teaching

other, stories

Seven months ago (last August) I walked into a hobby shop in Anchorage and bought a hundred dollars of model rocket motors.

Most folks call it “The [Dreaded] Last Week of School,” but I call it “Rocket Week, the Most Awesome Week Ever,” Rocket Week for short. This bundle* of rocket motors was for Rocket Week.

Needless to say, this isn’t something I could bring to Diomede in my luggage. Rocket motors are considered HAZMAT and cannot be shipped by USPS, the only carrier which delivers to Diomede. In Anchorage I optimistically called all the Alaskan cargo airlines that fly to Nome, full of false hopes. Nothing. Nobody would ship a little tub of rocket motors.

I called the barge companies, hoping to drop off this explosive little tub at one of the docks to be shipped up to Nome (or if I was super lucky maybe even straight to Diomede!). I guess barge companies operate on a week by week basis, because after some very serious rounds of phone tag I had a “maybe. we will get back to you.” from one company and nothing from the other.

Asking dear friends for huge favors is generally something I save as a last resort, and I indeed was left with no other options. So I call Darla, who works with our school district and also happens to be a private pilot. She agreed to ferry the motors up to Unalakleet the next time she flew there from Anchorage.

A few months later the weather was right and the stars aligned, and sure enough Darla managed to help the rocket motors on the first leg of their journey to Rocket Week.

Then came a long period of waiting and hoping. Sure enough, a month ago a teacher from Nome–the Legendary Mr. Nate–happened to be passing through Unalakleet, so I emailed him and crossed my fingers. Darla brought the bomb-like box to the District Office that morning, and Janice–a great friend and a teacher in Unalakleet–made the handoff to Mr. Nate.  He got the tub onto his flight from Unalakleet, and when he arrived in Nome he made the handoff to Erickson Helicopters (previously Evergreen), the airline that services Diomede. The absolutely wonderful staff there jumped through god-only-knows how many logistical and legal hoops and one and a half weeks later on the helipad here Hank (Diomede’s Erickson agent) handed the box off to Mr. Willis, our principal.

The final leg was carried out by Jason and Raleigh, two of our adorable 1st grade students. Those two little whippersnappers hauled the box up from the elementary to my classroom and made my day absolutely as brightened as it could be.

Here is the tub at the end of it’s journey:

IMG_0259

*I should mention that I tossed in a few bottles of HEET with which to make miniature jet engines. Not terribly relevant, doesn’t really have any line in the story, but nonetheless a part of how things went down.

other

Six days off the island, 350+ miles on my jeep, good times with some great friends (thanks for the food and hospitality, jason and heidi and carl and janet and dorothy johnson!). It was great and it’s wonderful to be back on the island, albeit two days late. We got to fly direct from nome, which means an absolutely beautiful hourlong low altitude helicopter flight, complete with extremely low mountaintop fly-bys and swooping and banking through arctic valleys.

And not a moment after I step off the chopper one of our super energetic 3rd graders nails me with a flying bear hug. Life is good.

..and tonight? Hours of lesson planning and organizing? Kinda miserable.

but part of the deal, and it’s a good deal.

Life is good.

other

And sometimes after days of getting by one day at a time half broken and dog tired a beautiful moment happens in the blink of the eye so quick that it’s long gone before I realize I almost cried and one of those moments is enough to get by on for a while. Like this one moment that came along today.

other

And sometimes after a day that breaks me the next day is just a bit better, enough to get by on for one more day.

other

In a teaching world that revolves entirely around standards it shouldn’t be so surprising to me how powerfully a ‘not met’ mark, or rather a number of them, works into my head and heart.

tryin hard here to remember ardentheartedness.

the northern lights are out right now.

funny, other

*see the post below before you read this one

Provisional Teaching Certificate: 200+ hours of study, work, homework up to date, and two more years of study

Moving to the bush: $1000 of food at Costco + $300 shipping

Teaching science: many, many hours of lesson planning

Coil of magnesium ribbon: $27 + $15 s&h

Combustion pre-lab and lab lesson planning: 6 hours

Setting off the school fire alarm with my middle schoolers despite doing our lab right next to an open window: priceless

other

It looks something like this:

-explain oxidation / combustion

-explain what’s needed for combustion

-light a nail (fail)

-light a candle
+what’s happening?
+cover, remove oxygen–>stop combustion by removing an essential part

-why can’t you light metal?

-light a magnesium strip w/clip (let it burn out)

-re-explain what is combustion? why does magnesium combust?

