Wrangell High School senior Anne Prysunka traveled to Anchorage earlier this month to present her senior project on bears at the Alaska Forum on the Environment.
Since early January, Prysunka, 17, has been working on her senior project that has included teaching Wrangell elementary students about bears in Alaska and the animal’s significance within the community.
“I wanted to connect the youth of Wrangell to the rich culture that surrounds the community,” she said. “To do that, I wanted to use the symbol of the bear, because the bear represents wisdom and power for native culture around this region.”
Bears are also Prysunka favorite animals, so it was an obvious choice to incorporate them into her senior project. Prysunka also knew she wanted to work with children.
She began by creating a simple drawing of a bear that soon turned into an intricate piece of art including native designs. She enlarged her drawing to a poster roughly 8 by 10 feet in size, she said.
Her design will now be used in the poster for this summer’s Bear Fest in Wrangell, Prysunka said.
“I’m really excited about that,” she said.
Last month, Prysunka began visiting elementary students to teach them about bears.
To the first graders, Prysunka said she talked about the differences in brown and black bears and read them children books about bears. While reading to them, Prysunka gave the students coloring materials and encouraged them to draw. With those pieces of art, Prysunka plans to make a bear collage to display next to her large bear poster at Bear Fest.
“The kids were informed about the bear and informed on native culture, and they were able to get creative,” Prysunka said.
And soon, Prysunka plans to visit with fourth graders and give them smaller replicas of her bear drawing and ask them to color it in a way that represents Alaska, she said. For instance, she said if the students think the Alaska flag is a good representation of the state, the children may color in the bear using the color blue and yellow starts, she said. Those drawings will also hang next to Prysunka’s bear poster at Bear Fest, she said.
Every senior at WHS is required to complete a senior project during their last year at the school, said Therese Pempeck who oversees the senior projects. The projects must be community-based, she said.
However, students are allowed to be creative in specifying what exactly they want to do for their senior projects. Some students this year are hosting a radio show on KSTK, some are teaching free guitar and drum lessons while others volunteered to be youth baseball coaches, Pempeck said.
The Alaska Forum on the Environment is a four-day conference in Anchorage that welcomes Alaskan students or student groups working on environmental projects that incorporate youth participation. After hearing about the forum, Pempeck suggested to Prysunka that she apply to present her project. The students selected to travel to the conference are given travel money and asked to give a 12-minute talk describing their environmental project.
Prysunka was selected to attend the forum and traveled with her father, who also served as a mentor to Prysunka for her project, Feb. 5-10. Prysunka said she presented her project in front of about 70 people. During her speech, she said she focused on the importance of the bear in Wrangell as well as the importance of the town’s annual Bear Fest.
“It’s a tourist attraction, but it is something that brings Wrangell together,” she said. “It shows us how much pride we have in our own little town.”
During the trip, Prysunka also got to meet the Deputy Secretary to the Department of Interior, David J. Hayes.
Prysunka thinks her presentation in Anchorage helped spread the word about Wrangell and the Bear Fest.
“It was a great experience, it actually did make a difference,” she said. “It brought a lot of recognition to Wrangell, like a lot of recognition.”
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