NEAH BAY — The teacher up there doesn’t look so much older than his students. And he remembers, so clearly, what it felt like to be a teenager way out on the continent’s far corner on the Makah Reservation, surrounded by your extended family.
But the Neah Bay High School where Wilson Arnold, 34, taught this year is a long way from the one he graduated from in 1996.
“When I went to the University of Washington, I had to study 12 hours a day,” he recalls. “I hadn’t had the academic rigor in high school.”
But “I didn’t want to fail,” he adds softly.
This was the late 1990s, and while his UW classmates studied maybe six hours a day, Arnold struggled and toiled. He wanted a degree in zoology, and he had plans to “come back and give back,” as he puts it, to work for the Makah tribe as a fisheries biologist.
It was not to be. After attending UW, Arnold picked up a job in a preschool. There, he discovered his calling, a vocation that would bring him back home.
First, though, Arnold armed himself with some more formal training. He went to Seattle University, to complete the intense, year-long master’s in teaching program. After doing his student teaching in Seattle, he landed a job out here, teaching all of Neah Bay High’s science classes. This past week, he completed his eighth year at the remote school.
A spring visit to Arnold’s classroom revealed that he’s teaching far more than chemistry, physics, mitosis and meiosis. Arnold uses a technique called “learning targets,” not only for daily lessons but also for life after high school.
It’s working. When a reporter walks into the room just before the start of class, senior Rebecca Thompson greets her with the news that 100 percent of her class has been accepted into a university, technical school or the military.
Thompson, 18, is getting ready to move to Seattle, where she’ll major in pre-dentistry at UW. Her classmates also are preparing to depart: Titus Pascua and Holly Lucas for Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma; Mike Dulik for Washington State University, Bonnie Alonzo for Eastern Washington University, Shantelle Kallapa for Northwest University and class valedictorian Crysandra Sones for the University of Oregon.
But these seniors weren’t always so exemplary. Back when they were freshmen, Arnold remembers, they seemed so apathetic, so disorganized, that he felt like throwing up his hands.
Arnold let his students know exactly how he was feeling. You’re not living up to your potential, he told them. Keep this up, and you might just squander the future.
The following year, the students began to change.
As sophomores, Arnold recalls, they brought a new energy to their work. That has been building, year by year, he says, until the class of 2012 emerged with a fierce focus.
This may sound a bit like a fairy tale, like one of those Hollywood movies about the heroic high school teacher. But watch Arnold in action, and you see he’s the real deal: a man who brings to his profession an effective mix of resolve, humor and humility.
But he doesn’t take credit for the successes of 2012.
“I just work here,” Arnold says with a straight face.
It’s Neah Bay High School as a whole, he says, that has turned students around. Principal Ann Renker and Cape Flattery School District Superintendent Kandy Ritter, with their faculty and staff, share one vision. It’s about high expectations and about doing whatever it takes to inspire one student at a time.
Together, they work from the growth mind set, an approach that praises students not only for talent but also for effort and perseverance. Instead of telling a youngster, “Come on, you’re smart,” these educators highlight hard work — and they get in there and do it, day after day.
“We are very, very lucky,” says Renker, “to have a lot of superstar teachers who spend countless hours off the clock” helping with homework and taking students on trips to college campuses.
“Our staff comes together,” she adds, “and has a common philosophy about high expectations.”
The results are coming in. Neah Bay’s state test scores have climbed steadily. In 2005, the year Renker became principal, just 21.7 percent of sophomores passed the writing assessments. In 2010, 100 percent passed.
On the reading test, 60.9 percent passed in 2005; in 2010, 95 percent passed. In science, the percentage rose from zero in 2005 to 55.6 percent passing in 2010.
Then, in the 2011-2012 school year, Renker and her school won an inaugural grant from the Washington Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics — STEM — Foundation. This caught the attention of People magazine. The magazine sent a team of journalists out to Neah Bay to highlight Arnold and his students — and there they all are in the April 23 issue of People, alongside the cover story about “Dancing with the Stars” heartthrob William Levy and a spread on Ricki Lake’s wedding.
