Culture Days, Senior Dinner, and Graduation

Senior Dinner

Graduation

This is the basket I made

Akutaq

WOW!! What a week we've had out here in the village! It was probably the busiest week since we hosted Elementary NYO. Monday and Tuesday were Culture Days, where the students participated in many different culture events including making Lap Balls (for a game similar to baseball called Lap Game), Eskimo Ice Cream (akutaq in Yupik), spears, drums, and many other things. I was in charge of showing the girls how to make baskets, which was a lot of fun. Then on Thursday evening we had the Senior Dinner. Each of our fourteen seniors were allowed to invite six people, but because of younger children and such, there was about 115 people or so. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. Finally, Friday night was graduation. By the time we got to the ceremony, the number of graduates had increased to seventeen students! That is the largest number of students graduating from our school in the last fifteen years. 

Making Akutaq-Eskimo Ice Cream

Working hard on basket making

Making a basket

 Monday and Tuesday were kind of hectic and crazy. There was a lot going on. The high schoolers were split into three groups- 7th and 8th graders, 9th and 10th graders, and 11th and 12th graders. The 7th and 8th grade boys were with the science and reading teachers, the 9th an 10th graders were with the social studies teacher, and the 11th and 12th graders were with the Elementary Yupik teacher. They worked on a few different projects in their respective classrooms. The girls, however moved from room to room. In my room they did basket making. In the writing classroom they worked on beading, the Yupik teacher taught them to make keychains and the math teacher showed them how to make lap balls. On top of that, each group went to the Special Education classroom for an hour to learn how to make akutaq. I went out with two different groups, so if anyone wants any lessons this summer, I'll do my best to teach you. Also, each group practiced a certain Eskimo dance for half an hour each day. 

Eskimo Dancing with face painted like a seal

Then, on Tuesday, we invited all the people in our village to come watch the students dance. We also handed out the akutaq we had made during the week. I had a wonderful time, learned a lot, and am looking forward to doing it again.

Senior Dinner setting up

Yummy food

Thursday was the Senior Dinner. Fourteen students brought their family members to share in their success. We served about 115 people plates piled with a cinnamon roll, shrimp, ribs, steak, and corn. We also had cheesecakes, pumpkin pies, blueberry pies, and apple pies for dessert. The families were so happy with their students for all of their hard work and accomplishing something so important. I loved getting to see all the students enjoying themselves and getting their hard earned praise for a job well done. 

Graduation starting

For graduation, I spent a while after school helping set up. Then came back to the school where it was super crowded and everyone was staring at the seventeen seniors. That's right, I said seventeen. During the course of the day on Friday, three more students were able to graduate. The last one finished at 4:15. Granted, two of those students didn't actually get their diplomas, they received Certificates of Attendances, which means they will finish taking courses this summer, but that is still a pretty big accomplishment out here. It took a while to find out, but the last time we had this many graduates from our school was about fifteen years ago. The guest speaker was the Social Studies teacher who has been here for six years. His first year in our village was these students' seventh grade year- they were his first group of students at this high school and it was their first year in high school. We are all so proud of them!

S.S. teacher was the guest speaker

This next week we will have 8th grade graduation and then we will be closing in on the last day of school. It's a bittersweet deal. I'm so excited to be done with the school year and go see my family this summer, but I also will miss my students and getting to talk to them and joke them with just about every day. This year has been so wonderful. I have truly loved my first year teaching and the students I was blessed with. I hope they all have a great summer!

Oh The Joys of Prom!

Working hard as a chaperone

The sun is almost completely set. I'm walking home. The path to my house is quite jagged and hard to walk on, so I've got my head on the path and am concentrating on every step. Suddenly, I hear something and see movement out of the corner of my eye. I freeze. Something's there. I turn my head and I see.... a rabbit. He is still mostly white, but I think I see a little bit of brown under his chin. When I stopped moving, so did he. I know that if I had a gun, I could catch him right now, but I don't. So instead, I just stare at him for a while. He is beautiful. This night is beautiful. I want to stare at him for a little longer, but it is just about 2 am, and I've been dancing most of the night, so I turn back to my path and take a step. I look back at the rabbit one more time and see that my step was a signal to him that it was time to go home. I smile to myself and walk the remaining steps to my house thinking how amazing my life is. 

Prom entrance 

Prom set up- lovely

That scenario happened right after we finished cleaning up from prom. Ah, prom! What a fun night! Prom in the village is much different than prom in the lower 48. For one thing, we stayed after the dancing was done to take down everything. The main reason we did that was because we were pretty sure if we waited until the next day, no one would come help. It took us less than an hour to clean up. A lot of people stayed to help. Young, old, everyone. That brings me to another difference- age groups. There aren't a whole lot of things to do on a Saturday night in the village, so prom becomes an activity not only for the high school students, but also for their parents to come and hang out and dance. I say dance, but that is yet another difference. Not a lot of the students wanted to dance. The teachers, now we hit that dance floor hard and had a good time, but the students seemed a little worried to be caught dancing like a baboon with us! Of course, some students did dance and had a grand old time of it. That was a lot of fun. 

The door ladies, making sure no one brings
anything they aren't supposed to

Our prom court-prince, princess, queen, king

Prom was held in our gym. Now, the sun stays up until after midnight here these days, so to help block out the light, the gym is decorated with trash bags lining the floor and material covering the top of the prom area. It was quite a different look for our gym than I had ever seen before. And boy, was it beautiful! The teacher in charge of everything did an amazing job! Even the students were impressed, which isn't very easy to do. 

Good sports

My class's design, isn't it great?

It was a great night, one to remember. Everyone enjoyed themselves and everything went smoothly, kind of like our event earlier in the week. On Tuesday we had a fire safety presentation. Leading up to that, the students for each class were asked to decorate their door in a fire safety theme and they could win a chance to pie an administrator in the face. My kids enjoyed putting our door together. I think it looked really good and that they should have one, but alas, I was not a judge and so our door wasn't the winner. However, we did get to enjoy watching as all of the administrators were pied by different students. The whole school was watching and everyone enjoyed it. 

Everyone gathered waiting for the event to begin

Just two more weeks of school and they are PACKED with fun filled activities! Monday and Tuesday are Culture Days, where students will be led in different culturally relevant activities. This, I feel, will be a lot of fun. I'm working with students on basket making. Other activities include making lap balls (lap game is very similar to baseball), beading, making agutaq (Eskimo ice cream), Eskimo dancing, and making spears or manaqing poles (ice fishing poles). I'm looking forward to all of these things. We also have Senior Dinner and Graduation next week followed by 8th Grade Graduation and Dinner the next week and our Clean Up Day, which I'm not exactly sure when that will be. Then, of course, there is the last day of school on May 17th. So much to do, so little time! I hope my readers are looking forward to the wonderfulness that is the end of the year teaching in Bush Alaska in my next and last couple blogs for this year!