For some teenagers from rural Alaska, learning to drive in Anchorage is a rite of passage

On a recent fall afternoon, Talya Robart slid into the driver’s seat of a gray Ford Fusion in an Anchorage parking lot, one of Alaska’s newest licensed drivers.

“Ready to go?” said her driver’s education teacher, the preternaturally calm Victor Shen.

Robart lives in Tatitlek, an Alutiiq village with a population of about 40 people, situated at the base of a towering green mountain in Eastern Prince William Sound. The main road in the community runs from the airport to the ferry dock, a distance of a single mile. Some people have trucks, but ATVs are more common, Robart says. There are no stoplights, or even stop signs, for many miles.

The 16-year-old is among dozens of teenagers from rural Alaska who come to Anchorage every year for a rite of passage: learning to drive in the big city.

Robart had spent the last two weeks learning to navigate the streets of Anchorage under the gentle tutelage of her driver’s ed teacher through a residential program offered by Voyage to Excellence, part of the Chugach School District. Together with a handful of other teens from Whittier and Tatitlek, she had reckoned with roundabouts, merged onto highways, navigated lane changes and massive, slow-moving RVs. She had driven up the bumpy, narrow road to the back side of Flattop hiking trail and cruised, at the speed limit, all the way to Girdwood on the Seward Highway.

And this morning, Robart and her classmate Mary Jane Nonog from Whittier had gone to the Anchorage DMV and passed their tests with flying colors.

During two-week terms, students can sign up to stay in dorms on the South Anchorage campus of what students refer to as “Voyage School” while intensively studying everything from snow science to culinary arts. A life skills class teaches budgeting, bank accounts, establishing credit and applying for financial aid and scholarships. An emergency medicine certification allows high schoolers to earn their first 80 hours toward becoming an Emergency Medical Technician. There are even backpacking and mountain biking trips, some held in far-flung destinations like Texas and Utah.

The idea is that education can be enriched by intensive learning of skills that wouldn’t otherwise be available in small village schools, where often one or two teachers instruct across many grade levels, said Stephanie Burgoon, the school’s principal.

“It’s all about doing things here that you wouldn’t be able to do in your community,” Burgoon said. “However, it’s also all about learning the skills that you can take back to your community.”

Students come from villages such as Mountain Village, Hooper Bay, Emmonak and Akiak and others. They also come from the Chugach School District’s three communities of Whittier, Chenega and Tatitlek.

In the evenings, teachers take them on outings to do other Anchorage activities, such as run in the Bonny Sosa Tuesday Night Races series, see a movie at the Dimond Center or bounce at a trampoline park. Lots of the kids have plenty of experience in Anchorage through extended family and other visits, Burgoon said, but getting out and about in the city is also a learning experience.

Driver’s education fits squarely within the school’s goal of preparing students for life after high school. There’s no DMV and not much opportunity for a formal driver’s education in many communities, she said. And private driver’s ed in Anchorage can cost hundreds of dollars.

“We want to provide life skills,” Burgoon said. “And a driver’s license is one of those big things kids and adults need in order to have a job.”

Voyage School is not the only place rural students can go for driver’s education: The Lower Yukon School District also offers driver’s ed classes — including a driving simulator — at the Kusilvak Career Academy, a similar fixed-term residential school in the Spenard neighborhood.

Freshly licensed, Robart pulled out of the Voyage School parking lot and cruised through a tucked-away neighborhood, eventually turning onto O’Malley Road. Shen narrated quietly as she drove.

Many students come to driver’s ed with plenty of experience on ATVs and snowmachines, but little in cars or trucks, Shen said. Not all the students come from villages with car-drivable roads.

“A lot of students know that already, they drive side-by-sides back home,” Shen said.

Robart circled roundabouts and adjusted as a large RV overtook her in the right-hand lane. The actual driver’s test hadn’t been that hard, said Robart and Nonog.

“We were super nervous the night before, but then we got there and we were like — oh!” Robart said. “It was easy.”

What will they do with the ability to drive? Nonog said she’d probably come in to Anchorage sometimes from Whittier. And when she travels to the Philippines for an extended visit to family, she planned to seek her international driver’s license so she could drive there too.

For Robart, the answer was closer to home. “I’ll probably be driving to the airport a lot, to pick up freight,” she said.

Editor’s note: Stephanie Burgoon is also a freelance sports photographer whose work has appeared in the Anchorage Daily News.