Alumni Spotlight - Racquel Wright

Moose nose soup and boiled fish heads. Winter nights that last 19 hours or more – and endless summer days.

That’s life in Alaska, and recent YSU grad Racquel Wright has been learning to adapt since she moved to the remote Southern Alaska village of Newhalen to accept a school counseling position last year.

Born and raised in New Castle, Pa., Wright earned an undergraduate degree from Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pa., then enrolled in YSU’s graduate Mental Health Counseling program. Serendipitously, she signed up for School Counseling Ethics class by mistake, loved it, and switched to the School Counseling track.

The Alaskan assignment was also an about-face from her original plans.

After completing her YSU master's degree, Wright attended a career fair near Pittsburgh seeking a job close to home. A representative from the Alaskan school district approached, told her about the program and suggested she interview “just to gain experience.”

Within a week she had signed a one-year contract and was making plans to move north. “I figured, what’s 10 months out of my whole life,” she said. “But now I love it here so much, I’ll stay a few years if I can.”

She relocated to Newhalen last August and lives in a tiny apartment next door to the school. She provides weekly group counseling sessions, using a preventative violence curriculum that emphasizes kindness, empathy and anger management. One-on-one student counseling sessions are often done via Skype.

When Wright says the village is “in the middle of nowhere,” she’s not exaggerating.

Newhalen is in a mountainous area 320 miles southwest of Anchorage, with a single paved road that runs from the airport to the school. The school district is about the size of West Virginia, with 12 schools and 300 students in grades K-12 spread across hundreds of miles. “There are no roads to get from village to village,” she said. “You take a plane or a boat wherever you go.”

Winter temperatures have been similar to what she experienced in Pennsylvania, but the short winter days and long nights took some getting used to. Wright found it even tougher to cope with Alaskan summers, when daylight can stretch 21 hours or more. “It’s 11 p.m., but it’s bright as day, so you just keep going,” she said. “It’s hard to realize that it’s time to sleep.”

Wright is learning to understand the culture, language and dialects of the Alaskan natives she works with – about 91 percent of Newhalen’s population are Eskimo or part Eskimo and speak both Yupik and English.

Food choices can be an adventure. So far, she has refused to try moose nose soup or boiled fish heads, both menu favorites in the region she now calls home. “The people here eat every part of the animal that you can imagine. They don’t waste anything,” she explained. “It’s part of their history and culture.”

The prevalence of air travel on small planes resulted in the first major crisis she faced in her new school counseling position. A pilot, a coach and his two teenaged children were tragically killed in December when their single-engine plane crashed over a lake on the way to a state volleyball championship in Anchorage.

Wright flew to Port Alsworth, their home village, to offer counseling to the grieving students and school staff. “It was baptism by fire. It was my first experience dealing with school grief, and I had no idea what to do or say,” she said. “I emailed one of my Counseling professors at YSU, Dr. Don Martin, and he helped me out. He gave me some encouraging words. I was so grateful!”

Profile by Cynthia Hixenbaugh