From place to place- Learning beyond walls.

There are places that shape you in ways that stay long after you leave. For me, Southeast Alaska is one of those places.

Last year, I had the opportunity to spend time working alongside the incredible team at the Sealaska Heritage Institute. What I experienced there continues to influence how I think about education, community, and what it truly means to belong to a place.

Southeast Alaska has a way of slowing you down. The ocean, the forest, the mist that moves between mountains — everything feels deeply alive. But what left a lasting impression on me was not just the landscape- it was the people and the stories that live within it.

The work being done through Sealaska Heritage Institute centers the cultures and knowledge of the Tlingit people, Haida people, and Tsimshian people. I had the privilege of learning from educators, culture bearers, and community members who carry generations of wisdom about land, language, and identity.

What struck me most was how education there is inseparable from place.

Stories are not simply told for entertainment. They carry history, survival knowledge, moral teachings, and identity. They are living threads that tie generations together. Elders share knowledge not just about the past, but about how to live responsibly in the present.

In Southeast Alaska, education does not happen only inside classrooms. It happens on the shoreline, in the forest, during the carving of a canoe, through language revitalization, and around tables where food and stories are shared.

That experience reshaped how I view learning.

When I returned home to Montana and continued building Rain or Shine School, I carried those lessons with me. While the ecosystems are different — coastal rainforest in Alaska and mountain forests in Montana — the heart of the work remains the same.

Children need connection.

Connection to land.
Connection to stories.
Connection to the people who came before them.

Place-based education is not just about taking children outside. It is about helping them understand that they are part of a larger story. The soil beneath their feet holds history. The rivers, the animals, the trees — they all have something to teach us if we learn how to listen.

At Rain or Shine School, we try to cultivate that same sense of belonging. Children dig in the soil, follow animal tracks, notice the seasonal shifts, and learn through direct experience with the natural world around them. These small daily encounters build something powerful: a relationship with place.

The people I met in Southeast Alaska reminded me that education is not simply about information. It is about remembrance.

Remembering how to live with the land rather than on top of it.
Remembering that stories carry wisdom.
Remembering that communities are built through shared experience and care for one another.

From Alaska to Montana, my mission has stayed remarkably consistent.

To create learning environments rooted in place.
To honor storytelling as a way of knowing.
To help children and families feel deeply connected to the landscapes they call home.

The mountains may be different, and the waters may flow in different directions, but the heart of the work remains the same.

Connection.
Place-based learning.
Stories that remind us who we are and where we belong.

Want to know more about what SHI is doing in SE AK.- read more here!