Elaine B. Griffin
1995 National Teacher of the Year
Pioneer Teacher
Chiniak School, Kodiak, Alaska
President William J. Clinton,
Elaine Griffin, 1995 National Teacher of the Year
The White House Rose Garden -- April 28, 1995
Washington, D.C.- (April 1995)-- Elaine B. Griffin, a native New Yorker who has helped revolutionize education in two remote Alaskan villages over the past 20 years, has been named the 1995 National Teacher of the Year. Ms Griffin, head teacher of Alaska's Kodiak Island Chiniak School, was honored at a White House Rose Garden ceremony, where President Clinton presented her with a crystal apple, the traditional symbol of teaching. The National Teacher of the Year Program is the oldest and most prestigious awards program to focus public attention on excellence in teaching. Now in its 44th year, the program is sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers and Scholastic Inc.
"Elaine Griffin's impact on education in Alaska sets an example for teachers everywhere," said Gordon Ambach, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. "Her success in raising student performance and expanding personal horizons in her village school is a remarkable achievement and inspiring example for every teacher and school." Griffin, whose range of teaching excellence spans subject areas from kindergarten through high school, is credited with expanding and significantly improving the educational, social, and cultural environments of Akhiok and Chiniak villages on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
"Because of her extraordinary innovations in curriculum and staffing in these villages, her multicultural vision for education, and her success at integrating school and community, Elaine Griffin richly deserves her selection as National Teacher of the Year," said Dr. Ernest Fleishman, senior vice president of Scholastic Inc.
 Akhiok and Chiniak
Born in upstate New York, Elaine Griffin's adventuresome spirit and fascination with Alaska and "distant cultures" was nurtured during long childhood afternoons at the Westfield Public Library, where, she says, "I can still picture the exact spot where the Alaska books were shelved." Alaska remained only a dream, however, until 1974 when grown and married and working as a public librarian in Flagstaff, Arizona, she and her husband, Ned, first saw Kodiak Island in slides at a friends's home. Within months, the Griffins had left Arizona--"with a year's worth of groceries"--for the two-teacher school in Akhiok, Alaska, an isolated, roadless village on the tundra at the southern tip of Kodiak Island.
Finding a community disoriented by rapid change and troubled by alcoholism, teen pregnancy and suicide, the Griffins began to work with the village advisory board to design a more effective school program. They implemented a demanding and culturally-relevant curriculum and, through a statewide restructuring program, expanded the school's K-8 program to include a high school. Today the high school graduation rate in Akhiok approaches 90% and the community recognizes its own responsibility and power for making change from within. Village elders say proudly, "This is history in the making. If we can do it here, people can do it anywhere."
In 1981, the Griffins moved to Chiniak, another Kodiak Island fishing community of about 150 people, where, at Chiniak School, Griffin introduced her system of "shared staffing," to provide stability and a variety of teaching strengths and styles for the small, 37-student population. With the help of one additional full-year staff member, innovative administrators and committed parents, the Griffins have alternated semesters with another teaching couple ever since, vacating their district-owned housing each spring to travel, teach and volunteer in countries all over the world. "We've done everything from teaching at an orphanage in Calcutta--where we adopted our daughter, Marjeena--to translating medical information at a clinic in Mexico, to preserving native plants at a rainforest nursery in Australia," says Griffin.
Their travels not only provide fuel for teaching but also inspire and enable their Chiniak students to seek their own foreign exchange adventures, an idea once viewed as "an unattainable dream," for most rural Alaskans. "American schools resonate with the diversity of our citizenry," says Griffin. "And so, the whole world must be our community."
During summers, when she is not traveling or teaching at the school , Griffin dedicates 200 hours to the volunteer-staffed Chiniak Public Library, where she reads reviews, orders books, and teaches teenagers and other volunteers how to catalog books and generally operate the library. "From the time I learned to read, libraries have been a focus of my life," says Griffin. "I want every person in Chiniak to have the same access to books that I had when I was growing up."
