Well, the bay and Koyuk River is completely frozen and people are enjoying hooking for tomcods, lincod, trout, smelt. It reminds me of the very first time I tried hooking with a hand made stick with fishing line wrapped the long ways. Esther and Ethel, two Elders, whom I adore, offered their hooking rod to me and I tried. I got one and freaked out because I was so excited. You all know how I react when I get excited. So good memories.
I mentioned in the summer that I was thinking of leaving AK and going to Oregon. God has changed my heart and am so thankful He has. I'm planning on returning to Koyuk next year! I love it here. I believe when I wanted to leave AK it was around the time Jason and Myra left and was very emotional.
The weather has been really cold, but not any snow except for a dusting. I saw the white Northern Lights once. It was incredible. I also the moon surrrounded what looked like a halo. Any ideas what that might be?
It's been fun cooking and baking...chocolate chip cookies, chicken lasanga, buffalo chicken soup. Wish you were here Dad to try it! I'm making boo cups with my kids this week. You make chocolate pudding mixed with crushed oreos, put in a cup, put in a dab of whip cream and two chocolate chips to look like eyes. The product looks like you have a ghost.
We will have a costume parade, pinnatas, and classroom party on Friday along with Trick or Treating! Will update. I do not yet have a costume. The last two years I dressed up in my rendevouz dress and mocs was an exercising grandma. Any ideas for this year?
Off to bed early tonight. I'm exhausted! Then work tomorrow and Bible Study!
Oh yeah....Christmas plans...God willing...I will be traveling to Galena to visit Jason and Myra. I will go home in the summer so I can have more time for quality visits.
Until later.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Fall Ed Conference in Unalakleet
Well, this post is for my friend Amanda, who said I should blog more than once a month and blog about the ed conference. Every year the kids get a week off in October because teachers all around the BSSD (Bering Strait School District) come to Unalakleet for a 4 day conference. The funnest part of the conference is sleeping on classroom floors with air mattresses and taking showers with my collegues, along with luke warm or sometimes cold water. Hmmmm....high school all over again!
This year I presented my first time with Heather. We presented what we learned from our Bridges in Mathematics workshop this summer. Heather did most of the presenting because she also went to a 5 day Math workshop the year before. I learned a ton from her! At the end of each day, I got to meet with Kindergarten teachers to share Bridges lessons and good questioning techniques. I was a little nervous but so excited to be sharing the new curriculum that lets students come to their own understanding.
All the participants, including myself, worked through problem solving together, learned new theory on Math. It was fun and challenging to do problems with others. First, I enjoyed seeing how others figured out problems and challlenging because I did not like problem solving in the past because I never thought I was good. But I'm learning that I am and everyone is a mathematician because we solve problems in our own way that makes sense to us and the power of working with others to grow as a math learner was neat also. What great concepts and ideas to apply to the classroom.
It was also fun to see friends: Amanda, Becky, other old co-workers, families I got to know in Unalakleet, etc. It was nice to spend time with co-workers. One of my favorite things to do was to visit the coffee shop every day to get a Macky Mocha with English Toffee! Yummy Yum Yum. They had a cute little puppy boxer.
Overall, it was one of the best ed conferences I've been too! I also took one hour sessions on learning about a new curriculum the district purchased for Unsafe and Safe touches. I'm excited to use it 2nd Semester, after I start and finish the crisis prevention curriculum I got last year. I also went to a session about how to communicate with parents about student's pacing with the standards and levels we teach. What a perfect time because parent-teacher conferences are coming up.
This year I presented my first time with Heather. We presented what we learned from our Bridges in Mathematics workshop this summer. Heather did most of the presenting because she also went to a 5 day Math workshop the year before. I learned a ton from her! At the end of each day, I got to meet with Kindergarten teachers to share Bridges lessons and good questioning techniques. I was a little nervous but so excited to be sharing the new curriculum that lets students come to their own understanding.
