Mark Shellinger.

Bringing the World to Alaskan Islands

As superintendent of schools for the Pribilof Islands School District, Mark Shellinger couldn't be any farther removed from Western civilization and still operate on American soil.

His location, some 800 miles northwest of Anchorage, Alaska, conjures up images of a snow-covered landscape devoid of intellectual and cultural development.

In reality, Shellinger reports, it rarely snows and precipitation is less than 20 inches a year. Average income tops $40,000 a year due to a thriving fisheries industry. And satellites, microwave transmissions, two new state-of-the-art libraries, and the imagination of a committed superintendent have transformed a K-10 district that was suffering from academic anemia.

Shellinger, 40, believes he enjoys the best of two worlds. "I get to be a superintendent, but my district's small enough that I get to work with the kids. I get hugs everyday."

When Shellinger arrived two years ago, he inherited a school district with four academic programs serving about 160 children, including a boarding placement program for students in grades 9-12 on the Alaskan mainland. Students were far behind their peers academically and reading was such a low priority that neither of the two elementary schools had a suitable library. The district had no physical education teachers or counselors. Parent-teacher conferences were considered a novel idea.

"I was truly shocked and surprised," says Shellinger, who previously spent nine years as principal of Weller Elementary School in Fairbanks. At Weller, he reduced class size, began a Japanese language program for grades 1-6, revamped the reading program using trade books and novels, and personally taught a daily reading class.

In his current assignment, he harnessed parental interest in sustaining the Aleut language as a way to keep a dying culture alive. Children receive daily instruction in Aleut, staff give students routine instructions in Aleut, and Shellinger announces the morning weather report in Aleut. Although he admits his pronunciation is poor, he believes it's important to model the language for students. Shellinger also began a visiting artists and presenters program.

"Staff and students have been electrified by the experience," says Shellinger. Students became particularly enthusiastic about African American dance. It has given teachers new ideas of how other adults can work with their students successfully.

"Mark has tremendous personal energy and clarity of focus of how children that learn that is extraordinary," says Roy Rowe, a faculty member at University of Alaska at Anchorage and a former principal in the Pribilof Islands.

"He knows how to run a tight ship financially, and he is still in touch with the instructional program. He knows how to motivate his teachers at the classroom level," adds Rowe.

School board president Glen Woodall, who has three children in Pribilof schools, notes the district and community have been concerned about the number of students who didn't complete high school. Often students dropped out when they became homesick after leaving the island to attend school on the Alaskan mainland. Now with a program on the islands, the district expects fewer of these children to fall through the cracks.

"A kid from the Pribilof Islands is more worldly and better traveled than many kids educated in the middle of Kansas," says Shellinger proudly.

How Shellinger came from a principalship in Fairbanks to the superintendency of this tiny district is a story in itself. While running an in-service program on the Alaskan Writing Project in the Pribilof Islands, several teachers told him of the superintendent's pending retirement and asked him to apply for the job. He admits he fell in love with the islands.

As a youngster, he had a hand in his family's move to the 49th state. Recalls Shellinger: "When I was 14, we lived in southern Nevada, and my dad was a teacher who had been unhappy with a teacher settlement. He turned to me and asked, 'Mark, if you could pick another place to live, where would it be?' I immediately said, 'Alaska.' So he asked if I had a particular city in mind, and I said Fairbanks.

"Well, he picked up the telephone, got the operator on the line in Fairbanks, and said he wanted to talk to the superintendent. The operator said, 'Well, you won't find him at the district office right now, he's down at the Pastime Cafe having lunch.' So my dad rang him there, had a telephone interview and was hired!"