Compelling and honest: A real page-turner!
Reviewer Allison Janicki Interviews Genét Simone, Author of Teaching in the Dark: A Memoir
“Thank you for your service.” It’s something we say reflexively to veterans and active members of the military, and others who choose careers that serve a greater good. Yet, every healthy society requires selfless citizens. In fact, the most valuable work is not often compensated with a good salary. The rewards come from elsewhere.
And that is why some people bristle at being thanked for doing a job they chose because they wanted to serve humanity. It was a conscious, deliberate decision. They are living their lives to the fullest.
How else to think about Genét Simone’s decision to board a single-prop plane for an isolated island in Alaska to teach?—she, fresh out of college and with no teaching experience, other than three months of student-teaching which she nearly failed. But as she admits in today’s interview, her attitude has always been one to say, “Hey, that looks like fun! Let’s go!”
Genét tells the tale of that adventurous year teaching Iñuit students in her delightful memoir Teaching in the Dark, which recently earned a glowing Clarion review from Allison Janicki. Excited to hear more about her fearless attitude and desire to make a difference in the lives of young Alaskans, we asked Allison to connect with Genét for the following conversation.
The book begins with a bold move: applying for and accepting a teaching position on a remote island despite very little teaching experience. Was this adventurous spirit typical for you, or was it a unique occurrence? And did you continue to take similar leaps of faith from then on?
Ask anyone in my family about my adventurous spirit, and they’ll likely roll their eyes and nod, then smile a little. I’ve always been eager to try new things and ask questions later. In my younger years, I deliberately pointed my tricycle down the concrete steps in front of our house (ouch). Soon after, I graduated to a proper bicycle. The minute my father unscrewed the training wheels, I attempted riding “hands free.” I was successful with balancing on straight stretches of sidewalk so I figured, “why not try hands free around corners?” You get the picture.
Buying a one-way ticket to Shishmaref, without understanding where I was going, was simply the adult version of me riding a bike, hands free. Only four years prior, I purchased a one-way ticket to attend college in Washington State. I didn’t think it strange at all, getting on a jet by myself from Denver to Seattle, and then boarding a small plane up to Bellingham. I had to figure out the campus and make new friends; I had to find a job. It was hard. It was amazing! Even now, many years older, I am quick to say, “Hey, that looks like fun! Let’s go!”
I have no idea where this fearlessness (or folly) comes from, but I love the faith I’ve always had in myself to venture out and wrestle with whatever comes along for the ride. I have a greeting card on my desk at home—a quote from Margaret Shepard—which says, “Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.” The image on the card depicts two bobby-sox girls in midair, leaping down a sand dune and toward the ocean. That’s me: launching myself into unknown territory and figuring out how to land on my way down.
Since Shishmaref, I’ve launched myself in a variety of directions. I moved from Alaska to Minnesota for my master’s degree. Then I moved to Colorado for my doctorate, squeezing in a hike to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, in 2002. That trip took some planning, of course, but I still maintained a deep faith that I’d make it to the top at 19,341 feet above sea level (and I did). When the coursework for my doctorate was finished, leaving me only with the final facets of my dissertation, I accepted an adjunct teaching position for Western Washington University, where my college years started two decades prior. In a sense, I came full circle.
Not wanting Pacific Northwest moss to grow too long underfoot, I am dreaming of traveling to Australia’s Gold Coast and Spain’s Camino de Santiago with my wife, also a teacher (now semi-retired). I want to be a tourist, of course, but may also try hang-gliding and ziplining–maybe Hawaii. I like having a view.
Your experience teaching in Shishmaref takes place in 1984, four decades ago. What inspired you to revisit and write about this experience now?
I started rewriting my Shishmaref experiences soon after leaving the village, trying to flesh out the more potent moments. But I couldn’t find a purpose for my writing and ended up with a jumble of disconnected tales. No matter how I tried to capture what it had been like for me in the village as a new teacher in a vastly different culture, I found myself consistently scrawling, “You had to be there.”
My stories, as written pieces, went dormant for three decades. But my writing hiatus wasn’t for lack of wanting to write this book. I just wasn’t ready. It would take a long time for me to get a proper perspective on my experiences there. Since Shishmaref, I’d always wondered if I should try teaching teenagers one more time. What would that be like? With decades of life experience and thirty years as a teacher/educator, I should be able to figure it out, right?
