The Village that I Love

View of the Yukon

I think it is officially beginning to feel like winter here. The river is freezing over quite nicely. The temperatures hover right around 32 (for now). The sun doesn't rise until close to 10 am or later. Yup, feels like winter is coming on.





I was afraid I wouldn't have anything really interesting to write about this week, but then I realized my birthday and parent-teacher conferences were both this week along with the village Halloween Carnival at the school.  It was a very fun week with lots of successful events, I would say.

Our packed gym

Parent-Teacher conferences: In an earlier blog, I told you that expectations are different for parents here than they are in the lower 48. School is not seen as important here and therefore parents don't necessarily NEED to come to things like parent-teacher conferences. Normally, half or less of the student's parents show up. For my very first parent-teacher conferences, eight of my ten students had a parent show up to discuss their students progress! I was amazed, astonished, and stoked that so many came out. I even had one suggesting ways they could help their child improve at home! It was amazing and I was so happy with the results. Since the beginning of the semester I have believed that I have the best group of students in the school, and because so many of their parents showed up, I was able to brag to almost all of their parents about how great their students are. As a first year teacher to have so much success, that was definitely a self-esteem booster as well.

box full of birthday goodies!

Birthday: I loved getting packages from home for my birthday. They were awesome. It was also really neat to celebrate my birthday in such a small place. Literally everyone knew I was turning twenty-three. Every single kid came up to me at school and told me happy birthday. It made the day even a little bit more special because so many people cared. Not only that, but all of the teachers become like a second family out here. Our bush family celebrated my birthday with cake and a movie. It was just a little simple get together at a teacher's house. But to me, it was perfect. We couldn't go out to the mall, or to a restaurant, or do anything you may have done living with the normal conveniences of civilizational surroundings, but we had each other and it made my birthday the most perfect day this year.

Escaping the Haunted House at the back

Halloween Carnival: Last night was the Halloween Carnival held at the school. They had booths for games set up all around the gym, a prize room for winners, and even a haunted house in the hallways of the school. When things like that are open to the community, everyone in the village comes out to celebrate. The gym was PACKED with people! There was no entry fee, just a sweet little ticket booth selling tickets to win prizes with. I worked the free throw shot. Students would pay two tickets to get four shots on the free throw line. If they made a shot, they won a prize ticket. I picked this event because basketball is a big deal here. I figured a lot of the students would enjoy this game. I was right. Especially one of the seventh graders who isn't in my class. He kept coming back over and over again. He wasn't bad, either. Several times he made all four shots. I was impressed.

Pond frozen over

It has been a great week, but it isn't quite over. Today we are celebrating a two year old's birthday. Then, next week is Halloween. That is a big deal around here. I would appreciate prayers for next week because Wednesday and Thursday will be pretty crazy days because of Halloween. I am excited to celebrate my first holiday with these people in this village that I love so very much.

Ice On The River

Our referee for a few games/volleyball coach

Last week was a dreadful week! Being a teacher is hardest just a few times a year, and when report cards are due is one of those times. Fortunately, I finished all of my grading and what not, but it is a lot of extra stress and worry for one solid week. 

It started snowing!

On top of that, there was a volleyball tournament hosted here this weekend. It was a lot of fun, but the teachers have to do a lot of work for these things such as line judging and officiating, and score keeping. I like doing score keeping, so I did that for all the games. By yesterday afternoon when I came home I just passed out for a while, because I was so exhausted. 

Ice floating down the river

I woke up from my nap and decided to go get some things from my classroom so I could get some stuff done and ran into two of the other teachers heading to the store. I caught a ride with them since it seemed like the thing to do. 

On our way we drove down beside the slough, and looked over to see ice chunks heading down the slough. It was beautiful. It was the real first sign of winter coming. Soon the river will be frozen over, snow will completely cover the ground, and everyone will get their snowmobiles out to play.

Soon it will be completely frozen over

 I'm looking forward to it because there are many other things to do once the snow settles in. It opens a whole new world of adventures for me. 

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Sorry that this post isn't very long, like I said it was a very busy week. If I wasn't in my classroom, I was in my bed asleep! Hope you enjoy seeing the fun pictures from a great weekend!

Last of the First Nine Weeks

Beautiful snow

It snowed today. Twice actually, although the first time isn't really what a lot of people would consider snow. Me, being from the southwest thought it was beautiful. Then, when I saw the real snow, I realized that the first snow was dull. This was majestic. I made myself a nice cup of hot cocoa just for the occasion, even though it isn't that cold out here yet. I also took some pictures just for my wonderful readers. Ah, what a wonderful place it is out here!

This week felt so very long! By Wednesday I was ready for the weekend. Of course, each weekend seems to become shorter and shorter. Or maybe that is just the days. My roommate told me that daily we are losing five minutes of sunlight, two and a half in the morning, and two and a half in the evening. It is extremely noticeable. Back home you didn't start noticing the night getting darker until daylight savings time. I wasn't expecting it to be so much darker already in the mornings.

