Tag Archives: teaching

They say it’s fifty below

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But I don’t really have a clue. I suit up in all my layers to trek to school (I’ve walked farther in grocery store parking lots) then peel off the bibs and the parka and the neckwarmers and the gloves and hat and get down to the business of teaching school. It hasn’t felt cold yet, but I haven’t really stopped to wallow in it or to dip my bare toes in the snow or anything dumb like that. I have been warned not to touch metal with my bare hands and to always cover my mouth and nose when I’m outside so I don’t get frostbite in my lungs.

I stopped on the walk home last night to watch the northern lights. They were green and shifty, like some sort of seaweed in turbidity, swaying in and out of view. It wasn’t a great show, but it was my first, so I reveled in it until I started to feel the chill in my hands.

My kids are delightful. They’re funny and charming and smart. I have the privilege of teaching writing, so I have them journaling a few minutes a day. Yesterday, in response to the “if I were a superhero I would be…” prompt, one girl wrote about how she would have ice powers and she would battle lava girl. She would shoot lava girl in the toes with a big ball of ice power, and Lava Girl would turn into a rock. Today, one boy wrote about something he’s proud of and told me that studying Gwich’in makes him proud and helps him understand the way people used to live.

One of my favorite things about living here is my walk home (again, think of walking across a parking lot) for lunch at noontime. The dawn and dusk spill out over the whole day, and they stain everything pink with the sideways-falling dye of light.

When you can see chimney smoke at all (most of the time it is dark outside) it is pink like cotton candy.

When you can see chimney smoke at all (most of the time it is dark outside) it is pink like cotton candy.

This is what I see when I step out of the school for my lunch break. Is it the cold that makes my eyes water, or am I simply appropriately stunned by the magnificence of the arctic?

This is what I see when I step out of the school for my lunch break. Is it the cold that makes my eyes water, or am I simply appropriately stunned by the magnificence of the arctic? I’ll try to take some better pictures, soon.

Housekeeping item: I’m poaching the school’s internet, so I don’t have facebook. If you want to get in touch with me, send me an email or write me a comment or gchat with me sometime.

Three Faces of Saying Goodbye

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It’s best if we simply choose not to acknowledge the inevitable passage of time.  I’m sure we’ll have another chance to say goodbye.

It’s easiest to get through days like today by focusing on the details. I blasted Dixie Chicks in my classroom and picked every bit of ticky tack off the walls. It was strange and freeing, peeling off the faded posters from my first year and unearthing graffiti from when the graduating class was in the ninth grade. I didn’t want to make small talk and try to keep my composure. I didn’t want to start saying goodbye too early and have to avoid seeing people in the hall after long, heartfelt farewells. I didn’t allow myself a single tear until C came to say goodbye, and then I dropped a couple (splat) on the linoleum floor. I make light, but it broke my heart. I will miss that kid like crazy.

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WHAT HAVE I DONE! (And all I can think about is all that I still have to do!)

I scored finals and entered grades and peeled tape off the chalk board and cleared drawers all day until my room, usually messy, often fluffy with snowflakes or hung with geometry mobiles or draped with graphing posters, sometimes smelly and always colorful, was neat as a pin. I didn’t think about Alaska until I turned in my keys and slid my gradebook under the office door. By the time I came through the front door at home, I had a to do list all ready to draw up and start marking out. It feels like everything is happening all at once and far too fast, and all week I’ve been struggling to switch gears quickly enough to keep up. Now I’m heading into open country and the last stop sign’s in my rearview mirror. It’s smooth sailing into fifth and I’m about to be barreling into the unknown at a whopping 95.

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I hate saying goodbye, and I’m afraid I’m leaving good things behind, and I’m also looking forward to something extraordinary, so I’m not ready to look backwards yet.

I said goodbye to my Principal today. He calls me his daughter and treats me like one. I’ll miss his kindness and his unshaking faith in me. I’ve been very lucky, and I won’t soon forget any of the people I have come to love here. I missed saying goodbye to lots of folks, and I think I like it that way. Feels more like “so long, but not forever.” My colleagues have been more than kind to me, and I wouldn’t want to inflict my hideous, blotchy crying face on them anyway.

I lost my cool on the ride home, thinking this might be my last cruise down our county road in the dark, listening to gravel spraying the belly of the car. I think I’m quite brave and perhaps very stupid to give up awesome for the chance of something better.

What am I thinking?!

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I have a twelve page to-do list and a head full of question marks. This whole operation is crazy.

If you google Venetie, AK, you will know almost as much as I do about this place. I’ve gleaned a little more from talking to the folks I’ll soon be working with.

