A quiet day despite the busy-ness of the whole thing. We had students until 1:45, and parent-teacher conferences until 6:00 pm. We mostly spent time explaining test results and filing out forms with parents. We repaired to the house for a sumptious feast of sausage and sauerkraut (I like 'em), and that was kind of the day.
Our sub, Jim, found out that his full time replacement has been hired by the district. He will apparently be here next week, so we will get a look then. I am happy for Jim, as he will get to go to South America as he had planned, but I will miss having him on the staff. I thought that he was a good fit here.
More parent-teacher conferences tomorrow, then it will be on to the long weekend in a couple of days.
Tomorrow will be my parents' 60th wedding anniversary, and I get to use this space to thank them for always loving and supporting me, even when I didn't make it easy. If I turned out to be a decent human being (and I hope that I am in the near vicinity of being that), it is to their credit. Thanks, Mom and Dad-I love you guys. I will expect to talk to you tomorrow.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Number 500...
What more can I say? I don't know that I would have predicted this last July. Of course, I don't think I had any idea what was going to happen last July. I know that we place big store in our kids' ability to predict when they read. I suppose that it shows that they are paying attention, but prediction strikes me as presumptious and arrogant on some levels. After all, who the hell knows what is going to happen, anyway? We spend so much of our time trying to game the future that we have entire fortunes devoted to it, and we can see just how far that has gotten us...
It is the evening at the end of a long and kind of contentious day. Mondays can be treacherous as the year goes on, and this one was certainly that. I am just glad that it is over, and we can move on to a better tomorrow. I never saw myself as much of an optimist. In order to try to do this job properly, I think that optimism, even grim optimism, is essential. I don't want to overanalyze it, so I will leave it at that. You need to be able to look forward to the hope that things will improve. That was nearly impossible for me for much of last year. I think that it has changed this year. I hope so, anyway.
The first day of parent-teacher conferences are tomorrow. We will discuss the results from last year's testing, mostly. They were pretty grim overall for the junior high. Here is where that hope for a better year comes in. Maybe this year we will do better...maybe.
It is the evening at the end of a long and kind of contentious day. Mondays can be treacherous as the year goes on, and this one was certainly that. I am just glad that it is over, and we can move on to a better tomorrow. I never saw myself as much of an optimist. In order to try to do this job properly, I think that optimism, even grim optimism, is essential. I don't want to overanalyze it, so I will leave it at that. You need to be able to look forward to the hope that things will improve. That was nearly impossible for me for much of last year. I think that it has changed this year. I hope so, anyway.
The first day of parent-teacher conferences are tomorrow. We will discuss the results from last year's testing, mostly. They were pretty grim overall for the junior high. Here is where that hope for a better year comes in. Maybe this year we will do better...maybe.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Powered Up...
I woke up at some point in the middle of the night and realized that the power was out. It didn't strike me as all that important at the time. It goes out here pretty frequently, and there has not been a real long term outage in the year or so that I have been here. When I woke up at 7:30, the power was still out. More annoying, because I wanted coffee, but not the end of the world.
I went back to sleep for a little while, and there was still no power when I woke up. Hmmm...it struck me that this was likely a more serious problem than whatever causes the ususal brief outages. I made some phone calls, and looked at the empty, non-dripping coffee pot, and decided that it wasn't worth the bother to stay up (and I had not slept well all weekend), and proceeded to catch up on some more sleep.
A check of my computer revealed at about 11:30 or so that the internet service was working, which meant that the generator at the school was working. I thought that I might as well work, too. I knew that there would probably be coffee over there as well, so off I went. I learned that the village generators had apparently run out of fuel. I was convinced at that point that we were going to have to learn to do without for a couple of days. Adequately caffienated at last, I turned to writing lesson plans with my teaching partner.
Sometime around one o'clock, I learned from another teacher that the power had been restored in the village. At least we were not going to have to worry about all of the meat in our freezer going bad. I spent the remainder of the afternoon contentedly puttering in my classroom, and getting ready for the return of my bride. I learned that my classroom is getting a smart board (yay!), and I got checked out on the school's four-wheeler, so that I could haul both totes and spouse from the airstrip at 5pm. Much nervousness on my part, as I had never operated one of the beasties before. Not to worry. I still know how to handle a motor-driven vehicle after all. Retireval was accomplished, and the machine in question was stored, and no one was killed or injured.
We topped the evening with a pizza get-together at the house of Jim, our long-term sub, featuring yummy pies and some delish cheesecake that my darling brought from Anchorage. A pleasant end to a day that started out in a not-so-promising fashion.
The week awaits us. Tuesday and Wednesday will feature parent-teacher conferences, and we have a district writing exercise with which to entertain our students on at least two days. I note that the prompts are the same ones that we saw at least twice last year. Then it is in to the Labor Day weekend, which we are all awaiting with anticipation. This week will also mark a milestone in the history of this blog, which I will likely talk about tomorrow...
