redoubt Homemakers is up to 12 members and is active year-round. They make craft items to donate to various causes, sell homemade items at bazaars and festivals to raise money for the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank and the Nikiski Neighbors program that sponsors families for Christmas, clean up trash in the spring, take field trips and hold their retreat once a year. This year’s was attended by the Homer FCE group and the She-Mon-Sun group from Willow.

“We love these ladies,” said Donella Otter, of Willow, about why they attended the retreat.

“It’s a long winter, we need a break,” said Mary Olson, of Nikiski. She’s largely responsible for the Willow group’s presence. She and Bonnie Shurtleff, of the Willow group, have built a friendship through FCE activities and were happy for a reason to visit each other.

“And there’s such a thing as the Kenai fabric store. All the reasons kind of blend together,” Shurtleff said.

The Nikiski group meets twice a month throughout the year at Nikiski Fire Department Station 1. The program agenda is a scaled-down version of the retreat, with potluck food, some sort of speaker or demonstration, crafts and a business meeting — which is as short as possible to leave the majority of the time for crafts and socializing.

The group’s open to anyone to join — even men, although none have taken the plunge beyond husbands helping haul supplies or other supporting duties.

It’s that spirit of inclusiveness that Nancy Whiting, with the Redoubt group, found so inviting. She talked her husband into indulging her 10-year dream of living in Alaska by moving to Nikiski in 2005. She wanted to live in Nikiski because of its rural feel, where houses are spread out and there’s just woods around you. But that same sense of natural isolation can lead to social isolation when you don’t know anyone.

“For me, they were some of the first people I met. I have to say it boosted my confidence in being accepted here. They accepted me wholeheartedly. I wasn’t the new kid. It was like, ‘Welcome,’ and my newness here wasn’t an issue,” Whiting said. “I’ve not been a joiner in my life, but I was really happy to join this one.”

Many of the group’s activities center on crafts, like sewing, quilting or cooking, but one need not be knowledgeable in those areas to be involved. Novices play a special role in the organization, since much of its purpose is to pass on expertise.

“There’s a lot of wisdom, knowledge and information that is heartily and readily and easily shared,” Whiting said.

Beyond that, the group forms a safety net, for the community in all the charitable work it does, and also for each other.

“I have to say, first and foremost, it probably offers friendship. Not that everybody always agrees 100 percent with everything and everybody else’s ideas, but we’re like sisters. It’s kind of like we get to know each other, we’re personal with each other. It’s like, if you have a problem or an issue, you can call.”

Little by little — State moving closer to preK education

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Keeping the attention of 11 4-year-olds long enough to sing a song or practice counting can be an impossible task, especially two weeks before Christmas. Yet Title I teacher Tricia Young at Nikiski North Star Elementary School was beating the odds Dec. 11.

Sort of.

One little girl was engrossed in trying to pull all her limbs into her shirt. Another girl’s attention was split between her Dorothy of Oz red glittery shoes and a cut on her leg, making sure to limp until a Band-Aid was applied. A boy was perhaps a little too attentive, jumping in with comments and answers whenever he had a chance.

Still, when the students were asked a question, their hands shot into the air. When told to “crisscross applesauce,” they dropped into a cross-legged position. And when a song required dance moves, limbs re-emerged from their cotton T-shirt entombment, and the previously immobile injured leg was miraculously healed.

In the pre-kindergarten class, that’s a big part of what learning entails — teaching 4-year-olds to listen, sit still, get along, pay attention and follow directions.

“It’s important. If they go into kindergarten knowing the social skills necessary to learn in school, they’re ready to go,” said Denise Cox, the preK teacher at Nikiski North Star.

There’s also an age-appropriate curriculum with academic skills, including the alphabet, colors and shapes, following a calendar and counting to 100. But it isn’t taught through lectures or sitting at desks.

“Our program is learning through play. We try to make it as playful as possible,” said Phyllis Oberhauser, a preK aide funded through the Salamatof Native Association.

A look around the cluttered classroom confirms that, with stacks of toys, puzzles and games, a box of dress-up clothes, fish tank and class pet cages, and art projects hanging anywhere there’s room. The kids take a music class and physical education, and have outside recess when the weather’s nice enough.

To the kids, school is fun time — at least after the initial period of adjusting to being away from home and their parents for part of the day.

“We do a lot of comforting the first few weeks,” Cox said.

To the education community, pre-kindergarten is a vital step in getting kids off to a good start.
“It’s called prevention versus intervention. If we catch them early on, we can prevent many of the difficulties students have once we get them in school,” said Doris Cannon, director of early education for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.

