Carla Swick teaches Japanese at Palmer High School in Alaska, her alma mater, where her true love of language, other cultures, and people began as a student.
A three-week homestay and high school exchange to Palmer’s Sister City, Saroma, Japan ignited a desire to explore the world. After high school, she studied in Gnosjo, Sweden for one year as an AFS exchange student. She then majored in Secondary English Education and minored in Japanese Language at the University of Wyoming. Her junior year of university, she studied as a Rotary Scholar at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. After university graduation, she was invited to return to Saroma to teach English in the town’s middle schools and work as an educator and translator for the local school board. She taught in Japan for three and a half years and just finished her 23rd year of teaching Japanese in Alaska. She is a proud participant of the 2019-2020 J-LEAP program and is the Pacific Northwest Council For Languages (PNCFL) 2019 Teacher of the Year.
When she’s not teaching, you can find her playing in Alaska’s outdoors with her husband Lance and eight-year-old son Billy. She loves hiking, playing hockey, floating the Kenai, watching Kansas City Chiefs football games, and traveling the globe.