Back In The Wolverine State...

It was a secret for about three weeks, but the cat is officially out of the bag, so I can share at last.

Last Saturday, after much anticipation on our part, we left Napaskiak on the way to Bethel. Eric and Sara Jung were nice enough to give us a lift in their new pickup truck. Definitely a much more comfortable way to travel than snowmachine. The outside temperature at noon was -20, so we were very grateful to be inside of a heated vehicle. The river was well-frozen after several days of renewed sub-zero temperatures. In fact, the previous melt and rain had combined with the subsequent cold to produce a very smooth ice surface (in relative terms). Our ride was uneventful, and we quickly found ourselves going through the process of checking dogs in at the Alaska Airlines counter at the airport. Off to Anchorage for a six-hour layover. We hung out at the airport version of Humpy's, a popular Anchorage restaurant, with a couple of teachers that were also headed back east for the holiday break. Afterward, we picked up the dogs from baggage check and found a quiet corner of the airport to sit with them until it was time to check them back in for the flight to Chicago.

We had the aid of a friendly tailwind, and the flight took only about 5 1/2 hours. As the sun rose over Chicago on Christmas morning, we descended for our landing at O'Hare airport. My wife and I have become pretty practiced at our routine on landing. She gets the bag and the dogs. I take the little dog and pick up the rental car. I then meet her at the curb outside the terminal, quickly lift the dog kennels into the back of the vehicle, and we are off. It went like clockwork-there were very few folks flying on the holiday-and we were off shortly to my sister's house in Arlington Heights, where we spent two very pleasant days.

On the Tuesday after Christmas, we headed north to Michigan, where we spent the next several days surprising friends and family. It was a joyful reunion with our Michigan home. We are fortunate to have my wife's parents staying here at the house for the holidays, and we got a visit from our friend Adam Bode, who came all the way from Ohio to spend a few hours yakking about things in Napaskiak and his home.

We are hosting family and friends for New Year's Eve, and plan to go downstate and visit my parents tomorrow. Those plans might be complicated somewhat by a winter storm that is being predicted for New Year's day, but we will roll with whatever the situation brings.

We return to Alaska on January 14. In the meantime, we will bask in the warmth of our family and friends and recharge ourselves for the semester to come...

Vacation May Officially Commence...

My lesson plans for my return have been prepared and mailed off. I am now set for a departure from school and related activities for the next three plus weeks. Fantastic.

It is cold here, but I took a walk to the post office at the behest of my life partner and boss (according to her students). At least it is relatively still. However, the forecast suggests that the wind is about to pick up over the next several hours, as there is a windchill advisory for values in the -25 to -45 range. Brrr...We actually get pretty used to it, but it does warrant care when traveling out of doors.

Speaking of travel, we got to be decadent and stay out late on a school night last night. The fact that it wasn't really a school night did not really detract from the wonderfulness of being out socializing with adults on a Thursday. We did not get to bed until midnight, and we did not get up until after 8 am this morning. How much fun is that?

We took a ride up to Bethel in our neighbors' very nice new truck. Much warmer than the sno-go route. I can see why people make the choice despite some limitation in utility. It was very comfy indeed. Tonight I believe that we will be having a little dessert with them. My wife has concocted some pear ice cream, if you can imagine such a thing. My in-laws were kind enough to buy us an ice cream maker, and it comes in pretty handy for this sort of thing.

Enough for now. I am going to copy lesson plans and place them on my desk. Then I am going to go home and goof around for the next three weeks...

Done! (for now...)

The kiddies left at lunch time, and the boss and family left a little while ago for points east. Now it is mostly a few stragglers in the building, and I think that there may be some more basketball practices coming up yet to come. I have got much of my gradebook up to date, and I will work on it more tomorrow. I also want to get lesson planning done for January before the end of the week, because I don't want to think about it for the next three weeks.

Confirmation-the junior high kids have started showing up for practice.

Anyway, the holidays are upon us for certain, and that means long-due rest and relaxation. Time for a deep breath and some long naps. More to follow....

This Afternoon...

This is the end of the effort for the semester-mostly catch-up from the motivated souls...their self-control and my patience are running out at about the same time...

The Last Monday of 2011...

For us at the school, that is...Wednesday we are done, and that will be that. A few days to catch up on grading and prepare lesson plans for our return, and then we can engage in some deep relaxation. We have a staff party tonight and the Christmas pageant tomorrow, which is always cute and fun. I think that I safely speak for everyone when I say that we are all ready for a break. It will be nice...

Thursday...

Another week nearing completion. The kids are getting flakier by the day, which does not surprise me under the circumstances. Christmas is nigh, and Christmas break is nigh-er. Nothing like a good post-class wrestling match with four kids to put ya in a good frame of mind. Of course, it was all in fun. I don't want there to be any worried minds out there. Ah, the good life....

A Little Haggard...

Lesson plans for a one-hour sub for my liveliest class...how to keep them all busy without burning the place down...a balancing act for me when I am there...how to design the perfect alternative when I am gone...sometimes it is much more stressful to be gone than to be there...

Quiet Times in The Multi-Purpose Room...

Prep time is as good a time to write as any, and better than most. I have just graded the quiz that my kiddies took for reading yesterday, and I am making a good effort to get current on grades and stay that way through the end of the semester, which comes in eight days. There are still kids that need to get make-up stuff done, and I am pondering the best way to do that in the next few days. I suspect that I can come up with some sort of extra credit assignment for the students that have kept up with their work.

