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!