The answer to that question was revealed in August 2019, when I accepted a position for Seattle Public Schools, teaching a class called Careers in Education. It seemed like an easy slam dunk.
My first class had only ten students in it, ages fifteen to eighteen. There was a mix of boys and girls, and an equal mix of nationalities and cognitive abilities. Even with all the differentiation required to make lessons stick, I expected to have things handled. I mean, by that time, I’d taught literally thousands of adults how to be teachers! I knew all about state standards and curriculum alignment; I was a whiz with lesson planning, forms of assessment, and knowing how to manage a classroom.
But you know what? That class brought me to my knees. Memories of Shishmaref came rushing back and I once more found myself living through new-teacher insecurities and constant self-doubt about the lack of curriculum. It was Shishmaref all over again. Then, Covid hit. From March 2020 to April 2021, I tried (as did millions of teachers) leading the class online. That almost broke me. But I persisted and started making connections with a few students; they were eager to learn and, little by little, they turned their cameras on. It was fascinating (and grueling) to relive the ups and downs of my Shishmaref years. But I hung in there, because I wanted to honor my students and prove to myself that I could do it.
That’s when the stories from Shishmaref woke up. They said to me, “Okay, smarty pants: now you’re ready to write!” My tales wanted to be told—not just for me, but for ALL teachers, and for anyone who’s ventured far from home and had to grapple with their identity—with growing pains and living with the nuances and glaring differences of another culture.
The next four years of being a high school teacher were accompanied by me writing early in the morning, late at night, and during breaks. The writing was fun. It was also overwhelming and confusing at times. The net effect, however, was that writing about Shishmaref helped me process my first year as a teacher in the 1980s, while simultaneously helping me process my current reality of teaching in the twenty-first century. Different circumstances, same challenges. I started realizing that, in order to evolve into the teacher I wanted to be, I had to get those stories out of my head and into the world.
I think it worked, because I love teaching high school more than I thought I ever would. Colleagues all around me are retiring, but I keep thinking, “Not me. Not yet! I’m just getting started.”
One other reason I was inspired to write this book was my desire to acknowledge the people of Shishmaref and thank them for tolerating me and countless other educators who’ve come through their village. I want them to know how enormously and positively impacted I’ve been my entire adult life because of who they were for me at that time and who they continue to be: kind, generous, and courageous.
Something you describe in great detail is the beautiful, icy landscape of Shishmaref and the lifestyle of the Iñuit people. How do you think climate change has affected both the land and the culture? Have you returned to visit since?
Shishmaref sits on a tiny barrier island along the coast of the Chukchi Sea. It is completely exposed to the elements and has taken quite a beating for decades as a result of climate change and global warming. A simple online search of the village offers a plethora of articles, research studies, and documentaries that illuminate the damage caused by melting permafrost, retreating sea ice, and stronger storms. One report by the Alaska Department of Commerce in 2016 stated that, since 1969, the island had lost over 200 feet of shoreline—and that was written almost ten years ago.
When I was in the village, I distinctly remember the residents’ concerns about an increase in storm surges that threatened some homes. They worried about the unpredictable sea ice, which prevented hunters from venturing as far as they needed to catch oogruk (bearded seals), a major part of their subsistence lifestyle. Villagers tried various configurations of seawalls; they threaded large concrete blocks with steel cables and laid them across the bluffs. They shipped in huge boulders and dumped them along the most vulnerable stretches of land. All their efforts have slowed erosion, but Alaska is a land of extremes: slight changes in weather patterns and temperature can wreak havoc.
Interestingly, coastal erosion would not present such challenges if Shishmaref had never been established; it wasn’t initially intended as a permanent settlement. Instead, the locals, who called themselves Kigiqtaamiut, or Island People, used that area for fishing, hunting, and camping. They moved according to the seasons—to the migration of ducks and geese, and land animals like foxes and caribou. During the Gold Rush years in Nome (1898-1907), the island became a supply center for mining interests. A post office was established in 1901, and a government school followed in 1906. Soon, a church was established and then more infrastructure; people eventually settled year-round.