The magazine hails Arnold’s energetic teaching style, as well as his other tactics. This past spring, Arnold made a promise to cut off his shoulder-length, Justin Bieber-like hair — make that shave his head — if 60 percent of his students passed the state science test.
Sixty-four percent passed, and Arnold shed his shiny black locks.
They grew back in time, fortunately, for the People photos and story, which served as a cornerstone for the magazine’s Teacher of the Year contest. Nominations are being accepted through July 2 at People.com/teacherofyear; the magazine is looking for “the country’s most dedicated, successful teachers” and will award $5,000 to the educator and his or her school.
As for Arnold, he’s inclined to put the emphasis back on Neah Bay’s teenagers and their progress.
“The best thing to watch is the growth,” he says, “to watch them come in unfocused, and then leave as focused, responsible students.”
This year was a triumphant one for the school on another level: the Red Devils football team won the state championship.
The Neah Bay student body has many stellar athletes out there, in basketball and volleyball — but such success can make it difficult for the classroom teachers. Teams are traveling a lot; the school is already small, with class sizes between 11 and 24 students, and when a whole team is away at a game, Arnold has to help them with a lot of makeup work.
Not that the state victory wasn’t “great for the kids,” he says. It also signified something more than raw talent.
“We’ve had teams that were more talented — but this team worked together and went [to the championship] with a positive attitude.
“My message to them when they came back was: Congratulations, Red Devils. If you talk like a champion, walk like a champion, and act like a champion, you will be a champion. Now, let’s get back to work.”
To put a sharper point on it, Arnold adds: “There are two things I live by. Having high expectations. And I just like my kids.”
Of course, there have been tough students, youngsters who start to think this science class is just too hard. Or there might be a bigger issue, such as a family problem, so the student acts up in class.
This calls on Arnold’s abilities not just as a university-educated teacher, but as one who knows what it’s like to grow up in Neah Bay.
“I talk to them alone,” he says of students who disrupt his class. “And they’ll tell me that something is going on, or they’re just having a bad day.
“I tell them: You can have a bad day. But you can’t quit.
“I’ve had plenty of bad days. But I will never quit.”
Arnold’s colleagues at Neah Bay High are with him on this. These colleagues include his mother, Cora Buttram, who’s been teaching Makah cultural arts at the school for two years; she likes to bounce ideas off him now and again.
Both of his parents have inspired him; his father, Greig Arnold, also graduated from the University of Washington, and is a planner with the Makah Tribe.
“My dad is very driven; my mom is compassionate,” Arnold says. The son got “the best of both worlds.”
There was also an educator at Neah Bay High, way back in the 1990s, who inspired him: science teacher Gary Giovanni, who showed young Arnold the possibilities of a career in science.
And while Arnold appreciated the foundation he was given here — and acknowledges how hard it is to leave his family and community — he felt driven to see more.
“I wanted to go and experience the world,” he says, “and the only way I was going to do that is if I got an education.”
He also found a life partner, a woman who returned with him to the Makah Reservation. Robin Arnold is Neah Bay High School’s psychologist, counselor and college financial aid finder.
“The success we’ve had in getting kids admitted to college is due to her work,” helping them navigate applications, scholarships and grants.
The Arnolds, married six years now, are also quite busy outside school; they’re parents to Milla, soon to be 2, and Liam, 5 months.
Robin, with her juggling of family, profession and community, “amazes me every day,” her husband says.
The time has come, though, for the family to make another move. Robin wants to earn a doctorate, and as the Arnold family grows, they need a bigger place. They plan to move this summer to the Everett area, where Robin already has been hired as an elementary school psychologist.
Arnold, after eight years at his first full-time post, is looking for a teaching position in Everett or Mill Creek.
He’ll keep the house in Neah Bay, so the family can come back and visit a lot.
“The hardest part,” Arnold says, “is moving my kids away from their grandparents.”
And so like his seniors in the class of 2012, Arnold will leave his home town, to explore another place. The move is “the next stage . . . a leap of faith,” just like the students are making.