All the participants, including myself, worked through problem solving together, learned new theory on Math. It was fun and challenging to do problems with others. First, I enjoyed seeing how others figured out problems and challlenging because I did not like problem solving in the past because I never thought I was good. But I'm learning that I am and everyone is a mathematician because we solve problems in our own way that makes sense to us and the power of working with others to grow as a math learner was neat also. What great concepts and ideas to apply to the classroom.
It was also fun to see friends: Amanda, Becky, other old co-workers, families I got to know in Unalakleet, etc. It was nice to spend time with co-workers. One of my favorite things to do was to visit the coffee shop every day to get a Macky Mocha with English Toffee! Yummy Yum Yum. They had a cute little puppy boxer.
Overall, it was one of the best ed conferences I've been too! I also took one hour sessions on learning about a new curriculum the district purchased for Unsafe and Safe touches. I'm excited to use it 2nd Semester, after I start and finish the crisis prevention curriculum I got last year. I also went to a session about how to communicate with parents about student's pacing with the standards and levels we teach. What a perfect time because parent-teacher conferences are coming up.
ATTACK......
Don't worry mom...no bear attack! As Sarah and I were walking our puppies up by the airport, we almost got attacked by a plane that we didn't hear that was right behind us! Brings back memories when Myra and I were walking on the airport. So, the attack story is a little more involved. Do I have you hooked yet? So Sarah and I saw this huge bird! An owl, hauk, no it was a falcon! We thought it was so neat swooping in and out of the willows and spruce and made jokes of how funny it would be if it tried to attack our dogs. Without thinking twice about it, the falcon left the airport and suddenly and secretly came back heading closer to Sarah and I, and her pup that is is the size of a small rabbit. I yelled to Sarah, "Grab your bird, I mean your puppy!" I was a little nervous as you can tell. So she swooped her up and I was in awe of how beautiful the falcon was and then Berry decided that she wanted to play with this big bird. So she started chasing it and barking at it. It was so darn cute, but I reminded her that is not a bird you want to be playing around with. The falcon hung around by Berry a while and I said a quick prayer. This reminded me of the time when I went duck hunting with Jason and Myra and Kemper and, I believe, an owl, was swooping after him. Both the falcon and the owl must have had nests close by.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Pokes, Musoo and Fall
Wow, can you tell how busy I've been with school; I haven't written in about a month! Since I mentioned school, I'll start with that. It's been going well. I'm learning how to just enjoy the kids' presence and not be so focused on the curriculum. I'm thankful for God for allowing me to turn from my frustrated feelings and not lash out. It's so neat because I believe I'm finally seeing the fruit of my prayers: that I would be free from that. The kids are doing an amazing job spelling by sounding out. This is much earlier than most years! The new math curriculum is fun! The kids made their own calendar pieces: spiders and ladybugs and figured out a way to make patterns and then they chose which one they wanted. The only downfall to to this curriculum is that it takes a lot of time to plan and make the materials. I also have to the curriculum I had already first then I can do the new one. This doesn't make sense to me because the same concepts are taught but just in a different way. The kids recently loved the Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle. It was neat to hear how much they remembered from reading it, I think in Head Start. So the last thing about school is the pokes. That is what the kids refer to when they get shots. So we went to get TB shots, iron, weight, height, vision. We brought our classroom puppet to help too. The kids loved this. As I sat next to them explaining what was going to happen at each step and told them to look at KinderRoo and sing stupid songs about KinderRoo and each student, they did spectacular! They had to bravest class I ever had!
Musoo...Eskimo word for wild potoato. I know most of you are thinking of small round brown vegetables but nope. I was invited to go musoo picking up the beach a couple of Sundays ago. We traveled by Honda on beautiful Fall day. We got to Coal Creek and used a handmade boat that brothers made a few years back to get across the other side. It was extremely tippy so thank goodness my dad taught me how to get in and out of a canoe. As the little boat filled up with water as each person went across with Tom paddling it was a thrilling adventure! We made jokes about how each one would fall and how that would be funny! Luckily, that didn't happen. We got across and got a quick mini-lesson on how to dig for musoo with a large pick ax from the Native that was with us (same woman I went fishing and boating with this summer). So Elvina showed us what the plant looked like, how to just dig and pry the tundra up and look for the twig like potatoes. It was like picking for berries; you didn't want to stop. It was quite the work out too because the ground was getting hard from the freezes we have had. It's really whitle inside and has a skin like a "white" potato does but it has a sweet taste. Yummy and all natural! We stayed out for four hours and got to see two swans, an eagle, and the reindeer being herded. What a day! I can't wait to order myself a musoo digger for the spring time!