The villagers have voted a few times to either stay and keep battling the elements or relocate nearby. The last vote in 2016 (as far as I know) finally tipped the scales toward leaving: 89 yes, 78 no. The dilemma is where to go, and how to pay for such a massive move. During the Obama Administration, there was renewed interest at the federal level in helping people along the coast grapple with their predicament, but that talk never amounted to much. The cost of moving an entire village and setting up the necessary infrastructure continues to be insurmountable. It’s a game of wait and see.
As to the question of me returning to the village, I am happy to say that, yes, I’m going! And I’m taking my award-winning photographer brother, Todd Winslow Pierce, with me. I had often thought about going back to Shishmaref, but always talked myself out of it due to lack of funds and an unclear purpose. But now, with the publication of my book, I feel like I have something to offer. Our trip will span about one week in late October 2024. It’s going to be a whirlwind of a tour, with book talks in Nome, Shishmaref, and Juneau.
I’m tickled pink that my book talk in Nome will be in the same building as the Carrie M. McClain Memorial Museum, a place I visited when I flew to Nome with some fellow teachers to decompress and do a little bar hopping over Thanksgiving weekend. You can read about our wacky trip in the chapter titled “Through the Burled Arch.”
And, of course, I’m excited to fly into Shishmaref again, not only because the airstrip is longer now (joke), but because I am eager to reconnect with former students and their families and do a book reading at the school. I also want to feel the land again. After Shishmaref, Todd and I will stop in Juneau for a few days on the way back to Seattle so I can reunite with old friends and do one last book talk at the Mendenhall Valley Library—a stone’s throw from where I end my book—another instance of coming full circle.
Amidst the excitement and challenges of adapting to Shishmaref’s culture, were there particular moments or experiences that proved most difficult to write about?
I went through a wide range of emotions while writing this book. Some scenes really caught me by surprise, like the knife-to-my-heart scene when students asked if I was prejudiced. That was a doozy. And there was the time when I shared a story with one class that was of great significance to me but the students were bored and indifferent. It hurt then and still hurts today when I allow myself to be vulnerable in the classroom and am (by all appearances) dismissed. One of the hardest things for teachers is when they share something that means a lot on a personal level and students don’t seem to care. I don’t think they are being deliberately rude (they are still maturing), but the impact of their apathy can take a toll on teachers, making it hard to open one’s heart again.
By far, however, the most difficult scene I had to write was the decision I made at the end of the book. It tore me up then and it still does. I went through a lot of Kleenex writing that segment, and I make sure to have some handy when I read it out loud to others.
On the flip side, most of the stories were fun to remember and a delight to write. I sometimes giggled so hard that tears streamed down my face. I’d be tapping away on my keyboard and suddenly be transported back to a moment that was so ridiculous! It would take several minutes for me to dry my eyes well enough to see the keys again. A few chapters that come to mind are when I met my roommate (chapter twelve), the training in Computers 101 (chapter 16), and the morning when the school lost all power (chapter 25). Everything went dark, just before the principal was scheduled to conduct my first formal observation. What a day.
Your time in Shishmaref undoubtedly shaped your approach to teaching. Is there a specific lesson from Alaska that has stayed with you? What advice would you offer new teachers just starting their journey?
On my website, I share this sentiment: “Teaching is 5 percent content, 15 percent skills, and 100 percent about developing relationships. I know that doesn’t add up quite right, but it’s TRUE.”
The biggest lesson I learned in Shishmaref is the most important one for teachers if they want to stay in the profession they love. It’s this: Accept the fact that you are changing every day, and so are your students. You must take time to develop self-awareness and self-compassion, and do the same with your students.
Ironically, the best places for cultivating awareness and compassion are not in the classroom, where the teacher has authority (or at least the perception of it), but rather in the students’ world. In Shishmaref, it was in the school’s gym during basketball games, out on the tundra or the beach, or with a couple hundred Shishmaref locals during a potluck.
It was during those moments, when I saw my students’ wisdom, vulnerability, and humor, and was able to connect to them on a heart level—maybe even a spiritual one. One of the most potent illustrations of this phenomena is in “Turning Point” (chapter 55) when I went to the reindeer corral with one student with whom I had a strained relationship.