But it is beautiful. Every morning as I leave my house to go to work I take a moment on my steps to look at the stars. They are magnificent! I can see so many more than I could even from our farm back home. The big dipper is right above us right now, making me feel like I could be scooped up into the sky any morning. It really cheers me up when I can wake up and look at the stars and the moon. It reminds me that I woke up for a reason this morning.

Mom's famous chili... yum!

I'm not a very good cook. That is probably one of the hardest things so far about living on my own in the remote Alaskan bush. If I screw up dinner, there is only one restaurant to go and solve my problems at. Unfortunately, the restaurant closes at seven so if I make dinner after then I can't very well do anything except try again. My mom is an excellent cook. You would think I would get some of those genes, but they skipped right over me and went to my younger siblings. My mom is great, though. She sent a care package with all the things (except meat) to make her famous chili. It was the highlight of my week when I got that package. I followed her recipe to the tee and my chili turned out fabulous! I even had the other new teachers over to try some and they loved it. If I keep following my mom's recipes so well, people are going to get the wrong idea!

Probably the worst thing that happened this week was something I put a lot of effort into. My kids made awesome dioramas of things we had been learning about. I was so impressed that I decided the kids should get to show off to their parents. I made cookies and invited all the parents to come to the classroom for just a half hour one day this week. I stayed until almost 5:30, an hour after I was supposed to be done, and no one showed up. Not one parent. They didn't want to come see the miraculous things their child had done. The other teachers told me not to take it personally, and I don't. They worked so hard on those things. That is the norm here, though. We have parent-teacher conferences coming up and the other teachers have said not to hold my breath, that the parents won't show up for that, either. It's just the way of the people here. I don't understand it, but that is the culture, I guess.

Big snowflakes!

The best thing that  happened this week was moving my classroom around. I don't have any pictures to put up on here. I didn't take any to show you, but let's just say it is completely reversed. I moved my desk to the opposite side of the classroom and it looks really different that way. It was a lot of fun, though. I also did a lot of reorganizing, so hopefully those two things don't add up and haunt me this next week, especially since report card info is due at the end of the week. I'm not looking forward to that, by any means!



I'll be teaching on weather, the thirteen original colonies, Alaska's original Natives, metacognition, short stories, and fractions. Maybe this last week of the quarter will be the most productive.

This Is How We Know What We Know

Another view of the dioramas

This week wasn't super eventful, but the students started a project last week and finished it up on Wednesday that made me think of a topic for this blog. It is something that I have been realizing more and more since being here, but never thought about before. It answers the question, "How do we know the things we know?" If all you had ever known was a small town, with a couple tiny stores, no bowling alleys or movie theaters or anything less than a plane ride away, how much would you really be able to relate to the outside world? 

Here are most of the students' projects. As you can see,
most of them are on white or blue paper, representing snow

In social studies we studied the different groups of Early Americans, including the original people of this area, my students' ancestors. We learned a lot about these people. As a culminating activity, I had the students choose any of these groups of Native Americans and create a diorama of the culture. All but two of my students chose the Early Americans in the north-- Their ancestors. It got me to thinking about how they really have no way to relate to any of the other cultures we discussed, even though they learned so much about them for the two weeks before we began the project.  All most of these kids have ever known is hunting moose and seal and super cold winters. They've never been to the deserts of Arizona or into caves. They've never been in the woods where tall trees reach to the heavens or the plains where buffalo can roam wild with nothing holding them back. All they know is the marshy land and ice they see every year. It was a wonderful thing to realize.

This is one of two projects on a different area than North Native Americans

Even though I have been directing my lessons as much as I can to their culture, it really opened my eyes to how important it is to relate to their culture. They don't know the outside world. They've never been to a museum, a movie theater, or a Wal-mart. These things that I've taken for granted throughout my life are things that these kids have never seen. I can't just assume that because students in any other town in the lower 48 may have been to a fair or carnival, these students have only heard of them or seen them on movies. They don't know the atmosphere of a fair or carnival or the smells. 

Our bonfire started off cold and rainy

One of the Black Fish caught

In other news, we had a play day at the school for the students who have been well behaved in the halls. It was a lot of fun and we had a pretty good turnout. We also had a bonfire down by the dock, which was loads of fun, even though the weather was a bit rainy and cold. We shot the guns, cooked s'mores and hot dogs, and on our way back, found a puddle with black fish. Black fish is translated into Yup'ik as emmonak, or emoniq (?). It was very interesting finding fish in a puddle. We caught two of the bigger ones, and there were tons of baby ones, too. It was a catch and release, though, they were small, even for bigger fish. One of the teacher's husbands told us the people here catch them to eat. He also said you can catch them, put them in the freezer for a few days, and then take them out and put them in water and they will come back to life. Crazy!

This is the puddle the Black Fish call home

The highlight of my week was learning how important relating to the culture is in this community. It is the best way to reach the students with information, because they don't relate to the same things you or I would. The students worked really hard on their projects, and I am so proud of the great work they did!

A beautiful sunset to end the night