Berry Picking in the Bush and Much, Much More...

Dancing at Teacher Eskimo Dance

I never thought of Helen as a very talkative woman, but after yesterday, I learned that this Native woman has many, many wonderful stories to share about her life growing up in the village. Just about every weekend since the school year started, she has taken my roommate out berry picking with her and her husband, and yesterday they asked me to come along as well! It was loads of fun and I have much to say about it, but unfortunately, my camera battery died. So, before sharing about my berry picking experience, let me tell you about the Teacher Eskimo Dance and the Jr. High Cross Country meet.

Father and Son dancing, Wife in the back

A bunch of teachers and Natives dancing

At the end of the first week of school, the village held a Teacher Eskimo Dance like every year to meet and greet the new teachers. We were told it would start at five and be a potluck, but by the time we went up to the T.C. (Tribal Council) building, it was almost seven and so it turned out to be more of a snack table. The new teachers introduced themselves and then we sat and talked to people while watching the dances. Two teachers, who are married and have two beautiful children, danced, and had their older son, who is about two, dance with them. It was super cute to see him getting into the culture and dancing with the Native people, and they seemed to enjoy it as well. I was able to see many of my students from last year and talk to them. I also danced in a couple of the songs. I'm not very good at it, but it is lots of fun to try to follow along. My favorite dance we did was the last one, the "Snow Machine" song. The dances describe what the song is talking about, so for this one (which is a little more modern of a song) we were moving as if we were on a snow machine. It's movements are fairly simple, and by the time we left I had it down.

Me Eskimo Dancing

St. Mary's bus; Jr. High Cross Country Meet

Kids heading out for cross country

Yesterday was supposed to be the Jr. High Cross Country meet in St. Mary's. We were all prepared for it, then, on Thursday, the cross country coaches got a phone call saying their plane would be there by noon to get the kids! Fortunately, they were supposed to be back that same night, so they didn't have to rush home and get clothes, but they did have to rush to make sub plans for the rest of the day. One of the team members that was in my class last year asked to borrow my camera, so I was able to get these pictures without going myself. One of our boys got second place in the meet, which was very exciting. The High School Cross Country meet is SUPPOSED to be next Saturday, but after what happened this week, no one is going to be surprised if that changes.

Just a small amount of the berries I picked

Net all set up :) Last picture I took
before my camera died

Lowering the net for fishing

So, now to berry picking yesterday. Growing up we had some blackberry bushes that grew along a fence line down the dirt road we lived on. When I thought of berry picking, that is the picture I had in my mind. However, the berry plants here grow close to the ground. To pick the berries, I sat and scooted from one area to the other. They are also quite small, so even though I picked what felt like a lot of berries, I only managed to fill about half a gallon of a ziplock bag. My roommate filled her 1 1/4 gallon bucket to the brim. It was lots of fun and very peaceful. It did, however start to cool off and sprinkle on us right before we finished up. We went to two different spots very close to the village of Nunam Iqua. One was already occupied by another Native from our village and her daughter. It also had lots of bugs so we went across the river and picked on the other side. While we were picking we saw an otter swimming in the river, it was cute. Before we settled in to pick berries, we set up a net to catch fish. Helen told us while her husband was setting up the net stories her grandmother had told her. She said in her grandmother's day, people were buried in the fetal position, and when they started burying people laying down her grandmother was upset. Her grandmother said, "Why bury them laying down, that's not how they were born!" I thought their way of burying people sounds like a good idea, but I guess that's just me. We didn't catch any fish during the day, just a couple of willows. Before heading home for the night, however, we met up with some friends and had a campfire going. One of the men had a son who had caught a seal that day, so they gave us the two of the livers. We cooked them up next to the fire and at them. They were really good! The Natives were teasing me and my roommate saying that we need to eat more Native food and then we won't be so cold. We sat around the campfire talking and laughing for a while, then took off to see if we could find some seal before it got too dark. We had seen a seal on our way out berry picking before we set up the net earlier in the day, but he had gotten away. By the time I got home I had made the decision that this was my favorite day I had had so far living out here. It was a wonderful time. I hope to get to do it again next weekend. Maybe next time my camera won't die on me!!

