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FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The towns of Mentasta Lake, Alaska, and Fort Gibson, OK, are more than 2,770 miles apart but have shared a close relationship this school year thanks to a first-year elementary teacher.
Mallory Cooper, 24, moved to Mentasta Lake, a small village 47 miles from Tok, early this summer to take a teaching position at the city's school. The village, with 114 people, is pretty different from Fort Gibson, where she grew up, a town of 4,000 in northeast Oklahoma — a town she thought was small growing up. This year's senior class at Fort Gibson High School is made up of 130 students.
"That's way more than these kids (in Mentasta Lake) are used to seeing, especially in one school, let alone in one grade,” Cooper said.
The Mentasta Lake school has 17 kids in grades kindergarten through 12. Cooper, one of only two teachers at the school, teaches 11 of them.
For the past several months, those 11 kids have gotten a taste of Oklahoma, not only through Cooper, but through an exchange of letters and gifts with the senior class in Fort Gibson.
"We're really just trying to be pen pals with them,” said Katie Smith, a 17-year-old senior in Fort Gibson. "We're sending up different gifts for different holidays.”
Cooper's students have enjoyed the little gifts, but she said she hopes they enjoy the connections they're forming more.
"It's been a learning experience for them to see something that they would have never experienced in the village,” she said.
Living in Mentasta Lake has been a new experience for Cooper as well, who said she's dreamed of teaching in Alaska since she was in middle school.
Smith said the seniors are planning on continuing the relationship for the rest of the year.