Fall has been beautiful! The tundra has turned orange-brownish. The fireweed leaves turn bright crimson, others are orange, willows, alders, and currant leaves turn yellow and orange. The insects are gone! The mornings are crisp and the days have been sunny! Just this week the bay and the river froze over completely, but melted in the middle because of the warmer days and after the high winds left. I'm wearing my down coat already and starting to wear sweaters. I think it's going to snow tonight because of the way the sky looks or it might rain, but others don't agree. As Berry and I go for our daily walk, her run, she is disappointed to find her once "cool off dipping places" frozen over. She also got into this funny habit of going through one drainage pipe and coming out the other. It's cute to watch! Along with Fall comes spruce hen hunting, crane, geese, swan, moose, beluga, seal, and ducks. Kim's dog caught her a birthday spuce hen. Berry is going to have to take lessons. She did come face to face with a stupid spruce hen (like our grouse) in the drive way. The dumb bird actually was moving towards her! She loved chasing it and was bummed I couldn't shoot it. She also met up with it a second time. We scared it out the grasses. Yes, it really did scare me!
Three long paragraphs later and you have an update. Another post is next.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Happy Birthday to.....
ME! Well take some guesses. I always think it is funny to let my kids guess how old I am. Some said 5, 7, 8, and one older Elementary girl said 100, 50, etc. It was neat to have Elders guess too. I like their guesses because they always say a younger ages.
It was a nice birthday. The whole school sang to me. I had two surprise presents waiting for me in my classroom: candle with encouraging book with Bible verses from my old mentor, some Heavy whipping cream from the first grade teacher to make ice cream. Our class made blueberry muffins because muffins begin with the /m/ sound and we just learned that. They had fun!
I treated myself to a movie and chilly cheese fries and nachos that night. Don't think I ate that all; I had some help with from other teachers at a small cookout. Yummy potato salad, hotdogs.
Berry also surprised me with a present: puke on the bottom of her kennel with her covered in it. She ate something rotten the night before on the beach. Then as I had to let her out of her kennel, she shook and got it all over the walls, puke footprints on the carpet. I thought she did her business outside so I brought her in and gave her a bath. She "loves" baths. Then she decided to give me more presents of puke piles. So I doubled my lunch break to clean up messes. Good thing my old mentor, now site evaluator was there to watch my kids. I put Berry outside the rest of the day on her rope. I could see her from my classroom which was relieving. She paced non stop for 5 hours. Poor girl had millions of gnat bites on her belly. She still wasn't feeling well either and the bites bothered her so layed on my bed the whole night. She's better now.
One of the new teachers got a new puppy which is 5 weeks old. Berry is so cute and gentle with it, which surprised me. She got excited one day and decided to do the same thing she does when she get throws up a piece of her food. She rolls on it; so the poor Juno got smooshed by a big black dog! Gosh makes me want to have a puppy again. I really love Juno. She gives me kisses all the time, is funny when she is clumsy, and is just darn adorable. I can't wait for her to get a little bigger and then see what her and Berry will do.
Well it is cranberry picking time. I went today and got 1/2 quart. HOpefully again this week.
We have a potluck and Back to school night tomorrow. I'm beat so off to read and bed!
Until next time.
It was a nice birthday. The whole school sang to me. I had two surprise presents waiting for me in my classroom: candle with encouraging book with Bible verses from my old mentor, some Heavy whipping cream from the first grade teacher to make ice cream. Our class made blueberry muffins because muffins begin with the /m/ sound and we just learned that. They had fun!
