Huslia First Impressions

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Keely

Not exceeding the speed limit anytime soon.

Flying out of Fairbanks yesterday I got completely disoriented. I kept scrubbing the plane’s window to melt the frozen fog so that I could peer down at the landscape. Reflexively, I looked for familiar hills and riverbends. I found none. This is new territory.

Just now I got back from my first walk around Huslia. It was my first and last chance to walk in daylight, since I’ll be teaching all week and leaving on Saturday. I walked around the school a little and bumped into some kids who filled me in.
“The sixth grade boys are kind of mischief,”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be okay though. They’re not my first mischief boys.”
“If you yell at them, they’ll just make fun of you.”
“Good to know.”

I’ll challenge any of the boys who messes with me to a wood-chopping contest after school. That should do it. Or at least get someone’s wood chopped.

The girls were worried about me being out in the cold, too. “Your eyes are freezing!” Just the usual: a little ice in my lashes and on my hat. It’s maybe thirty below, but it was sweet of them to worry.
“I’m doing okay. I want to walk all around the village to learn my way.”
“Well don’t be afraid to take breaks. It’s pretty cold out.”

They’re awful sweet.

Not that cold, but tired–I didn’t sleep too well last night in my unfamiliar bed.

Here’s what jumped out at me on my walk: there are birch trees here, and a couple street signs (at about chest height, since they’re mostly not for cars), and people tow wooden basket sleds behind their sno-gos, not just plastic ones. The riverbank is really tall. I stood on it to watch the last sliver of the sun set over the river. Wish: May tonight’s be the first of many Koyukuk sunsets I witness.

There’s something either really silly or really profound about how different my first observations of Huslia were from the ones I made in my first weeks in Venetie. I guess we notice the things that are most different from what we’re used to.

It feels really good to be back in a village. It’s like a clamp came off my chest as soon as I got off the plane. Everything just seems to move slower in the bush. I’ve missed it. And that confirms something I already knew: this is it for me. This is how I want to live.

I’m also, kinda weirdly, in the lap of luxury. For this week, while my unit is getting painted, the district has me staying in this massive three-bedroom apartment. There’s running water (and laundry!) and baseboard heat with a backup blazeking. I keep finding myself standing around with no idea what to do because I’m used to so much time going to chores. For now, I’m not missing the chores, but I will soon. It’s kinda hard to sleep in a house that stays this warm. And stuffy. I can’t believe I miss the drafts in the yurt, but I do. Gosh, am I good at finding something to complain about or what? I love having a bathtub though.

Last night was my first night in Huslia, and just as I was getting settled in there came a knock at the door. When I opened it, I found four young girls standing on the top step.

“Hi!” I said.

“Hi,” they said, “are you a new teacher?”

“Yep, sixth grade.”

“ooh, we’re in sixth grade,” one girl gestured to one of the others. They were full of questions. “Do you have any kids?”

“afraid not”

“pets?”

“a dog, but she’s not here right now.”

“I have a dog,” one girl said.

“we have a class pet!” said another.

“Yes, I met Sammy the Hamster.”

“how long are you staying?” They all quieted down to find out.

“I’ll be here until the end of the school year,”

“Oh good!” said one girl, “you seem nice.”

“Howabout the rest of your life?” said the smallest one.

I think it’s time to dust off the mixing bowl and bring back cookie night.

The girls asked for a sleepover, but I don’t think I’m ready to commit to that in my first week.

When I saw them again at the end of my walk today, one of them asked when they could come for cookies. I said I’d talk to the principal, and if she says yes we can do it on Thursday. “I’ll bring chocolate chips,” said the ringleader.

Jimmy Huntington School: Home of the Huslers

Butter, Sugar, Dog Hair

Posted on May 20, 2019 by Keely

Two elementary school girls came over this afternoon to make cookies. They have a sleepover lined up tonight, and I loved listening to them discussing the games and pranks they plan to play.
“What if you hide outside the door and scare them?”
“We could put whipped cream on their face!”

We made a couple dozen tiny cookies and a specially tailored cardboard cookie-carrying box with the words “top secret” printed on the top so that they could transport them without losing them all to nosy neighbors.

It was wonderful and also a little sad for me. Cookie night used to be a big thing in Venetie. It never took off here in the same way, but this felt to me like those old cookie nights used to, with the girls laughing and opening up a little in ways they don’t at school. I am going to miss them. And all of this.

While the cookies were in the oven, J asked to play with Daazhraii. Now, Daazhraii is a pretty good dog. He’s playful, obedient, tough, smart, quiet, affectionate with his people, and sensitive (sometimes a little too sensitive), but he doesn’t like children, especially little girls. He treats kids with extreme suspicion and, if they approach him in an enclosed space, he stiffens, glares, and, if they keep coming toward him, growls. It’s scary and disheartening.

I have done a lot of reading on this, and I try to handle it well. I control any fear or anxiety I feel when kids are around him. I don’t allow him to be cornered, and, when I need to, I remove him from the situation gently. I don’t validate his fears by punishing him, I just watch him carefully and do what I need to do to remain confident that everyone will have a positive experience.

“See how his tail is stiff? That means he doesn’t want to be petted. Let him sniff you and, if he walks away, just let him go.”

