Dear Students and Parents,

Steller Secondary is privileged to be hosting a sister school exchange this year through the Alaska Humanities Forum. Five students will be selected to travel to a rural Alaskan village and experience living in another cultural setting for a week. We will be traveling to the village of Noatak, an Inupiaq village of roughly 600 people located in northwestern Alaska. During a week in rural Alaska, our students will spend the days taking part in cultural activities relevant to our setting; creating digital stories to document our experiences, and spending time with our host families. While students are on their exchange they will have daily time set aside to focus on homework from Steller Secondary so that they don’t fall behind in their classes.

Students from our Sister Schools will come to Anchorage and take part in similar activities, in our urban setting in the spring and will stay with your family. Students and families need to be aware that there is a lot of hard work involved with this program, and there will be work to complete outside of school before and after travel. Additionally, students and families need to understand that Sister School Urban Rural Exchange is providing more than a $1,000.00 scholarship for each student – there is no cost to students or families for this experience.

For this reason, commitment is essential. We are looking for self-motivated, creative, curious students who would love to experience this once in a lifetime opportunity and are capable of being responsible for their classwork while they are traveling. If you are interested, please fill out an application packet and submit it to the office, on or before October 26th, 2017. Late applications could result in a candidate not being selected as a traveling ambassador.

There will be an information meeting on Wednesday, October 11th during lunch in Relo #1 for students that are interested. If your student is selected, more information will follow. Should you have more questions, please feel free to call or email Rosa Hohnstein at: Hohnstein_rosalie@asdk12.org