All Dressed-up and No Place to Go

What do three single female teacher do on a Saturday Night in rural Alaska – What else is there to do they get dressed-up in their finest, they eat and they play cards. Please note NO alcohol was consumed during this evening. (remember this is a dry village)



This has become a Saturday night thing for the three of us, getting together, teaching Alicia to play Euchre and eating dinner. This week it was great food – Homemade pizza (MJ makes great pizza crust) chips and cheese and a few fresh veggies, the cupboard is getting bare when it comes to fresh veggies we had to throw the lettuce out it was slimmy. Soon after this picture was taken someone got a craving for some dessert (a chocolate milk shake was mentioned) so we decided to make blueberry short cake. Alicia was sent to the store because someone remembered that they did have CoolWhip (step 1) I had some Bisquick and blueberry’s MaryJane ran home for starch, blueberry’s and the recipe for blueberry sauce. YUMMY is all I need to say as to how it all came out.

Well I hope all is well with everyone everything is the same here in Kongiganak It continues to rain most days and I can defiantly notice the change in the amount of daylight. It was still dark at 8am this morning and will probably be dark before 8pm tonight.

I have taken on the challenge of starting and coaching our Lego-Robotics team. It should be very interesting and fun. I currently have three students on the team and two of them are very excited and want to work on it all of the time. I will be learning along with the kids what it is all about. I also seam to be being prodded/recruited into coaching a girls basketball team – Paul has sent me the information on getting certified as a coach – I have been telling him I would help him or volunteer to help as long as he coached. We haven’t had a girls team since the early 1990’s and Paul coached them to the State tournament. In 1987 (I think) they actually one the state tournament. Plus I am teaching math twice a week for half an hour in our extended day program so basically I live at the school.

Again I hope everyone is well – keep in touch. I love reading most of your comments.

It's the weekend

It is Friday night and what I am I doing sitting home alone with a smelly dog watching Charlie’s Angels and it is a great night. It is the weekend and that means two days with out kids in the classroom. Hoping to get more things organized and set for my classes. Life is still good here in Alaska - The temperature has defiantly started to drop. Almost sweater in the classroom weather - I have been wearing a sweater vest over my shirt and have even worn a turtleneck a few times.

The smelly dog is MaryJane's (my fellow teacher that went on the Fishing Adventure with me). The smelly dogs name is Justice and she is hanging with me because MJ headed to Bethel with 4 students for the final cross-country meet - Yes it is the end of the season. The word I have heard is that it could snow in September but usually it holds off until October. Justice is a Golden Retriever that loves the water/mud which we have in excess of and with limited running water she has a slight odor. But you have to lover her - she is a Happy Golden Retriever.

Today was pay-day - Yeah - That means I am putting together my monthly dry-goods grocery order. I think we (me and a couple of other teachers will be placing bi-weekly orders into Bethel for fresh produce and dairy). We did that last week and it worked pretty good. I also ordered a new sleeping bag - rated for -40 degrees for my next adventure - Although this weekend should be pretty quite I do hope to go pick some cranberries to my a cranberry relish.

Today was a somewhat of an exciting day - I had a student "slap" or "tap" my face so I took her right down to the office and she was suspended for 5 days. She is in my 7/8 grade class. Another one of my 7/8grade students will be in Anchorage for two days having has tonsils removed. Due to the lack of medical facilities iin the villages this is typical for kids and a parent to stay in a "Ronald McDonald house incase something comes up until they are healed. So it may be a little easier in a couple of my classes. We will see. I will say that I really like our site administrator. He and I are on the same wave of not putting up with much from the students. He really supports the fact that I have high standards for the students and won’t lower them - I currently have 2 out of 14 students passing Social Studies simply because they don't do the work - They haven't had a test or quiz yet. I also have 8-10 HS students failing History for exactly the same reason.