It works well, and it seems to be helping him build up his confidence, because when J talked me into letting her play with him, he aced it. fullsizeoutput_228

One of L’s little-kid-sized rubber boots had a tear in it, and I’d just put on an Aquaseal patch, so she and I stood in our socks on the steps and watched as J spoke softly and gently to Daazhraii until – I couldn’t believe it – he let her pick up his rope toy and play tug and chase. They played for at least half an hour, at first on his run by the front door, then running laps around the house, taking turns carrying the rope toy. He was as gentle as – gentler than – I’ve ever seen him, and completely beside himself with the fun of it, totally relaxed and thrilled with his new best friend.

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Daazhraii seems to be mellowing, and I’m glad. There is not much room in the world these days for dogs that can’t be trusted. He may never get to be really trustworthy (I still wouldn’t let him into the house with the kids, where he tends to get more territorial and feel more cornered), but he’s making some progress, and that’s pretty exciting stuff.

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One Dog

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Keely

Screen Shot 2019-04-17 at 12.15.19 PM

Lily won the one-dog race with Daazhraii yesterday!

Occupational Hazards

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Keely

so much more than just the cold!

1. Parasitic Arthropods

Our cabin is currently sitting empty with the windows open. Last time I checked, the temperature upstairs was about -5. I never actually saw a bedbug, but I have a distinctive line of bites along my ribs.

Kids bring bedbugs to school, along with head-lice, pretty frequently. A few weeks ago, I had a kid raise his hand in the middle of read-aloud. I glared, and he put his hand down. A minute later he threw his hand up like Arnold Horshack and waved it in the air. All it took was a raised eyebrow and he burst:

“I found a zhii!”

That is one of my hundred or so Gwich’in words, so I did what most people would do if someone loudly announced that they’d just picked a louse out of their hair- what everyone else in the classroom did – and stared slack-jawed.

He looked back, totally ingenuous.

“Umm. Go to the office.” He left. I tried to play it cool and get back to read-aloud, but he came right back in.

“Um, where’s the office?”

“Katie! Go tell Katie!”

Katie’s our administrative aide and she’s worth her weight in gold. She quietly arranged a school-wide head check and called parents.

After a while my student came back into and helpfully notified us all that “nobody should sit there. [He had] dropped it.”

All that is just to say that parasitic arthropods are just part of classroom teaching. What are you going to do? It’s really a wonder we’ve never had bedbugs before.

We threw the mattress in the yard last week, and a day of forty-below took care of that. Freezing the house at a temperature of zero or below for a few days will kill any bugs or even eggs that are left inside. We had to move the canned goods and perishable food out of the place, but there are no pipes to freeze. It’s a perk of arctic living.

ice on the windows so you know it’s cold: bedbugs begone!

2. Trauma

I realize I am just beginning to understand trauma: it’s the dread I feel with the coming of dividends and holidays – times of heavy partying; It’s the sick feeling I get when someone who doesn’t usually visit the school shows up in the middle of the day. So often those visits mean that someone – a student’s cousin or a parent – has died.

This fall, I taught for two hours with the knowledge that two of my students had lost a parent that morning. They had no clue, just went about business as usual. I held everyone in my classroom, escorted kids to the bathroom, made sure no one snuck a device under the table and got on social media. I tried to keep it light, have fun, not let on. It seemed to take years for the kids’ grandma to come and get them. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

meanwhile, the sun is rising again, a little longer each day

By the time these kids hit middle school, they’ve seen far more tragedy than I saw in the twenty-five years of my life before Alaska. I have only been around for a few years, but already my gut is twisted with it all.

Trauma clouds the vision and tragedy is what happens when someone gets backed into a corner and can’t see a way out. Tragedy is what happened to both these boys, one of whom was my student. I try not to let myself dwell on it, but I have had a hard time letting it go.

3. Polar Bears

This is Not a Polar Bear

Jim is my neighbor, the father of a whole pack of young Arctic Village girls. He came by the school to pick up his daughters and I got to hear this story firsthand while the girls got their winter gear on. I just about lost my cool when I heard about this: it was the same weekend I was out thinking I was so badass for patching up the Bravvie all alone in the wilderness. I would have felt a lot less badass if I’d known there was a polar bear prowling around the area.

And after I fixed it, practically under the nose of a ravenous bear, my ride found the strength of ten Bravos, plus two! (this is how we haul school trash, these days)

**Polar bears aren’t really an occupational hazard. I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. This is just a ridiculously nifty story.

Things I have done so far today (1 pm)

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Keely

I have…

Cleaned up a mysterious pee puddle in the girls’ bathroom (in front of the shower, nowhere near a toilet)
Instructed a girl to “come back over here and wipe [her] loogie off the outside of my trash can.”
Called the clinic to see if we can get a health aide to do a talk on basic hygiene while a child puked in my (other) trash can
Called said kid’s mom because he puked in my trash can
Asked Geoff to give the aforementioned kid a ride home because his mom had no fuel in her machine
Sent more than half the kids in my class home sick, most on foot
Wiped down all of my desks and chairs with bleach
Wheeled a chair out of the room because it smelled like someone had pooped on it
Arranged for someone to have a talk with the stinky-bottomed child
Administered a state standardized test

Update (3:30 pm)

I have now, in addition to the previous items,