Seward Camp and Other Musings

Whew! Survived the first day.

As promised, here are a few pictures from the Seward camp.

The girls cored trees with help from one of the camp
directors. This tree was diseased and was only about
38 years old or so.

I think this is the perfect picture for capturing the phrase, "can't see the
forest for the trees." We cut our own trail this day, and of course I
tripped trying to take a photo of  this endeavor. Kinda cool, though, eh?

Cottonwoods and Devil's Claw and brush,
oh my! 

Serving as a desk for my student, Ms. Hunger Games, as she marks her map.

Waiting for the boat to take us to Tonsina Point, where we would use
our GPS systems to take data points. In the meantime, we suffered
with this view and this awful weather. 

My roommate for the week, a chemistry teacher
in Anchorage. She's a doll, and she's already
helped me with new resources for this year! It
must have been meant to be - we have the same
exact raincoat.

I  must say that this camp was not only beautiful, but, getting to focus on only two students, I was able to learn so much more about their train of thought and their prior knowledge. Ms. Hunger Games was mumbling answers all day long to the camp guide's questions, things that we never got to in the curriculum last year. Both girls blew me away with their skill sets and knowledge of the outside world. I don't know why I continue to be surprised at these things. Maybe one of these days I'll learn. These two will be key in teaching their peers this year as we try to include the whole class in the online course.

So at this point I was just taking pictures of our
beautiful hike back to Seward. It was maybe
two miles or so.

View from the bridge.

I sorta look Oompa-Loompa-ish and my eyes resemble possessed Marlena's
from Days of Our Lives, but the light is different here. That, and I might still
 be trying to figure out my new camera. So nice to have some color!
It was such a gorgeous day.

Moss growing on the Dr. Seuss branches, as I've termed them. 

Another poor picture of the perfect reflections in the water. 

Exit Glacier. We used our GPS handheld units to find the rendezvous point below.

This geologist showed us how they mark spots for
aerial photography to be taken. Apparently bears
often tear apart these X markers,  costing
much time and money for these researchers as
 they track the movement of glaciers and landforms
over time.

My two girls really bonded with a few girls from the bigger cities. This
was so sad to watch them say goodbye!

The following shots are from the train that took us from Seward back to Anchorage. It was absolutely beautiful, and should be on your to-do list if you ever visit this huge state. They serve refreshments and everything, and the scenery of the Chugach Mountains is unreal. I did my best to capture a few of the best views, but it's tricky when you're on a moving train:

Upon my return to the village, it was 75 degrees, so I went canoeing with the new teachers and Michael the Medicine Man, who cured me with chaithluck last fall.

At the Bethel airport, I bumped into Colleen, the public health nurse who visited us in the spring, and her husband Rob. They are moving to California and I thought I'd missed them, but I got to see them one last time and meet their new little addition, baby Robert!

After just one week in the village, my color is
nearly gone! So pale I will be soon. I apologize
ahead of time for the ghostly version of me that
will return at Christmas.

As I said, we survived the first day and I think this will be a good year, or at least an improvement on last year. I'm hoping, anyway. It's no fun to get one's hopes up only to get them dashed to pieces, and I have plenty of experience with that, but what else can you do? Toiling towards something with hope is obviously preferential to just plodding through from day to day without even a sliver of it.

It reminds me of Dad's Zig Ziglar spiel, that your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude. It's funny how we need reminding of that from time to time, or at least I do. I know it factually but fail in the implementation here and there.

And that's a huge reason behind my posting these pictures and stories. They serve as a reminder to me of past good experiences but also to focus on their creation for the future. Plans are usually quite loose around here, and that leads to some of the best stories, but intention is also crucial.

I might be posting more frequently, as I have recently cut ties with the all-seeing Facebook. (Really, it's kinda creepy how all-seeing it is.) The last time I signed in I was congratulated that I now have Timeline! Or, as I see it, that I have no choice in the matter. Now, I'm stubborn with a German heritage, so this change was just never going to go over well for me. I don't like such things being decided on my behalf, trivial though it may be. (Can you tell I was a bit of a pill growing up? Sorry Mom and Dad!)

After avoiding their guilt-trip (they posted pictures of friends, saying "Julie will miss you! TJ will miss you!") I cut it off. Here's what I discovered: FREEDOM! I no longer am inundated with ridiculous statements about one's Diet Coke consumption, bad haircut, crappy job, or traffic situation. Seeing such comments while living out here and seeing that many do not live even close to the American dream (or even have their own dream) just angers me to no end. This is not to say that I won't miss pictures of my beautiful niece and nephew and friends, or the many hilarious and thoughtful things that some people do post, but I don't have time or energy to be annoyed by the inane.

Another bonus: I'm not as judgmental. In terms of karma, this has to be a good move.

We'll see how long it lasts.

Ciao!

I'm Baaack!

Hello, all!