Part of the reason for my solicitude is that we switched from a much different curriculum system at the beginning of the year. The old way allowed students to progress at their own pace, which may have been better suited to ESL students in some ways. We are now on a traditional system of pacing and grading, although "Ds" have been eliminated. A student with a 69% now has an "F." The kids here have always been on the old system, and some of them clearly have not adjusted to the new way of doing things. For now, I will try to cushion that shock a little bit. My concern is that the new way simply makes it too easy to fail. They may ultimately need to get toughened up to the new way of doing business, but they may also need a bit of a hand up in the process...

800...

This is the eight hundredth post on this space since it came into existence in July of 2009. The frequency has been diminished of late, but I find myself drawn back to type in these little boxes from time to time, even if the time for typing is kind of restricted these days. It is nice to have an outlet for my musings, and I can occasionally show it to students to show that they can keep a journal of their thoughts.

I would not pretend to think that this is the home of thoughts profound and portentous, and I never intended it as that. It does stand for me as a record of sorts of this directional shift that I have undergone in my life, and some of the struggles associated with that shift. I have purposely done some censoring of entries since those from my first year out here-I am now aware that more people read this thing, or have in the past, than I ever thought would happen when I started it as a sort of record for family and friends as I prepared to come to Alaska.

Things have gotten better since then, with time, experience, and perhaps some wisdom. But it is still a struggle-the stresses are significant, and they continue even up to these last days of the semester. So much is behind, but there is still so much to do, and that often weighs heavily on my mind, usually at 3 am. For some reason, I have the affliction of insomnia, as does my wife. The fortunate part is that we often get the chance to have conversations about the challenges that we face in the middle of the night, rather than tossing and turning alone. The bad part is the lost opportunities for a decent night's sleep. I strongly suspect that we will be sleeping long and hard come December 21, our last day of the semester. We will have a couple of days to catch up after it is all over, but I am reasonably certain that it will not involve an alarm clock...

Monday's Over...

Yes, it is...and there are only two left now before the end of the 2011 semester. I would consider a retrospective, but I am not sure that it is time yet. This group is a pretty nice bunch of kids, even when they are very silly. And they can be very silly indeed. Of course, they are junior high kids, and I have seen it suggested that they are all that way to some extent or another.

I am sitting in my classroom with my bride as she takes one of her classes toward her master's degree. It is a long process, but I trust that it will ultimately be worth it. This class runs until 8 pm, so it makes Monday a long day for her. I am usually disposed to hang out with her and keep her company, so we do not usually get home to have dinner until then. I should probably get going, though, because I remember that I have some dishes to catch up on, and the dogs could stand feeding.

Just another romantic, exciting day in the life of a Bush teacher...wrestle a bear, shoot a moose, and set up 19 student computers for tomorrow's bubble test. Yep, it surely is a life of adventure...

Short Timer...

The penultimate full week of classes in 2011 begins today. My kids seem a little buggy. We will see how they fare as the morning progresses...many interesting days ahead for the holidays...more as it transpires...

Saturday at The School...

We had breakfast with our very nice neighbor (her husband is stuck in Dillingham coaching wrestling), and eventually floated over here where I spent some time in an executive board meeting for the local teacher's union. I entertained myself afterwards with some extensive grading and grade entering, followed by preliminary lesson planning, accompanied by the first Big Ten Championship game on the radio. Unfortunately, the Michigan State Spartans (not my alma mater) was not successful in its effort. Now it is ten pm and I am watching my wife shop online for Xmas gifts. Kind of a lost day, but not bad overall. At least I am nearly caught up on grading. That stuff is a bear.

Tomorrow will be another (at least partial) working day-I need to get some stuff finished, and there is still some grading left to do. Of course, there is always stuff left to do, at least up to the end of the semester. Coming soon....

A Lazy Schmoo...

I just don't keep up on this as I should...no excuses any more. The holidays approach, and good times and rest. I have said enough on the subject of exhaustion, and don't want to read it any more. Suffice to say, being out here involves a lot of work, and even the simple stuff gets complicated quickly. It is expensive, and difficult, even when it comes to something as seemingly simple as buying a carton of milk.

It will get a lot more complicated if the Post Office "reforms" go through, and the mail system out here becomes more expensive. It is currently a life line of sorts for rural Alaska. You can probably find a lot of people (especially in the cities) who think that this is an unsupportable lifestyle that has been too long subsidized by the federal government and oil money and that it just has to end. They will write long and hard in the comments section of the Anchorage Daily News to that effect with some frequency.

They may have a point. I don't feel qualified to comment. Times are tough everywhere, and it is hard to argue that there should be some sort of accommodation here not available to others elsewhere. I suspect that life is going to continue to get harder for most people in this country for the foreseeable future, and that little in the political arena is likely to change that. Our system is pretty clearly in thrall to the interests of those with enough financial power to manipulate it.

It is, however, nice in some ways to be out beyond the direct grasp of the advertiser and the huckster, the baying hounds of the "news' media, and the general Great American Bullshit Machine that runs the conversation back in the world. We are not so very far, in many ways, but it is easy out here to step off from that platform. I am not sure that I like all of the things about civilization, as comfortable as they are.

There is a real push and pull that is hard to know how to resolve. Fortunately for me, there is no hurry...