Cannon said the results of research on the impact of preK education are clear — early education is tremendously beneficial in catching, addressing and preventing learning problems.

“We know that having universal preschool available to all — not mandatory, but available to all — would certainly be a benefit to our kids. It’s just a good opportunity for kids,” said district Superintendent Donna Peterson. “In my experience as an elementary teacher and principal, if there’s one place we could make the biggest difference, this would be it.”

Kids learn the basic rules of school and how it operates, and they get used to being away from home so when they get to kindergarten, they’re ready to jump in with learning. If students do have learning challenges, they can be identified and addressed before they get behind in school. Students also get an introduction to basic academic concepts, like ABCs and 123s, which some kids may get at home, and some may not.

“It kind of levels the playing field for a lot of kids,” said Robin Thye, a kindergarten and first-grade teacher at Nikiski North Star. “If they don’t have a strong background coming into school, the preK program really helps.”

Nikiski North Star’s preK program has been going for four years now. The first year Thye had kindergarteners from the preK program, she could tell a difference, she said. Of all the students who have gone through the preK class, so far none have needed special help later in school, Oberhauser said.

But as successful as the preK program is at Nikiski North Star, it’s the only public preK program in the district. That’s because the state doesn’t fund general, public preK education.

Special education preK programs are funded by the state, Head Start programs for low-income families get public funding, and there are some private, preK educational programs, generally run in conjunction with day care. But none address the needs of the general population of students.

That may be beginning to change. Gov. Sarah Palin announced a plan to include $2 million in next year’s budget for the state Department of Education and Early Development to try a pilot program for half-day preschool. It would serve about 500 kids around the state, and districts would apply for the money through grants.

It’s not universal, public, preK funding — which KPBSD is hoping for — but it’s a start.

“At least they’re talking about it. Just to have the discussion on the table is encouraging,” Cannon said.

If the pilot program happens and KPBSD were to participate in it, Cannon said the district would approach it like it does everything else — determine where the greatest need is and start from there. Ultimately, Cannon said the district doesn’t want to start something that isn’t sustainable, but hopes the state is moving in that direction.

“We wouldn’t want to have it for one year, then it’s gone. When they land somewhere and it’s sustainable, then we’ll be there,” she said.

At Nikiski North Star, the preK program exists because the school saw enough of a need for it that it decided to sacrifice in other areas of its budget to shuffle funding and make it happen. There used to be a preK, day care sort of program at the Church of the Nazarene in Nikiski, but that was canceled.
“Everyone started looking for other places to put their kids, and there just wasn’t anywhere,” said NNS Principal Lori Manion.

The school receives federal Title I money because of its percentage of students from low-income families. Parents started pushing for a solution to the lack of preK and day care options in Nikiski.
“The community really was screaming about a need for preK, and we looked at the research that said kids who get started in an early educational experience, we weren’t going to be doing intervention on them as they got older,” Manion said.

Four years ago, with the district’s blessing, the school rearranged its budget to offer one session of half-day preK. They did without a kindergarten through sixth-grade Title 1 interventionist aide to do it — “that was really hard,” Manion said — and Manion recruited Cox from her position as librarian to do preK part day and library the rest.

The success of the program was evident the first year, Manion said, with an added bonus of increased parental involvement. Parents are encouraged to volunteer in the preK classroom, helping with art projects, reading or anything else. Those parents typically stay involved as their kids progress through the grades, helping with fundraisers, volunteering in classrooms and joining the PTA.
“We have really capitalized on parents getting involved early on,” Manion said.

Ramona Malston volunteered in the classroom last year when her son, Kyle, was in preK. She said the half-day format was a great transition into full-day kindergarten.

“He was just very comfortable in that school environment going from being a stay-at-home child, he was pretty shy and I was pretty concerned about his being able to sit down and focus. He really learned a lot and they do a lot of fun activities,” she said.Richard Malston said preK gave Kyle a head start on academics — he counted to 29 on his own in a parent-teacher conference last year — and got him excited about school.

“The social interaction and learning, he had a good time and he was really excited about school. Of course, his older brother (Brady) was going to school so he wants to be like him,” Richard said.
The mandatory attendance school age is 6, so preK isn’t required for 4-year-olds. Even so, NNS added an afternoon preK session to meet the growing demand, with 15 kids in the morning and 15 in the afternoon.

There are still challenges. The little guys and girls needed smaller furniture, new curriculum materials and don’t always fit in with the hustle and bustle of the rest of the school, although Manion said they try to integrate preK as much as possible into assemblies and events.