Round 2: Life Back In The Village

Panoramic view from Flattop

My first glimpses of being back in Alaska

As a new year of school begins, I find myself back in the biggest and most beautiful state! A lot has changed around here: The snow melted, all my students from last year are at least a foot taller than what they when I last saw them, and our district has changes in curriculum and behavior plans I'm trying to learn. With so many changes, one can become overwhelmed quite easily. But despite all this, I still know that I can look forward to helping grow the minds of my new students as a second year teacher. 

Back to Flattop for another attempt to climb it

This year I will be teaching first grade, which is a big jump from seventh grade last year. A lot of people have asked me about the reason for this switch, so let me explain. Last year our seventh grade class was one of the biggest the school has ever seen. It was so big, in fact, that our Instructional Leader was worried that the students wouldn't all fit into the same class. That's where I came in. I took half of those seventh graders and taught them so that there weren't as many in one room. Towards the end of last year, our Instructional Leader informed me that this year's seventh grade class wouldn't need the same accommodations, but the new first grade class would. I therefore, could take a first grade class if I so desired. I thought this was a marvelous idea. It wasn't until later that I was informed of a sixth grade opening, but by then I had already made up my mind that I wanted to teach first and for those of you that know me (or my father and his family), once I make up my mind about something, I'm not going to change it. 

Part of the climb on Flattop

This is as high as we made it, the rainbow was very beautiful!

Coming in to my second year of teaching out here in the village has given me quite a few opportunities. The first of which was to do some exploring around Anchorage. Last year while I was there I was busy with training and wrapping my mind around the fact that I was going to be living in Alaska, that I didn't have much time to explore. But this year, I was able to meet up with other teachers and do some fun activities.  I also had a much better idea how to shop and what to send out to the village to eat. Shopping was a lot more enjoyable and a lot less confusing. 

We went for a drive and followed the train tracks

 

Groceries I brought out with me that I couldn't push back. 

 The second opportunity coming into my second year has given me is to already know what I'm coming into. It felt wonderful to already know my house and to come in with everything already here and set up. Also, walking down the roads in our village or the hallways in the school, I saw lots of people that I already knew and they knew me and it was a wonderful feeling to give them a hug and hear them say, "Welcome back," or, "I'm glad you're back!" 

This is how my classroom looked when I came into it

View of the Yukon River at the dock

Finally, being a second year teacher out here gives me the opportunity to let the new teachers in on the secrets of life out here. All three of our new teachers are veteran teachers, but being in rural Alaska isn't quite like being anywhere else. I can help them out, give them advice, and try my hardest to make this transition as easy as possible. 

Hanging out at the bonfire

Last weekend we had a teacher bonfire, with almost all of the teachers except one and their families gathered at the dock eating s'mores, marshmallows, hot dogs, and having a wonderful time together. This week school will start. My classroom is almost completely set up and ready. Soon those little gatherings will be necessary to keep ourselves from going crazy. But this first one was just a Welcome Home gathering. A chance to catch up with our "Village family," find out about what others did this summer and to get us excited for this brand new year in the village. No, our new school isn't finished yet, and we aren't sure when it will be. But the new year still holds many new faces, new lessons, and a whole lot of new experiences!

Decorations in my classroom

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!

Warmer Weather

Looks like the weather is finally starting to warm up, the sun is staying out much longer, and there are more things to do and explore!

Wooden boat we found on the bank

Captain of the Ship

Wednesday me and a few other teachers drove to our neighboring village to go to the grocery store but also mainly to just get out and enjoy the beautiful weather. When we came back home, we found this old wooden boat up on the bank, so we climbed up to investigate. It was pretty neat to see all of the really neat things up there. I loved just exploring and walking around in a wooded area like my hometown. It reminded me of exploring the woods with my cousin as we were growing up.

Barge back in the trees

Afterwards we goofed off and just sat in the sunshine as it gleamed down on us. The air was warm and beautiful. It's interesting to say it was warm, seeing as how it was only about 25 degrees, but we all took off our jackets and were sitting in the warm air enjoying ourselves.

Our snow machines look so cool!