I treated myself to a movie and chilly cheese fries and nachos that night. Don't think I ate that all; I had some help with from other teachers at a small cookout. Yummy potato salad, hotdogs.
Berry also surprised me with a present: puke on the bottom of her kennel with her covered in it. She ate something rotten the night before on the beach. Then as I had to let her out of her kennel, she shook and got it all over the walls, puke footprints on the carpet. I thought she did her business outside so I brought her in and gave her a bath. She "loves" baths. Then she decided to give me more presents of puke piles. So I doubled my lunch break to clean up messes. Good thing my old mentor, now site evaluator was there to watch my kids. I put Berry outside the rest of the day on her rope. I could see her from my classroom which was relieving. She paced non stop for 5 hours. Poor girl had millions of gnat bites on her belly. She still wasn't feeling well either and the bites bothered her so layed on my bed the whole night. She's better now.
One of the new teachers got a new puppy which is 5 weeks old. Berry is so cute and gentle with it, which surprised me. She got excited one day and decided to do the same thing she does when she get throws up a piece of her food. She rolls on it; so the poor Juno got smooshed by a big black dog! Gosh makes me want to have a puppy again. I really love Juno. She gives me kisses all the time, is funny when she is clumsy, and is just darn adorable. I can't wait for her to get a little bigger and then see what her and Berry will do.
Well it is cranberry picking time. I went today and got 1/2 quart. HOpefully again this week.
We have a potluck and Back to school night tomorrow. I'm beat so off to read and bed!
Until next time.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Life Away from school, wait is that possible?
Well, getting home at 4:30 or sometimes 5 is a nice feeling and a break away from school even though I find it hard not to think about how I will do things differently in the classroom or what should I do about this, etc.
I've been feeling very exhausted and to point of being fatigued again. I felt the same way I did when I came home during my first year of teaching. So I've been taking it easy with taking Berry for walks up to Devil's Hill, up the beach, or on the airport. I'm learning how to get her to listen more. I call her once or twice and/or whistle, and then keep walking and she comes! It was neat because one night, the two new teachers and I went to the beach and saw these larger brown birds. I identified them as hawks but I read my bird book today and they weren't. They were perrigan falcons. It was a pair! It was neat to see them swooping and flying and am glad they didn't get Berry!
I had a cookout with three other teachers. That was so relaxing. I couldn't remember the last time I had burgers on the grill. Yummy! For dessert we had blueberry milk shakes! What a treat! Now I'm going to make vanilla icecream so I can make different kinds of milkshakes and even experiment with the idea of making icecream like coldstone. Maybe brownies mixed in with blueberries, or crushed up candy bars mixed in with the vanilla ice cream. I made strawberry ice cream last week and blueberry pie! Yum, yum, yum. Yes, I'm bragging about my cooking again. I get this part of me from my dad! He's an excellent cook and I miss his grilling. So eating good food and making it has been fun. I tried making pasties (stuffed pie crusts with ground beef, potatoes, onions) that look like calazones. They turned out just the way my mom's pasty did. I'm excited to make them again and freeze them so I have dinner for a week already planned. The crockpot has become my friend again. I'm making porkchops and a beef roast this week so I can have those for dinners and then I have bacon and beef pizzas for lunch this week.
I started my running yesterday and wow was it tough after 5 months! My heart and lungs hurt so bad, but it felt good in a way. My legs burned as I went up the hills too! I ran for 10 minutes then took a break for 3 and then ran another 10 minutes. The last were easier. My goal is to run every other day for 20 minutes and then do fast walking or treadmill the other days. I'm taking it really slow as I run. I'm not sure you can even call it a run, more like a jog. I slept so good after running too. Speaking of sleep, I would like to get ready for bed earlier so I have time to read before bed. This is something I have not been doing for a couple weeks. I'm currently reading a classic: Oliver Twist, Focus on the Family magazine,and a Christian politics magazine.
Look forward to telling you more about my kids, and non-school fun! Stay updated!