  1. The water is full of copper and lead. Buy a distiller.
  2. The kids will sell their souls for hot pockets. They love music.
  3. Venetie is considered a rough village. If I survive, this is my ticket to teach anywhere in Alaska. This is frightening but also nothing new, really. At least in Alaska, that kind of thing commands respect. Here, Sean teaches in one of the worst counties in the US, and that’s not going to help him get a job elsewhere. It might be differently bad, but not worse than Lee county. I was surprised at how casually my principal told me this, as if I would move on as a matter of course and I was just coming to do my time.
  4. My classroom has a fully operational radio station.
  5. The store has chips and soda and baby food. Nothing else.
  6. I should expect to see some of the best northern lights anywhere.
  7. I’ll teach all of the subjects to half of the kids between the ages of 11 and 20. The other half is with the other secondary teacher/principal.

I have compiled for your edification the following general info about moving to the interior in the middle of winter. The quotations are paraphrased from a phone call with my new principal.

  1. “Nothing can prepare you for seventy below”
  2. One must mail everything in the Rubbermaid roughneck totes with the lids ziptied on. Lesser totes will shatter in the cold and cardboard will break and spill your stuff everywhere unless it’s taped for the apocalypse (but also know that flat rate mailers are your best friend). Assume, when you pack your things, that they will be dropped from six feet up in the air.
  3. “You really can’t imagine the cold.”
  4. One must carry everything one needs to get through the first week in one’s backpack, but not too much because one gets only forty pounds of luggage free, and that should consist mostly of food. After the first forty pounds, it’s a buck eighty per pound to carry stuff on the flight to Venetie.
  5. One must fly in all of one’s warmest gear in case of a wreck. Carrying a flashlight is recommended because, with three or four hours of daylight, it’s likely to be dark upon one’s arrival.
  6. Food comes in the mail. Can one mail oneself, for example, rutabagas? They are a sturdy vegetable, but they aren’t dry-goods sturdy. I don’t yet know. I will in a month.
  7. “When it’s fifty below, it knocks the wind out of you. It’s an experience.”
  8. One must make good use of a day or two in Fairbanks to buy cold weather gear from Big Ray’s and to mail all of one’s groceries on to one’s new home.

Getting my teaching certification transferred to Alaska isn’t that big a deal, but it’s a lot of paperwork. I need to send off the following as soon as possible and to keep my fingers crossed that it will all be processed by the fifth of January. There are a lot of stamps involved here.

  1. a recommendation stamped by the Arkansas department of ed (mailed from me to the ADE and then back again before its trip to Alaska)
  2. official college transcripts (mailed to me, then sent on to Alaska)
  3. praxis scores (mailed directly to Alaska)
  4. fingerprint card (Mailed from Alaska, then completed here and returned to Alaska with the rest of my paperwork)

So all of this is a hassle and it’s scary and I’ll be isolated from my friends and family in a tiny, arctic village that never sees the light of day. What am I thinking? Here’s the deal: I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. It’s been fully two years since I decided I’d move to Alaska after Arkansas, but I remember looking into teaching in Alaska before I applied to TFA. There’s something fascinating about an arctic winter. In my imagination, it’s the end of the whip, cracking fast and harsh. I have to see it. I have to put myself to that test.

On top of that, the prospect of being an educator in rural Alaska sends a giddy shiver up my spine. Kids in Alaska, especially the native kids I’ll be working with, have a really unique set of educational needs. In order for their culture to survive, they must become adapters, activists and advocates. These kids live a subsistence lifestyle based on a fragile biome where the world’s air pollution concentrates (it’s called arctic haze) and where the effects of climate change will be devastating. Their communities are notorious for sexual assault and domestic violence. They need relevant knowledge that reaches way beyond their villages. They need educators who can value their culture and community. They need to become creative, logical, confident, flexible and purposeful. I’m not ideal for the job (I know nothing about anything, really), but I’m sure willing to give it my best shot with bells on.

 

Building a Blanket Fort

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I was offered a job today, one that I really want.
It’s a secondary teaching job in Venetie, Alaska, a village above the arctic circle in the Yukon Flats.
I am frightened of bears and of bush planes and of seventy degrees below zero.
I’ll be going alone and I’m terrified of that.

DSC01356Over Thanksgiving, I built a blanket fort with some friends. While everyone else was asleep, we reshaped the world. We took the furnishings of sleep and stayed awake to hang them over our heads, pinning this fabric of an improbable, inverted landscape to the ledges with makeshift fasteners and friction and gravity. We whispered our giggles and slept in absurd contortions, grinning.

DSC01347My greatest fear is of going to bed early, of giving up on things before I’ve even begun. I’m accepting the job offer.
Everything comfortable in my life is going to turn upside down.
Maybe my glee is childish, but I’m exhilarated: I’m remaking my life into an adventure again.
Wish me luck.