I went back to sleep for a little while, and there was still no power when I woke up. Hmmm...it struck me that this was likely a more serious problem than whatever causes the ususal brief outages. I made some phone calls, and looked at the empty, non-dripping coffee pot, and decided that it wasn't worth the bother to stay up (and I had not slept well all weekend), and proceeded to catch up on some more sleep.
A check of my computer revealed at about 11:30 or so that the internet service was working, which meant that the generator at the school was working. I thought that I might as well work, too. I knew that there would probably be coffee over there as well, so off I went. I learned that the village generators had apparently run out of fuel. I was convinced at that point that we were going to have to learn to do without for a couple of days. Adequately caffienated at last, I turned to writing lesson plans with my teaching partner.
Sometime around one o'clock, I learned from another teacher that the power had been restored in the village. At least we were not going to have to worry about all of the meat in our freezer going bad. I spent the remainder of the afternoon contentedly puttering in my classroom, and getting ready for the return of my bride. I learned that my classroom is getting a smart board (yay!), and I got checked out on the school's four-wheeler, so that I could haul both totes and spouse from the airstrip at 5pm. Much nervousness on my part, as I had never operated one of the beasties before. Not to worry. I still know how to handle a motor-driven vehicle after all. Retireval was accomplished, and the machine in question was stored, and no one was killed or injured.
We topped the evening with a pizza get-together at the house of Jim, our long-term sub, featuring yummy pies and some delish cheesecake that my darling brought from Anchorage. A pleasant end to a day that started out in a not-so-promising fashion.
The week awaits us. Tuesday and Wednesday will feature parent-teacher conferences, and we have a district writing exercise with which to entertain our students on at least two days. I note that the prompts are the same ones that we saw at least twice last year. Then it is in to the Labor Day weekend, which we are all awaiting with anticipation. This week will also mark a milestone in the history of this blog, which I will likely talk about tomorrow...
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Catching Up...
I have been busy running around a lot lately. We had our big shindig on Wednesday to celebrate making AYP, which involved a lot of serving and carrying, two parts of my special skill set. On Friday, we began the first of our marathon professional development sessions of the year. These babies run on into Friday night, and then pick up again on Saturday morning. With the necessity for lesson planning and classroom organization, they effectively make for seven-day work weeks in the weeks in which they fall. Of course, the commute to work doesn't burn up all that much time, but it does kind of kill the private life effectively for that week. Keep in mind that it is not especially unusual for us to be involved in something or other at the school into the evening hours of any given day. Fortunately, I like most of the people with whom I work, and I enjoy what I am doing. The other nice thing is that we have front-loaded the school year with these activities, so that we are not stuck doing them late in the year, when burn-out is becoming epidemic.
Oddly enough, neither my bride nor I were actually around for the entire escapade. She had to go off to Anchorage for a meeting with the Rose Urban-Rural Exchange Program people. I may have mentioned this organization before. It sponsors exchange programs between the afore-mentioned categories of school, with the goal of promoting exposure and understanding. I believe that this will be the fourth year in which she has led our group in this program. Having the students from Ben Eielson AFB in Fairbanks was quite a bit of fun last year. Our students enjoy their trips there as well. Anyway, she will be there all weekend.
I, on the other hand, got to enjoy the somewhat more prosaic pleasures of an overnight trip to Bethel. As a second-year teacher with the district, I am required to spend three Saturdays in inservices in Bethel throughout the course of the year. We will be spending that time focusing on specific areas of study. I have chosen science, since I am the accidental science teacher for the junior high. I say accidental, because I found out about this kind of by accident. The teacher who was previously teaching that subject gave me her 8th-grade materials, saying, "you'll need these in the future." To say that I was not consulted was an understatement. It has turned out ok, because the district has a fine-looking new set of source materials from which I can work, but it would be nice to be asked. I found the sessions in our focus group enjoyable.
I got to Bethel by boat on Friday evening, which meant that I was strolling down the muddy expanse of Front Street (which runs along the Kuskokwim) in a pair of knee-high mud boots, a foul-weather jacket with a PFD over the top of that, carrying a knapsack. The simple pleasures of a teacher's life in the Bush. I like Bethel. It is variously called the "armpit" or even the "asshole" of Alaska, but I like it. I have to admit that my appreciation has little to do with its esthetic appeal. Ok, nothing to do with that. It is likely the weirdness of the place that works for me: the New York ratios of cabs to humans, the Korean-Chinese-sushi-Mexican fusion restaurants, the grocery stores that sell prom dresses, snow machines, and hamburger (in HUGE quantities). I like to go to Camai for the dancing and crafts. I like the multilingual bathroom signs at the airport. I remember coming back here the second time that I visited, and being drawn in by the Yup'ik-accented English (and Yup'ik) that I heard on the plane out here, and seeing that bare concrete floor in the baggage area and somehow feeling a warmth that I could not explain. When I see it now, I just know that I have come back home. Go figure...