Well that's about it for now - Life continues on here in Alaska - I love all of the comments keep them coming - you can also make comments on the photos on Flickr

The Battle Continues

Well I think I am ahead in the battle of the students. I am not sure they might be just giving me some false hope but I was actually able to let my 7/8 grade Social Studies class leave on time yesterday. We are trying hard to learn to respect each other and other peoples property, and to take responsibility for our own learning. I don't allow gum chewing in my classroom due to the amount of gum under the desk and on the floor so that has been one battle. I now have the kids (mostly girls) spit their gum out into my hand so that I know it is being spit out otherwise they just fake it and I am asking them again 10 minutes later to get rid of the gum. Or other big problem is theft - The school provides everything - pencils, paper, folders etc, so first of the kids don't take care of anything and they expect a new pencil everyday. Nope, so then then they started just taking stuff off of my desk. Well, finally Wednesday afternoon during my prep hour I went and visited the other classes and figured out who had taken my good pen off of my desk - when his class was over I informed him that he had 30 seconds to return it to me or else I was reporting it stolen to the Site Administrator. I got my pen back - 10 minutes into my next class my pen is again missing - so the 7/8th grade Social Studies class once again stayed after class - low and behold a student found my pen by the trash can. Nothing disappeared off of my desk today.

Life continues on here - The temperature has started to drop. I wore a turtleneck and sweater vest in school today - and wore a jacket and light gloves while walking over. However, some of the kids have yet to notice the drop in temperature and continue to go barefoot and wear shorts and t-shirts.

I have a class tomorrow with the other two new teacher - It is a cultural class and since one of our "new" teachers grew up in one of the near by villages we were kind of hoping we could have him be our own private guess speaker but nope - at least we have all the answers. It is a district wide training and so we will be doing it via the Polycom (interactive TV).

Alright I really should get going home and to bed. Don't hesitate to e-mail me.

Another Adventure

Guess what I did! Here are a couple of hints – I wore long johns jeans and rain paint, two pair of warm socks and rubber boots, I had a Under-armor shirt, t-shirt, long-john shirt, a down jacket and a rain jacket, plus a ski hat on and I still was cold at times – I have a great case of wind burn on my face and I have been home for 16 hours – which I slept 12 of due to lack of sleep. We left on this adventure at 5pm on Saturday and returned at about 5-6pm Sunday. I spent those 24 fours in a vehicle that was about 25feet long by 6 or 7feet wide.

Did you figure it out yet – well if you looked at the pictures you probably did – We went fishing – Yupik style. MaryJane and I went with another teacher Sherman, his wife Loraine and Sherman’s brother Leroy fishing. It was great (I can now say that after having a hot shower and 12 hours of sleep). Unfortunately we only caught 12 fish total.





It would take forever to explain everything so I will try and give you some of the major high lights – Sherman, Lorain and Leroy both commercial fish all summer and are from Kongiganak. We had two boats for the five of use. We used nets to fish with and they can actually do it by themselves. The moth of the river is huge – you can not see across, I am not sure but I don’t think we ever truly left the river. And it is so muddy that they actually use the word mudds – you fish between the mudds. They have to keep a constant eye out for sand bars – in the middle of know where there can be a huge sand bar about 1.5-2feet deep not good on the props. We where trying to get to a river the first evening but couldn’t find the canal in and probably spent two hours using poles to push ourselves through the sand bars.

Sleeping quarters – Well MaryJane and I had deluxe accommodations Leroy setup his canvas walled tent for us and we slept on the floor of the boat at least our feet where pointed towards the fish. Leroy has his “pilot” house rigged so that he can sleep in there, Sherman and his wife just use a tarp on their boat. Bathroom – again Leroy was the gracious host and let us use the “pilot” house for “privacy” we used a five gallon bucket. The bucket was also my seat on the boat – after it was dumped, rinsed and turned over.

We saw a seal – Leroy tried to shoot it – yes it is legal for him to kill it because they will eat it. Seals do not keep their heads above water for very long.

At times the water was very calm and at others we had some waves – It was cold the whole time. It was a great experience and I might even do it again.