I also learned that, while teenagers may not immediately show they care about you as a teacher, they DO care about you when you show that you care for them. I think one of the reasons that teaching is more of an art than a skill is this dance of staying true to who you are and who you’re becoming, and being transparent about both. And you’re doing this in the fluid environment of everyone else’s development and emotions! It’s not easy, rowing in those waters while also trying to maintain some measure of consistency and predictability so that students feel safe and challenged and engaged all the time.
One last thing I’ll add is about the importance of making a connection to just one student, and how that can literally make a difference in your life and in theirs. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t remember a particular student in Shishmaref—what he or she said or did, and how that influenced my beliefs about what it means to “make a difference.”
Just before the school year ended this past June, a high school senior strolled into my classroom during my planning period. He came to school rarely, slipping in late and sliding out early. As a result, he was failing my class. All semester, I’d had a hard time pinning him down. When I did catch him for a moment and tried to redirect him, he wouldn’t follow through. And I never saw him smile.
So he approached me, looking a bit sheepish. We exchanged pleasantries and, even though I was a bit perturbed that he now wanted to make up a bunch of assignments in record time, I avoided embarrassing him further by bringing up his absences. I was just glad he came in to talk. That’s when he divulged that he’d been couch-surfing for months (meaning homeless). He hadn’t been able to come to school, because he was working a full-time job, earning money to survive. He had no parents taking care of him. And, for all of that, he was embarrassed and a bit afraid of me.
We made a plan, and he left. Alone once more, I felt my heart pounding, my eyes welling up with tears. I felt so shitty in that moment because I’d made up a stupid story that this student was just another lazy teenager who didn’t feel like coming to school. But then, I caught myself and realized that it was my calm and respectful demeanor that created the space for him to return during a vulnerable time. And I said to myself, “They always come back. If you love them anyway, they come back.” (FYI, he graduated with a huge smile on his face.)
That was a lesson from Shishmaref. That young man was just like my former student (Lawrence) in “Chance Meeting” (chapter 59).
Respecting native lands and people is a prevalent topic today, and you navigated this with care as a white woman living and working in a historically oppressed region. How did this experience influence your personal and professional outlook?
Shishmaref woke me up to prejudice. It woke me up to the impact of racism in society writ large. I realized that, while I accepted most everything about the village and the people as they were, I still represented a culture that was making a mess of their land and heritage. I did my best to tread carefully and minimize preconceived notions about the village and how residents chose to live. During my first walkabout on the island, I realized that I “couldn’t stroll into this brave new world called Shishmaref; I had to leap.”
I came away from the village with a desire to live honorably—as racist-free as possible. When I relocated to Juneau, I worked at an agency that helped struggling families (often immigrants) buy a starter home. I raised funds for the women’s shelter. I volunteered as an English tutor for adults from other countries. Excellent efforts, right?
But get this: only a few months after leaving Shishmaref, where I experienced only kindness and generosity, I suffered a massive disturbance in my supposed anti-racist inner compass. It happened as I was walking along Willoughby Avenue and I spotted a Native Alaskan boy carrying a bicycle on his shoulder. He was coming down one of the many steep metal stairs located around the city. Everyone used them in this way: people rode to the end of a street, hopped off their bike, and carried it down, then hopped back on and kept riding. It was a common scene, and I had done it myself dozens of times.
But guess what thought flew through my head?
“He must have stolen that bike.” (Because all Native kids are poor and therefore must be thieves.)
Where the hell did that come from? I had just spent a significant portion of time in an Iñuit community, meeting the most thoughtful, big-hearted people anywhere. Yet, my first thought was, the boy stole that bike?!
I was shocked and dismayed with my knee-jerk response to a scene that—had that child been white—would never have occurred. I vowed to crank up my awareness and step up to doing more to tackle the racism in our society, starting with me. A major reason I chose women’s studies for my master’s degree was because I wanted to learn from women of color through their writing and activism; I wanted to join them and also create spaces for white people to do some serious self-examination. I continued that work during my doctorate years at the University of Colorado, where I spearheaded numerous conversations around campus about the insidious effects of racism in our institutions.