I know that there are troubles galore out here-poverty, alcohol, suicide and assault. There are also many, many people who desperately want to preserve their traditional ways of life and also pass on a better life to their children, people who in that respect are no different than folks back in Cadillac, or anywhere else that I have been in the lower 48.
OK, enough preaching. Anyway, I hung out in Bethel last night after a fun boat ride up with Joe Bavilla. I went over to the Swanson's grocery store to get some cash from the money machine, and immediately ran into two families from Napaskiak, which made for a much more social occasion than the average trip to the bank. I saw a couple of the teachers with whom I came into the district last year there a little later, and we had a pleasant stroll back to the hotel where we were all staying.
After our session was done today, I hit the AC (Alaska Commercial-you can look up its history on Wikipedia) store for five dozen eggs, some potatos and a bag of onions. I was off to the Yute Air terminal in record time, and I even managed a little lesson planning while waiting for my plane (free wi-fi, natch). We took a Cessna 172 for the flight across the river, and it felt like a much livelier plane than the Cessna 207s on which I usually seem to end up. It started to make me think about studying for my pilot's license, but that is an expense which I will forego for the time being.
And now I am in the comfort of my tiny home, thinking about a better night's sleep than last night. I do not care that much for being alone any more, but it is tolerable for the night. A life shared, especially an adventure, seems better to me these days, and we will be back to doing that tomorrow...
Oddly enough, neither my bride nor I were actually around for the entire escapade. She had to go off to Anchorage for a meeting with the Rose Urban-Rural Exchange Program people. I may have mentioned this organization before. It sponsors exchange programs between the afore-mentioned categories of school, with the goal of promoting exposure and understanding. I believe that this will be the fourth year in which she has led our group in this program. Having the students from Ben Eielson AFB in Fairbanks was quite a bit of fun last year. Our students enjoy their trips there as well. Anyway, she will be there all weekend.
I, on the other hand, got to enjoy the somewhat more prosaic pleasures of an overnight trip to Bethel. As a second-year teacher with the district, I am required to spend three Saturdays in inservices in Bethel throughout the course of the year. We will be spending that time focusing on specific areas of study. I have chosen science, since I am the accidental science teacher for the junior high. I say accidental, because I found out about this kind of by accident. The teacher who was previously teaching that subject gave me her 8th-grade materials, saying, "you'll need these in the future." To say that I was not consulted was an understatement. It has turned out ok, because the district has a fine-looking new set of source materials from which I can work, but it would be nice to be asked. I found the sessions in our focus group enjoyable.
I got to Bethel by boat on Friday evening, which meant that I was strolling down the muddy expanse of Front Street (which runs along the Kuskokwim) in a pair of knee-high mud boots, a foul-weather jacket with a PFD over the top of that, carrying a knapsack. The simple pleasures of a teacher's life in the Bush. I like Bethel. It is variously called the "armpit" or even the "asshole" of Alaska, but I like it. I have to admit that my appreciation has little to do with its esthetic appeal. Ok, nothing to do with that. It is likely the weirdness of the place that works for me: the New York ratios of cabs to humans, the Korean-Chinese-sushi-Mexican fusion restaurants, the grocery stores that sell prom dresses, snow machines, and hamburger (in HUGE quantities). I like to go to Camai for the dancing and crafts. I like the multilingual bathroom signs at the airport. I remember coming back here the second time that I visited, and being drawn in by the Yup'ik-accented English (and Yup'ik) that I heard on the plane out here, and seeing that bare concrete floor in the baggage area and somehow feeling a warmth that I could not explain. When I see it now, I just know that I have come back home. Go figure...
I know that there are troubles galore out here-poverty, alcohol, suicide and assault. There are also many, many people who desperately want to preserve their traditional ways of life and also pass on a better life to their children, people who in that respect are no different than folks back in Cadillac, or anywhere else that I have been in the lower 48.
OK, enough preaching. Anyway, I hung out in Bethel last night after a fun boat ride up with Joe Bavilla. I went over to the Swanson's grocery store to get some cash from the money machine, and immediately ran into two families from Napaskiak, which made for a much more social occasion than the average trip to the bank. I saw a couple of the teachers with whom I came into the district last year there a little later, and we had a pleasant stroll back to the hotel where we were all staying.
After our session was done today, I hit the AC (Alaska Commercial-you can look up its history on Wikipedia) store for five dozen eggs, some potatos and a bag of onions. I was off to the Yute Air terminal in record time, and I even managed a little lesson planning while waiting for my plane (free wi-fi, natch). We took a Cessna 172 for the flight across the river, and it felt like a much livelier plane than the Cessna 207s on which I usually seem to end up. It started to make me think about studying for my pilot's license, but that is an expense which I will forego for the time being.
