When Roben Itchoak looks out at the social studies students in her rural Alaska classroom, she knows each one of them has a unique story to tell. They just might not know it yet. But growing up in the remote, Bering Strait region of the state lends itself to unique experiences.

Itchoak and her students live 33 miles south of the Arctic Circle on Sarichef Island, which is just a quarter-mile wide. Almost every student in her classroom is Alaskan Native Inupiat. Over the course of just a few fall days this year, that coastal community sustained a one-two punch from back-to-back storms that eroded more than 20 feet of precious coastline. Communities north and south of this community experienced homes swept off their foundations and prompted evacuations. 

Lives were threatened and families were uprooted.

Shishmaref experienced similar losses caused by severe erosion in the 1990s. Homes were relocated to safer and slightly higher ground. Shishmaref will have to relocate within the next 20 years. 

Disasters like these underscore why Itchoak’s work matters. A powerful storm can wash away a lifetime of memories, reminding her how vital it is to keep local stories alive. For her, storytelling isn’t just a lesson plan — it’s a way for students to make sense of change, carry forward their history, and protect what can’t be rebuilt.

“Alaskan stories are hard,” she said. “There’s some beautiful ones, but there is historical and ongoing trauma. And there’s all these stories.”

Itchoak didn’t realize it at the time, but when she enrolled in a federally-funded professional development program for educators in Alaska a few years ago, she would learn how to develop storytellers out of her students. And she would do it in a culturally-responsive, trauma-informed way.

Equipped with new learnings, Itchoak took new tools back to the classroom to surface those stories in ways that allow her students to more actively participate in their learning, gain a sense of agency about their lived experiences, and understand the value they each have to their community, even if they learn in non-traditional ways.

“I get to see them build their power and develop their power in creating their stories and celebrate their success,” she said.

The course Itchoak enrolled in as part of the state’s Alaskan studies and culture requirement for new teachers was facilitated by See Stories, a program funded by the Library of Congress. The “Teaching with Primary Sources” course allowed Itchoak to combine her love of filmmaking with storytelling while speaking to her passion for redeveloping healthy and vibrant indigenous communities. 

She brought to the course a master’s degree in education, 10 years of experience working in a museum and a personal commitment to find ways to preserve the Arctic. Storytelling seemed like a natural vehicle for that preservation effort. And the course required her to dig into the National Archives, an assignment that unearthed Indigenous trauma she would learn to temper for her future students. 

“The archive for Native American women is painful,” she said. “When the search terms didn’t apply for me, I had to resort to typing terms like ‘squaw,’ ‘seal’ and ‘savage.’ That experience is what catapulted me into my current work with See Stories.”

After completing the course, Itchoak joined See Stories as a guest instructor and steering committee member. She helped develop curriculum for other educators in Alaska while also utilizing her learnings in her classroom. And she helped to put Alaskan students and educators in charge of researching topics, using primary sources, and ultimately producing films. 

“I was able to help develop the curriculum with those cultural standards, with that trauma-informed lens that the state promotes, that not everybody implements for a lot of different reasons. The stigma or taboo of being trauma-informed,” Itchoak said, recalling the search terms she had to use for her own project. “The educator is informed and prepared so the students don’t experience it.”

As someone who deeply values equity and justice and fairness, and as an Indigenous Alaskan woman raised in Nome, Itchoak believes the See Stories program adds a vital educational opportunity for a population that historically and continually faces threats of erasure. Ahead of that devastating storm, a $20 million federal grant for flood prevention on Alaska’s coast, from the Environmental Protection Agency had been canceled by the Trump administration.

When students are tasked with researching, interviewing and producing films that reflect their Alaskan upbringing, it offers an alternate avenue of participation while validating their existence whether they are, Alaskan Native, Native Alaskan, or new to the state.

“Just the idea of being recognized as a living, breathing human and knowing one’s thoughts and ideas are heard, whether or not they agree with them or like them, each student is a valuable human,” she said. “How wonderful is it that every student, no matter their background, with a See Stories teacher is repopulating the national archive with their stories based on where they’re living? It’s validating.”

For now, the number of educators trained to utilize the See Stories curriculum will remain static. Funding for the educator training portion of the program, allocated through a Department of Education National Activities grant, was canceled by the Trump administration.

But, Itchoak will continue utilizing it in her classroom, as can any other See Stories teacher who has already received the training. Itchoak is committed because she’s seen the difference the program has made for her students, particularly in an era when communication has shifted to texting more often than talking.

In fact, a former student let her know that one of their first assignments in college involved interviewing someone. 

“They were really happy to have learned how to do that. That was not a transferable skill I expected to be useful right away at university,” she said. “I just knew our communities…our history is so important.” 

Her future students will not only hear her discuss the value of their heritage and the power of public funding, including the importance of paying taxes, but they’ll get the chance to create their own historically-anchored films. 

“In order to have communities we desire that are funded in ways we desire, we have to act in those ways as well,” she said, borrowing portions of seven generational thinking, she shares with her students. “I tell them they are my grandchildren’s elders. I need them.”