Sustainability Saturday: Fishing in the Alaskan North Slope

Alaska
Atqasuk, Alaska
Pop. 248

This week our Sustainability Saturday features the work of the teachers from our most recent I Am a Rural Teacher Podcast! Patti and Rod Lloyd work at Meade River School in Atqasuk, Alaska. They often incorporate local culture and custom into their lessons, and had this to say about their unit on fish:

"In Atqasuk, fishing is king. Whaling in the villages on the coast is ultra-important, but as we are located on the Meade River, we love fishing! Right now we are ice fishing and everyone is loving it!! We also love catching caribou and geese but everyone here loves fishing in the summer and right now ice fishing. We have some Inupuiat counting books that count fish. We cut up the fish as we do we talk about sharing with our elders and how some like fish head stew. We show the students the difference between the male and female fish, the eggs. The kids were fascinated with the insides and outsides of the fish, the different textures, sizes and shapes of the insides and outsides of the fish – eyes, heart, lungs etc."