A Typical Day at Chiniak School "There are many ways a teacher can positively influence student learning ," says Griffin, "including a love for books and a regard for multiple world views. But the most important thing to me is to forge an unbreakable bond with each student based on mutual respect and admiration. Because I teach the same students for 11 years in a row, I am able to develop a personal relationship with every one. Our school is a community and a family."
Elaine Griffin's day begins with her "30-second commute across the boardwalk," a proximity which, she says, makes her feel the school is truly home. The school building, Griffin reports, is clean and "art-filled," and without vandalism because "like the teachers, the 33 students also see the school as their home."
During a month-long interdisciplinary unit of Latin America, Griffin might meet with students over breakfast for individual conversations in Spanish before officially greeting her 37 students. As first through third graders busily read the bulletin board for news of an older student on a foreign exchange tour, fourth through seventh graders are learning the art of recreating an ancient building in design technology class, and eighth through tenth graders read or work in the library on reconditioned computers--"one for every child"--that the staff found for the school.
Afternoons may bring intense discussions on issues in Latin American poetry, songs sung in Spanish via satellite with long distance classmates in Flagstaff, or work on individual multicultural projects and Rube Goldberg-like inventions.
After school, Griffin might meet in the classroom with parents contributing hot lunches or art projects to the school program, and then at home with a student planning an exchange trip, and again back at school with another student having trouble with algebra.
After supper it could be volleyball night, and later Griffin and her husband might confer with staffing partners on a photography project before heading home across the boardwalk. "When teachers, parents, students, and administrators work together to meet challenges at the local level, the door to excellence is open to all," says Griffin. "The size of the community or school is immaterial. Excellence is as much within the grasp of the student from Chiniak or Akhiok as it is for the student from the Bronx High School of Science. The potential of each individual is infinite."
And Griffin firmly believes that the student/teacher bond and the continuity between school and community that she has achieved in Akhiok and Chiniak is just as possible in the Bronx as it is on Kodiak Island. "Just look at the movement toward breaking large urban schools into smaller, self-managed units," she says. "They are a mirror of the rural school model, because it's only human to want to recreate closeness, to have the sense of family and community in the school."
One Chiniak parent describes Griffin as "the most dedicated teacher I have ever known," and credits her with leading a team that significantly improved Chiniak School's college-attendance rate and earned the school the 1987 National Rural and Small Schools Consortium Exemplary Programs Award for Innovative and Creative Programs. "Elaine is the superlative among teachers," he says.
Griffin graduated at Barnard College in 1969 with a B.A. in American studies (and a stint as an exchange student at Howard University in 1967). She received a Masters Degree in Library Science at the University of California at Berkeley in 1971 and a Teaching Certificate from Northern Arizona University in 1974. The Griffins have three adopted daughters: Vera and Marie from the villages on Kodiak and Marjeena from Calcutta.
Other finalists in the National Teacher of the Year Program were Linda Holt, 1995 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year, a Chapter 1 reading teacher at the Haiku School on Maui in Hawaii; Jerry Howland, 1995 Massachusetts State Teacher of the Year, a mathematics and law teacher at the English High School in Boston, Massachusetts; and Manuel Ignacio Tinajero, 1995 Texas State Teacher of the Year, a 5th and 6th grade elementary teacher of recent immigrant children at Ramona Elementary in El Paso, Texas.
The National Teacher of the Year is chosen from among the Teachers of the Year from the 50 states, five extra-state jurisdictions, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense Dependents' Schools. The State Teachers of the Year have been selected on the basis of nominations by students, teachers, principals and school administrators throughout the state. The State Teachers of the Year are submitted to the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, D.C., where a blue ribbon committee of representatives from the 14 leading national education organizations review the data on each candidate and selects four finalists. The selection committee then personally interviews each finalist before naming the National Teacher of the Year.
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Contacts for additional information:
Jon Quam, Director National Teacher of the Year Program, One Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001-1431, 202-336-7047 -- 202-789-1792 FAX jonq@ccsso.org
Elaine Griffin's Thoughts on Teaching |