Transportation is the biggest hurdle. Students are only allowed to ride on school buses if they’re 40 pounds or heavier, and not all preK 4-year-olds meet that requirement. Even if they do, buses only take them one way — to school for the morning session or back home for the afternoon session — since buses don’t run in the middle of the day. Manion said transportation funding would be crucial to creating a successful statewide preK program. In the meantime, the school is working with the Central Area Rural Transit System to find a solution.

At NNS, the benefits of the program far outweigh its challenges, Cox said.

“I can see nothing but positive. I don’t see the negative of it,” she said.

Peterson is hoping the state kicks in to make Nikiski’s success possible throughout the district.

“It isn’t a matter of the school district trying to make kids smarter or take education down to younger and younger ages, it’s just having quality opportunities for all children,” Peterson said. “We’re not trying to make readers out of 3-year-olds, we have age-appropriate activities for them. It’s a good thing. The earlier we can do age-appropriate things with children, the better off we’ll be.”

Yeah for clay — Nikiski students put process over product in art

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

When clay artist Terry Inokuma teaches a class, it’s about the process, not the product.

She keeps kids focused on learning each step of the process by not letting them know what they are making.

“I don’t tell them what it will be because kids have expectations of what it should look like so they jump ahead in the process,” she said.

She also teaches them to let their hands guide them by having students sculpt some pieces under the table without looking at their work.

“They separate their sense of touch from vision because we’re usually too dependent on our eyes,” she said.

But the beauty of clay is it’s a 3-D medium, which can appeal to kids who may struggle with other art forms, such as figure drawing.

“The two-dimensional world is so visually attached, whereas the three-dimensional world is allowed to be a little more abstract. It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said.

Inokuma is finishing up a three-week stint as the artist in residence at Nikiski North Star Elementary School this week. The program, administered by the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Rasmuson Foundation, brings artists into schools to share their medium with students who may not otherwise be exposed to much art.

Inokuma is from Oregon. She’s done residency programs in her home district, and applied for the Alaska program after meeting a relocated clay artist from Homer. She’s been to Chenega on Evans Island, Teller, King Cove, Sand Point, Wasilla, Anchorage and Pelican. Her next residency will be at Sterling Elementary in January.

“The goal is to teach the basic methods of working with clay so as they progress through the clay world, if they love it, they’ll have the basics in working with clay,” she said.

At Nikiski North Star she’s working mainly with fourth- through sixth-graders, but has taught the primary grades, as well. There’s even an old kiln at the school to fire the kids’ projects. Being a clay artist, she’s had to improvise that portion of her classes before. In coastal areas she’s been to it’s usually warm enough to create a fire pit, but she’s also had to repair old, broken kilns, use a wood stove and create her own kiln with a burner and propane.

She has a clay day each time she does a residency, where she does demonstrations and her students exhibit their work to the public. Nikiski had its exhibition Friday. Inokuma said parents and teachers have been supportive of her work at the school.

“When I’ve heard from parents they come walking in with wide eyes saying, ‘What are you guys doing here? My kid’s coming home saying, ‘Clay is fun,’” she said.

Inokuma says parents should find a way to support the artistic tendencies all kids have, no matter what mediums they’re suited to.

“I encourage all parents to encourage the artistic sides in all of their children’s worlds, because everyone learns so differently and it opens up different avenues for children to learn,” she said.

Burning need — Family of 8 homeless after fire

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Having eight people under one roof makes life hectic for Maria Pedro and her family. When their roof caught fire Oct. 29, life became even more chaotic.

Now the extended, yet close-knit, Nikiski family is even more extended, as they’re staying with friends here and there in the area until they can make their home livable again.

“That’s the hardest thing, we’re all spread out and missing each other,” Pedro said.

Pedro and various combinations of her family have lived in their home on Bell Avenue off Island Lake Road in Nikiski for nearly 15 years. Longer than that, if you count the time Pedro lived there before spending six years doing missionary work in Central America.

Before the fire, Pedro’s son, Gabriel Cazares, who attends high school in Kenai, and grandson, Eddy Gomez, who goes to school at Nikiski Middle-High School, lived in the triple-wide mobile home with Pedro. Also in the home were Pedro’s daughter, Olivia Hart, her husband and their three kids. Another of Pedro’s 12 children, daughter Veronica Cazares, just recently moved into her own apartment.

Now they’re all over the place, after learning the hard way that there’s no such thing as emergency housing on the central peninsula. They haven’t been able to find rental space that’s affordable and doesn’t require a six-month or longer lease.

The Harts are staying with friends off Gaswell Road, Gabriel Cazares is staying with a friend from school, and Pedro and Gomez are rotating between friends’ homes.