First off, let me apologize for not closing out the end of the school year on here. It was too much of a whirlwind, quite emotional, and, as you may know by now, schedules here are really just suggestions and sometimes change so dramatically that it's hard to keep my own head on straight, let alone communicate with others. This summer, I just couldn't bring myself to process the end of the year in print, so I will do that here, where the feelings are fresh and I have time to reflect. Eventually, I will go back and fill in those holes as well as I can, complete with pictures.

Well, I'm back in Marshall for a second year. I just couldn't imagine leaving after one year, having just established some great relationships with the kids, the community, and the district. It will be quite a different year, as there are only four returning staff. As stated in the spring, I am officially the "Senior Secondary Teacher," which feels laughable, but should make for an interesting year; indeed, it already has in some ways. In the past three weeks alone, I've spent a week in Portland, OR, being trained in an exciting district initiative that will enable us to better teach our English language learning (ELL) students, taken students to a summer science camp in beautiful Seward, AK, and have started the process of breaking in the new hires. For the past week I've been slowly getting my room back in order, canoeing with the new teachers, briefing said new teachers in certain policies and general 'good-to-know' things, and sleeping when I get a chance...all this time-zone hopping is tiring!

So, here's the recap...

I've been chosen as tribute from Marshall to be trained for a district ELL initiative, called Constructing Meaning (CM). For our own amusement, we often speak of our job in terms of the Hunger Games, so you'll have to bear with me at times. If you haven't read them, you simply don't know what you're missing, but let this serve as fair warning that I may reference this phenomenal book series in the future.

My role as a CM trainer basically means that I, along with tributes from the other villages, will be in charge of training the other secondary teachers at the district-wide inservice in September, as well as be the on-call CM site facilitator to my 7-12 grade colleagues.

Slightly tall order for a second-year teacher, no? Many days I don't think I can handle it, or, handle it well, but don't worry, there's more...

Immediately after my week in Portland (which was a blast, and a huge THANK YOU to Aunt Sue for the fantastic accommodations), I flew to Anchorage to meet two of my students, a junior and a sophomore. We hung out in Anchorage for the night, and I had the pleasure of taking the girls to see a movie, which just so happened to be the Hunger Games. (No joke.) One of the girls had never been to a movie theater before; actually, she hadn't been to Anchorage since she was three years old, so we did the whole shebang -- pop, popcorn, candy, and everything. She went through the book series this spring in a matter of weeks and was thrilled when we found it at one of the discount theaters. I was tired from my own travel and the previous week in Portland, but seeing her face throughout the movie experience was pretty priceless.

The next morning, we joined other students traveling to Seward on a yellow school bus. There were 9 teams from around the state, and we learned about Geographical Information Systems, used GPS technology to map certain areas around Seward and our home sites, and had the chance to use some pretty cool software. Well, the girls did. They ran circles around me with the cool maps that we are going to be using this semester. We also took tree cores - one of the girls took a beautiful core of a tree that was 142 years old.

The really cool thing about this camp, which we attended via a state grant, was that it is the pilot group for a class to eventually be offered online to all Alaskan students. Cool, right? The girls will receive half a credit in Environmental Science for completing the online curriculum. I also get to pillage the online curriculum - yay for teachers graciously sharing their awesome ideas! The girls met some great kids from around the state, and I met some amazing teachers as well. The teams came from Anchorage, other rural villages, Sitka, Gustavus, and Kodiak. It was really touching to see all these groups interact. We ended up taking the scenic train back from Seward to Anchorage, which was absolutely beautiful. One of the girls' mothers even commented that she'd never had that opportunity, to which the girls grinned and giggled.

For not having a clue as to what I was doing when I applied for this camp, I think we came out remarkably well. We will be presenting our project to the school board in the near future and will try to link what we learned with geocaching, which is a pretty cool worldwide treasure hunt. Again, no idea what I'm doing here, but a wise teacher I had once told me, "If you're going to do something, do it with gusto!" She might have phrased it this way, in reference to performing onstage: "If you're going to mess up, mess up with gusto!" but since I usually screw something up, doing all things with gusto generally works out for the good for me. Thanks, Ms. Miner!

So, in addition to the CM training, the online course and geocaching, I will also be the Academic Decathlon coach this year. It sounds as though people want me to be the head volleyball coach, but right now I'm hiding behind the fact that I have no coaching endorsement to avoid it. I will gladly help out again, but being in the head coaching position just isn't something I've ever wanted. I will probably end up doing it anyway because that's just the way things work here. Also, I might be doing Battle of the Books. We'll see about that one; it's scary because our school has won districts for the past 8 years. I might put that one on one of the newbies, the reading/language arts teacher specifically. Is that mean?

With all that going on, I decided against taking one of two remaining classes to finish up my Master's. I have plenty of time to do that, and I'd like to sleep sometime in the next 4 months. Maybe I'll start that up in the spring. We shall see.

Sorry, no pictures this time, as I have misplaced my brand-new camera, bought the day my brand-new nephew and godson was born this summer. I believe it's at my apartment. Look for pictures and an updated post in the next week.

Thanks to all for all of your support and interest in the last year! Here we go again!