-kids hypothesize: can magnesium burn w/o oxygen?

-explain why you need to polish the magnesium

-light magnesium, cover

-kids write conclusion

epilogue: light a bunch of magnesium and drop it in hot water (IMPORTANT: near open window)

stories

A lotta years ago I began to wonder if I would find myself in Alaska someday, and now some day is today and hey oh, look, I live in Alaska. Four or five years ago I began to wonder if I’d find myself teaching in a village in Alaska, and in April I signed a contract and on Saturday the wheels of paperwork began to turn..my initial teacher certificate should be here in a few weeks, the certificate that will make good my contract to go teach in an Alaskan village. It’s happening!

Day by day was the tale of the past six weeks. This “Summer Field Experience” bit of the certification program was the most intense thing I’ve done in my life. It was like the most difficult finals week I had during college, cloned and stacked five times over. Worth it? Like gold, baby, worth its weight in gold.

Learning? Well yes of course, all the things we were there to learn we did learn in spades: classroom management, disciplinary literacy (beating kids with books? why yes…in a way..sorta..but not), assessment, standards, GLE’s, strands, philosophy, lesson planning, behavior management, and oh so much more. And then some extra things too. One big extra thing, really. This: no matter how good I am at not judging, I still do. That one I learned the hard way, and I can only hope and pray that from learning it the hard way I’ll do better next time. Yeah, there’s a story behind it, even written up as my last Summer Field Experience journal entry. I wouldn’t feel ok posting it here, at least not for a while.

And now what? Four weeks of reading, organizing, planning, goofing off, and tutoring–the time will sail by–and ka-pow I get on a jet plane for the north. First to Unalakleet for some training, then a plane to Nome, then a helicopter to home sweet home, Diomede.

Day by day, one day at a time, that’s been the tale alright. But when I hit the brakes and look around I’m struck breathless by where I am and the trade I am privileged, honored and humbled to be a part of. It’s surreal, unreal and beautiful.

The best part? In five or so weeks, subtract the unreal part.

:D

other, stories

Little Diomede Island. The village is named Diomede and I have the privilege, the million dollar job: I am Diomede’s next 7-12 math and science teacher.

‘Excited?’ No. That word doesn’t really work; here, this works  better: I’m kinda excited like the horsehead nebula is kinda big.

Reference: here’s the horsehead nebula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula

Yeah. Like that.

:D

Little Diomede from the side
snowy Little Diomede
Little Diomede, Alaska – The native village of Little Diomede sits on the border of Russia and the United States. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer Richard Brahm)
other

*well, at a least a test won’t keep me back. How could a test keep me back? It’s a sorta-long and very-boring story. TLDR: I am incredibly excited that I passed a hard test.

Here’s what went down. I pulled a dummie and didn’t get my mits onto a study guide until two and a half weeks before the test. Open the cardboard box, crack open the book, 50 bucks for one single 18 page chapter on the particular test I’ll be taking. And oh my word those 18 pages are all little bullet points, things to study each bullet point a huge thing to get into my head and working well. Might as well be 180 pages. Or 500 pages. Yeah..definitely 500 pages.. Biology. Geology. Astronomy. Chemistry. Physics. Lab procedures. Me, I love science, right? Even better teaching science. But this is a LOT of science in not much time.

Two and a half weeks plus three hours later I walked out of a room feeling like I just finished having my science head and knowledge and ability stomped and sqrcckkked (that’s the sound when you twist your foot on gravel) into gravel..because that’s exactly what taking that test felt like. And of course, all the teachers I talk to say “ohhhh that test, yeah that felt horrible after I took it, totally thought I bombed, but then I passed!” and I say to myself Oh gees thanks for the nice little ‘make me not feel so horrible’ gesture.

And four weeks later: 190/200. Certificate of Excellence mailed to me. Kinda felt a bit of the coolness of DiCaprio’s Abegnale at the end of the movie, albeit briefly, as any of the coolness that remained after my nobody-is-around-so-I-can-fully-show-my-joy-by-couch-vaulting was definitely lost in the midst of still-nobody-around-celebratory-somersaults.

So what now?

Diomede. Nunam Iqua. Hooper Bay. Koyuk. Tuluksak. Final polish on my resume today, submit apps tomorrow, job fair friday, my gut says if she goes steady as she goes than Nunam Iqua or Diomede…but I’ve heard that a job fair can be a pretty wild thing, so we’ll see.