“We don’t want to be a burden to anybody,” Pedro said.

Meanwhile, life marches on, refusing to give the family a reprieve from daily disasters just because they’ve had a major one. The window in Hart’s husband’s car recently shattered, to the tune of $300. And life with kids is always interesting, including a bout of nightmares and a son who recently developed a case of hives.

“There’s always something with kids, a Cheerio up their nose or in their ear you have to deal with,” Hart said.

Pedro’s income decreased since she took some time off work at the Nikiski Senior Center after the fire, and her son recently turned 18, so she no longer gets child support payments for him. As for the birthday, the family couldn’t even think of a place to celebrate. They finally settled on dinner at Pizza Hut a week after his birthday, since at least that was big enough to hold everybody.

The family takes it all, including the fire, in stride.

“We’re used to a lot of stuff happening. We get over it pretty quick,” Hart said. “We always have food and clothing, so we don’t worry.”

On the afternoon of Oct. 29, heat from the home’s wood stove sparked a fire in ceiling insulation that was too close to the chimney. Hart and her three kids, ages 6, 2 and 9 months, were at home at the time.

“We were just hanging out and just smelled smoke. I thought it was the fireplace,” Hart said. “My son was outside. He came in and said smoke was coming out of the house. I said, ‘Smoke is always coming out of the house,’ but I went out to look and, sure enough, it was coming out of the roof.”

She put her kids in the car while the Nikiski Fire Department was on the way. Pedro was visiting family in Oregon at the time. Hart sent her mom a text message to let her know about the fire.

“She texted me. It said, ‘Please pray, the house may be on fire,’” Pedro said.

At first the message didn’t sink in. Pedro’s daughter in Oregon thought it was a joke, and family members in Nikiski didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation. One texted back, “Ha, ha,” while another said something along the lines of, “Way to go. What did you do?”

“They thought I was kidding. We joke around a lot, but not about something like that,” Hart said.

Even more unbelievable was the house catching on fire a second time, the morning after the first blaze. This time a short in electrical wiring was the culprit. Firefighters put the second fire out, as well, but not without smoke, soot and water damage to the home’s interior.

Still in Oregon, it took Pedro awhile for the impact of the news to catch up with her.
“I knew it happened, but it really didn’t hit me,” Pedro said.

She was in Wal-Mart, looking for a shoe-bottom scraper Hart had wanted to get for the house.

“Then I stopped and thought, ‘Why am I looking for this?’ I’m in Wal-Mart in Oregon with all these things you can’t get around here and I couldn’t buy anything because I didn’t have a house to put it in. I started crying in the middle of Wal-Mart. It was weird,” she said.

Pedro looked through the house when she got back to town. The fire damaged much of the ceiling and roof, the fire department had to knock a hole in a wall, and other walls were damaged from smoke and water. Everything in the house is covered in soot, ceiling insulation and/or water, Pedro said. Power and heat have been shut off, so pipes may have frozen and could burst. Since the house consists of three trailers with a shared roof and a wood stove, along with a gas heater, it wasn’t insured.

Still, Pedro isn’t focusing on any of those things.

“I’m not like that. I just count on God and look at the good side, not the bad side,” she said. “And the good side is everything is fixable and nobody got hurt.”

The fire department estimated the house is salvageable, and the flames were mostly confined to the ceiling so the family’s possessions weren’t burned.

Even so, it’s going to take an estimated $10,000 and a whole lot of work to make the home livable again. Friends, the community and the board of directors for the nondenominational ministry organization Pedro founded 10 years ago, En La Gloria Ministries, have offered to help.

The Red Cross helped the family with food money and gave them vouchers they can spend on clothes, furniture or housewares at The Salvation Army. Friends have offered donations, as well, but Pedro and her family haven’t had a chance to sort through the mess to see what’s salvageable and what’s not.

“A lot a lot of people at first said, ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ but we don’t know what we need yet,” Hart said.

Housing is the main priority. The family would like to live together again while they work on the house.

Friends and the En La Gloria ministry board have offered to volunteer labor for the repairs, and a church group from Oregon may come up to help this summer. But they’ll need building materials, and that takes money. There’s an account set up at Wells Fargo Bank if anyone wants to contribute to purchasing building supplies. The Pedro family fire repair fund account number is 7319380957.

Beyond that, support has already come in a form that’s immensely comforting to Pedro, as a missionary to Central America, Alaska villages and Spanish-speaking churches in the Lower 48.

“I think we’re going to be OK because we have a lot of people praying for us and with us,” she said. “It could have been a lot worse.”