And now I am in the comfort of my tiny home, thinking about a better night's sleep than last night. I do not care that much for being alone any more, but it is tolerable for the night. A life shared, especially an adventure, seems better to me these days, and we will be back to doing that tomorrow...
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Alaska Airlines, Kiss My A--!!!
We are already looking at airfares for Xmas time. Expensive. The biggest hook is on the Bethel-Anchorage leg, because there is a virtual monopoly. F*&^%$s....maybe it is the year to just stay in the village...not sure how well that would fly, but it might cut down on the break-in threat...
The big AYP dinner was tonight...kudos to my all-star wife for pulling it off...we couldn't run this joint without her.
Tomorrow is Thursday...only 4 more working days until Monday.
The cold is breaking up nicely, although I did end up sleeping on the couch last night because I was coughing for a while. I think that I will live...and now it's time for bed...
The big AYP dinner was tonight...kudos to my all-star wife for pulling it off...we couldn't run this joint without her.
Tomorrow is Thursday...only 4 more working days until Monday.
The cold is breaking up nicely, although I did end up sleeping on the couch last night because I was coughing for a while. I think that I will live...and now it's time for bed...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Up On The Wall...
The kids were pretty good today, except when they fell apart...it is tough to get them to work together in group projects because they have a tendency to bicker. Someone says something, someone else gets his/her nose out of joint, and we are off to the races...we tried a little experiment with building the perfect paper airplane today. It was hard enough finding a place to fly, because the building is pretty crowded. We started, and then got moved, and then that reallt went to the dogs. I finally pulled them back into the classroom, and tried to have a postmortem on what went wrong. I think that caused me to really lose my patience. The backbiting gets to be a little much sometimes. Oh, well, we will try again tomorrow. The math kids, on the other hand, did pretty well. So, I guess that we have that working for us.
We did seem to have fun with a writing exercise. I am working on the writing process itself. We took a stab at free writing and word association, with pairs of kids coming up to see what they could do in 60 seconds. I also showed them that they can keep a journal, so that perhaps they can pull information from it in the future for expanded writing projects. I showed them this blog as an example of how they can try to get better at writing by doing it consistently.
Tonight was girls' open gym, and I hepled out a little bit with the preparations for tomorrow night's dinner. I probably could have justified staying at home and sleeping, but it was too boring to contemplate. Maybe I will catch up over the Labor Day weekend.
Tomorrow is Hump Day already, and it promises to be a long one. If I remember correctly, I had a cold last year at about this time. I just hope that I am not doing this all over again...
We did seem to have fun with a writing exercise. I am working on the writing process itself. We took a stab at free writing and word association, with pairs of kids coming up to see what they could do in 60 seconds. I also showed them that they can keep a journal, so that perhaps they can pull information from it in the future for expanded writing projects. I showed them this blog as an example of how they can try to get better at writing by doing it consistently.
Tonight was girls' open gym, and I hepled out a little bit with the preparations for tomorrow night's dinner. I probably could have justified staying at home and sleeping, but it was too boring to contemplate. Maybe I will catch up over the Labor Day weekend.
Tomorrow is Hump Day already, and it promises to be a long one. If I remember correctly, I had a cold last year at about this time. I just hope that I am not doing this all over again...
Monday, August 23, 2010
Hoo-Rah! Monday's Over!
Another exciting week off to a start! And another Monday gone between me and next summer's vacation!!! Funny, ain't I?? Oh, please-you didn't expect some earnest discourse about the nature of education, did you? Please. Please. Please...I'm starting to feel like James Brown...
Let's see...dishes washed, laundry done and put away, spaghetti sauce put away at the school. Pasta for Wednesday's dinner not yet cooked, but the meat is defrosting in the kitchen at school. I have my lessons blocked out for the morning. Now it is nearly time for bed. BTW-the cold is still hanging around, but it didn't stop me from spinning this evening.
Tomorrow one of my students wants to start coming to stay after school so that he can work on his English phases and get out of 8th grade by the end of the year. He came to me with the idea, and I am happy about that.
Not much else to say about the day except that it is over, and no one got hurt. Not necessarily for want of trying. On to Tuesday!
Let's see...dishes washed, laundry done and put away, spaghetti sauce put away at the school. Pasta for Wednesday's dinner not yet cooked, but the meat is defrosting in the kitchen at school. I have my lessons blocked out for the morning. Now it is nearly time for bed. BTW-the cold is still hanging around, but it didn't stop me from spinning this evening.
Tomorrow one of my students wants to start coming to stay after school so that he can work on his English phases and get out of 8th grade by the end of the year. He came to me with the idea, and I am happy about that.
Not much else to say about the day except that it is over, and no one got hurt. Not necessarily for want of trying. On to Tuesday!
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