For the past five years, I’ve been teaching in Seattle high schools. The district is quite diverse. There are about 51,000 students, and a minority enrollment of 60 percent (which seems more like a majority to me). Twenty percent are considered economically disadvantaged. I do all I can to create a learning environment where students feel welcome and challenged. I try to get to know them. I treat them with respect and use my position to advocate for their desires and dreams. It’s a slow process, but I am learning to accept that my influence as a teacher can only happen one child at a time.
One last thing about this topic, however: My awareness of prejudice and racism didn’t appear solely as a result of intentional mental exercise. There was something about Shishmaref being located on such a wide open landscape that impacted me a great deal. I believe that landscape and the slower pace forced me to “take in the whole” of scenes and situations, while simultaneously noticing details. Throughout my book, I tried to portray these inside-out sensations, of being a part of something larger than myself, yet turned inward. A sense of here/not here.
One good example is in chapter 32, “Coming to My Senses,” where I describe a lucid dream when I was looking through a kaleidoscope “crafted in silver, brilliantly polished and cool to the touch … my eye was washed with a dazzling array of deep blues and reds and purple-green flashes of color like the northern lights racing across the midnight sky. Then, the scene switched [and I was] surrounded by those vibrant colors … feeling the turning of the mechanism reverberating within my own body.”
That scene, and many others, are my attempt to illustrate shifts in awareness I experienced on a cellular level. I know that humans are constantly undergoing cellular change, but in Shishmaref I became aware of those shifts. I was conscious of them happening. And the long-term effect of those experiences impacted how I relate to others back then and to this day.
The decision you faced at the end of the book no doubt impacted the rest of your career. Can you tell us a little about what you’ve been up to since your time in Shishmaref?
It took several years after being in the village for me to understand what should come next in my life. All activities seemed to point me toward teaching (my grandmother was right), so I eventually left Alaska to obtain a master’s degree at Minnesota State University, Mankato. One of my professors, Dottie Engan-Barker, invited me to teach a Foundations class for teacher candidates, and I was hooked! I loved working with adults and learning about the history and sociopolitical influences in American education. For the next three years, I had the chance to teach a variety of courses that allowed me freedom with heightening teacher candidates’ awareness of racism in schools and how to change things, one person at a time. I arranged internships for teacher candidates to work in impoverished communities and created and taught a class titled “Empowerment in Teaching.”
When I left Mankato for the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU) to pursue a doctorate, I shifted my focus from “multicultural studies” to the more emotional and spiritual aspects of being a teacher. I was fascinated by the inner work of teaching and wanted to study how contemplative practices like meditation might help teachers work more skillfully with people from different cultures. This shift came about when I was jogging on a treadmill at the university’s rec center, looking into the backyard of Naropa University, a small private institution down the hill and on the other side of Boulder Creek. I spotted people practicing Tai Chi, which looked interesting! Long story short, I conducted a research project on Naropa’s teacher education program and ended up being invited by the director, Richard Brown, to help create a Master’s in Contemplative Education program. For the next thirteen years, I worked with some amazing faculty and teachers, both in person and online. I also learned Tai Chi.
The results of that work convinced me that working on prejudice and racism both in oneself and in society shouldn’t be approached solely through intellectual pursuits; doing so tended to make people defensive and adopt an us-versus-them mindset that led to uncomfortable stalemates and continued misunderstanding. Instead, people could learn to relax their inner boundaries of ego through contemplative practices and arrive more organically at a place of connection, regardless of perceived cultural differences.
One of my favorite segments in my book is in the chapter “Looking Into Tomorrow” where I reference Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Islands.” In that poem, Rukeyser explains how the bathers think they are separate from each other. But if they would just look under the surface, they’d see they are standing on shared ground.
My dissertation research followed this same line of inquiry. I’ve always believed that teachers hold an incredibly powerful position in society for creating transformation individually and writ large throughout society, so when I heard of a program called “The Courage to Teach” (now the Center for Courage & Renewal), I set up a study to go through their teacher professional development program and interview participants about their experiences. The study took two years and included six case studies of middle and high school teachers in the Seattle area so I could study the effects of that program on the teachers’ relationships with their students.
I found that—when given time to reflect on the heart and soul of their teaching practice—teachers were better able to sustain themselves, which helped them create and maintain strong connections to students.
