Veterans Come to Aid of Novice Teachers in Alaska’s ‘Bush’

Mentors help their protégés fit into the community, as well as improve instruction.

In Toksook Bay, Alaska, help for new teachers arrives by phone, Internet, and e-mail—and occasionally, by snowmobile.

Two years ago, when a blizzard made it impossible for planes to reach the village of 532 people on the Bering Sea—no roads go there—Barbara K. Angaiak had to resort to other means. The longtime Alaskan, who is a mentor in a state-run program for new teachers, climbed aboard a snowmobile and rode 17 miles from the village of Nightmute, in subzero temperatures, to the school in Toksook Bay.

Ms. Angaiak is one of 27 veteran teachers working in the Alaska Statewide Mentor Project, an enterprise to help new first- and second-year teachers improve in the classroom—and make the often-difficult adjustment to life outside it, after having taken jobs in some of the...