The week wasn't all just fun and games, though. I was in my classroom Thursday until six at night trying to get my purchase orders for next year's classroom done. Even staying that long, I still had to try to finish in the morning and it was very stressful. I'm moving to first grade, which is much different than seventh grade, and wasn't really sure I knew what I wanted. Luckily for me, I have awesome co-workers and a nice state mentor who helped me out a ton so that I think I have ordered most things that I will be needing for next year.

part of the bank sticking out

"I'm going to dive!"

Of course, after stressful days like Friday, it's nice to relax with a fun game of Volleyball! Seventh and eighth graders aren't allowed to be on the team, but our coach holds a camp for them to prepare those who might want to play in a few years. On Friday some of the teachers went out and played with them. We had a lot of fun, just playing around. Not many of us teachers are very good at the sport, but we sure enjoy playing around. One of my students didn't want to be on my team because he was sure we would lose; I guess he must've seen me play before. Even so, we all had a good time and we didn't keep score so it was all good.

Just sitting on some stumps

Just four more weeks of school left. The longer the sun stays up, the more events the school has, like cultural days, prom, and graduation. I think the next few weeks will be interesting, busy, and quick. Hopefully there will be a lot of good pictures for you all to enjoy!

Breaking Records

Here she is doing a Wrist Carry-
holding onto the bar only with her wrist,
she holds herself up as the boys on
either end run around the court.

This week was a week of breaking records, and it isn't even over yet!! I've had a blast and I'm sure the students that I've been spending my time with have, too. The best way to explain this is to just list the records that have been broken:

To perform a Toe Kick, you have to barely
land on the stick, kick it backwards with just
your toes and then continue jumping forward.

1) I was asked to be a chaperone for the students going for NYO to another village (you will remember from a previous post that NYO is Native Youth Olympics, a group of activities used to keep native people in shape during the long, cold winters that has now become a competition similar to the olympics).

This is a successful Toe Kick

2) I hustled to finish my DRA testing this week-- Totally school related and a lot of people wouldn't really care, but I don't think anyone has finished testing all their students in two days like I did; it just has to be some sort of record!

This is the record breaking one foot high kick!

3) Flying to our closest neighboring village seems silly. In fact, our flight was only five minutes long. You barely got used to it before you were landing!

Another of my favorite events, the One Arm Reach!
Students balance on one hand,
hold their foot with the other and kick the opposite
 foot up into the air to kick a ball on a string.

4) Never had I seen so many kids from so many different villages. There were high school students from at least twelve different schools. Our school had a pretty small group of ten students compared to the other larger groups, so you can imagine how many students there were. The coolest part was watching all of them interact. They have been competing against each other for so long that it was just natural that they knew each other and could read each other so well!

This is the Indian Stick Pull (both hold onto a stick and try to pull it out
 of the other's hand), I didn't get any pictures of the Eskimo Stick Pull

5) This year a district record was broken in my favorite event- The One Foot High Kick. The student jumped and kicked a ball with one foot and came back down landing on the same foot he kicked with. The ball was 104 inches above the ground! That is nearly nine feet high! It is always an impressive event to watch.

and last but not least, 6) I witnessed for the very first time the seal hop, Indian Stick Pull, and Toe Kick. These events were very interesting and took quite a bit of skill to master.

Here are our boys doing the Seal Hop, literally hopping on
their wrists and toes only all the way down the court

Though none of the students from our school placed high enough to go to state, they tried there hardest, did their best, and no one could ask for any more from them.

As for me, I met a few people from different villages that I hadn't met before. We shared a room with Kotlik girls and the chaperone for those girls and I sat down at lunch and she told me her story about how God has transformed her life. It was so inspiring. I may have grown up in a Christian home, but I still struggle through life with certain things. Now, during certain parts of my life, I can think of her and know that the Lord has a plan for all of our lives.

The week isn't over yet. I will return to my classroom tomorrow and try to restore mayhem, unpack my bag and pack another overnight bag that I will use while I chaperone for one of the other teacher's kids over the weekend. Talk about tuckered out!! Let's hope next week is a little bit less running around and a little more sleep!!