That said, four of the six teachers in my case study group quit teaching soon after the program because they realized that their school’s environment did not support their emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. To stay sane, they had to leave the profession they loved, and find other places to make a difference in the world. Their decision is understandable, but tragic. We still lose about half of the teaching workforce every five years, and it’s not solely due to lack of a livable wage; it’s the unreasonable workloads and unhealthy conditions that turn good people away.
I happen to work in a very supportive school, yet I also feel the mental and emotional strain of cumulative amounts of administrative work that take precious time and energy away from me being the kind of transformative teacher I want to be. Even with all I know about myself and how to “work the system,” there are days when the spirit-killing bureaucracy makes me want to go screeching out of the parking lot, never to return. But something inside makes me want to keep trying. Every day is another chance to learn, and I don’t want to give up on the kids.
Do you have any other projects you’re working on?
Absolutely! With my high school students, I’m testing out the application of the Five Wisdom Energies, a framework for understanding ourselves and each other, and our environment through the lens of different kinds of energy. I learned about this psycho-spiritual approach to human engagement at Naropa University and had success when teaching it to adults at various universities. My students are intrigued, so I’m going to be more courageous with the project by writing a handbook that’s tailored to their level of understanding.My goal is helping them become more confident in who they are and who they are becoming.
I’m also going to start writing vignettes about what I am learning now as a teacher—a collection of stories I will call “Teaching in the Light.” One of my sister-in-laws suggested that title when she heard about my idea. I think it has a nice ring to it.
Finally, I’m in the beginning stages of writing my first novel, which tells the story of a currently popular game, from its o—rigins on another continent and across the seas to America in the late 1800s. (I am keeping the game a secret for now.) There’s a strong female protagonist and shipwrecks and families at war and then at peace—all kinds of exciting twists and turns! It might even be a series. I’m excited to write a saga that has some historical truth, yet allows me free range to make things up.
My biggest challenge is getting the kind of time and concentration I need to research and write. It’s a bit tricky when I’m teaching full-time and wanting to inspire young adults. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
TEACHING IN THE DARK
A MEMOIR
Clarion Rating: 4 out of 5
Directed by humility and humor, Teaching in the Dark covers a nascent educator’s career evolution.
Educator Genét Simone’s memoir Teaching in the Dark is about the tumult of her first year of teaching in a remote Alaskan village.
In 1984 Simone was a recent college graduate. She applied on impulse for a high school teaching position in remote Shishmaref, Alaska. She had no teaching experience and only a few camping trips under her belt. Still, she got the job. The experience tested her physical endurance, professional knowledge, and mental resilience, from the moment she boarded the small, rickety plane headed to the island through to her acclimatization to the land. She struggled to tailor her curriculum to the needs of her Inuit students, knowing that only some of it applied; her students often spent their days fishing and hunting, and many weren’t in search of a college degree. Despite her initial culture shock, Simone settled in well.
Directed by humility and humor, the book includes memories of deciphering the scrunches and eyebrow raises of the locals, traversing snowdrifts in below-freezing temperatures, and discovering how to use a “honey bucket”—a toilet with no plumbing. Radiant imagery captures the snow-covered landscape of Shishmaref as well. In the background are Simone’s constant struggles to give her students the education they needed. In the process, she also learned about herself and what it meant to be an educator. Moments of light tension (as when Simone tried to figure out how to unlock her new home without a key) trade with instances of poignancy, as when Simone recalls younger children coming to say hello and begging for snacks and entertainment. Indeed, the book’s recollections of Simone’s budding relationships with her students are its most memorable portions.
Black-and-white photographs are scattered throughout the text—some more effective than others: the landscape images, and images of artifacts from Simone’s travels, are evocative; there are also more personal shots. A few noticeable punctuation errors appear as well. But the subject of Native culture is approached with sensitivity: Simone acknowledges her role as part of a culture that historically oppressed Indigenous communities. Her interpersonal relationships with Native Alaskans are conveyed in dimensional terms as a result. And the book’s conclusion is bittersweet, reflecting a career-altering decision and an uncertain future.
A humorous, tender memoir, Teaching in the Dark is about a year of teaching—and personal and professional growth—on an island in the Chukchi Sea.
Reviewed by Allison Janicki
March 21, 2024
Allison Janicki
