As a component of the University of Alaska's Cross-Cultural Orientation Program (X-COP), this journal provides a forum for rural Alaska teachers to share experiences and ideas. Articles in this issue discuss: (1) a highly rated school in Manokotak--a Yup'ik Eskimo community that is intergrating schooling into its contemporary Yup'ik culture; (2) songs as beginning reading materials to aid oral language development and bilingual education; (3) definitions and characteristics of "culture"; (4) advantages of traditional village life in Newtok, Alaska; (5) changing beginning reading instruction by reducing skill practice and Socratic questioning exercises and increasing teacher modeling of reading and direct student involvement in the reading lesson; and (6) a second-year rural teacher's advice on teacher-community relationships, laughter as a cross-cultural link, use of local social and learning patterns in the classroom, use of local teacher aides, and computers to assist individualized instruction. This issue also contains poems, anecdotes, descriptions of teaching experiences, a description of a memorial potlatch, an essay on expanding cognizance of our own behaviors--particularly teaching behaviors and methods--by learning from other species, and addresses of X-COP participants and other rural teachers. (SV)