I've been feeling very exhausted and to point of being fatigued again. I felt the same way I did when I came home during my first year of teaching. So I've been taking it easy with taking Berry for walks up to Devil's Hill, up the beach, or on the airport. I'm learning how to get her to listen more. I call her once or twice and/or whistle, and then keep walking and she comes! It was neat because one night, the two new teachers and I went to the beach and saw these larger brown birds. I identified them as hawks but I read my bird book today and they weren't. They were perrigan falcons. It was a pair! It was neat to see them swooping and flying and am glad they didn't get Berry!
I had a cookout with three other teachers. That was so relaxing. I couldn't remember the last time I had burgers on the grill. Yummy! For dessert we had blueberry milk shakes! What a treat! Now I'm going to make vanilla icecream so I can make different kinds of milkshakes and even experiment with the idea of making icecream like coldstone. Maybe brownies mixed in with blueberries, or crushed up candy bars mixed in with the vanilla ice cream. I made strawberry ice cream last week and blueberry pie! Yum, yum, yum. Yes, I'm bragging about my cooking again. I get this part of me from my dad! He's an excellent cook and I miss his grilling. So eating good food and making it has been fun. I tried making pasties (stuffed pie crusts with ground beef, potatoes, onions) that look like calazones. They turned out just the way my mom's pasty did. I'm excited to make them again and freeze them so I have dinner for a week already planned. The crockpot has become my friend again. I'm making porkchops and a beef roast this week so I can have those for dinners and then I have bacon and beef pizzas for lunch this week.
I started my running yesterday and wow was it tough after 5 months! My heart and lungs hurt so bad, but it felt good in a way. My legs burned as I went up the hills too! I ran for 10 minutes then took a break for 3 and then ran another 10 minutes. The last were easier. My goal is to run every other day for 20 minutes and then do fast walking or treadmill the other days. I'm taking it really slow as I run. I'm not sure you can even call it a run, more like a jog. I slept so good after running too. Speaking of sleep, I would like to get ready for bed earlier so I have time to read before bed. This is something I have not been doing for a couple weeks. I'm currently reading a classic: Oliver Twist, Focus on the Family magazine,and a Christian politics magazine.
Look forward to telling you more about my kids, and non-school fun! Stay updated!
First Week of School
Well, I think it was the first time someone said to me, "Are you going to update your blog?" So here it is. It was a hectic week before school started and especially on Monday the day before school started. We didn't get a lot of time in our classroom but we got together as a staff and made a Koyuk school vision, goals for attendance, reading, writing, and math, established processes and procedures for attendance, tardy, homework, in school suspension, elegibility for sports, practiced technology.
On the first day of school we had a picnic down at the beach. It was gorgeous day out! I helped plan and organize this community event, which is part of my second job as Solution Team facilitator. We had a scavenger hunt planned along with, caribou, caribou, Eskimo baseball, and a water relay. I was encouraged by our principal to get as many student helpers/leaders as I could. Well, it was amazing to see how willing the students were to take leadership roles, even as young as Kindergarten and first grade. We didn't get to the scavenger hunt or Eskimo baseball because we had to wait for the food for a while (happens every year). The water relay was the hit! It wasn't my idea though. IT was neat to see older kids helping younger kids and seeing them all working together to fill the container with water from the river.
The first week was a blast! There are many things to celebrate. The kids were a joy to be around, awfully quiet though and that is something I don't remember from last year. THey helped each other a lot and me in the classroom doing little jobs, shared, took turns, caught onto the procedure really well. I think my favorite was seeing them "come alive" when we read stories together. They became so talkative! They made great observations about the pictures, had good ideas to questions. Their excitement motivated me! We start learning our sounds next week. We've been working really really hard on practicing procedures in the classroom. There are a lot that need more clarifying and some we have not covered yet; for example, how to sharpen pencils, use some of the materials and where they go.
I'm super excited to start this week in Math. I get to use a new curriculum that I got trained in this summer called Bridges in Mathematics. Last week, I let the kids explore the math manipulatives. This week is still exploring but also discovery lessons on shape attributes, graphing, sorting, counting to 100 using bugs. This whole math curriculum uses fun visuals and manipulatives like geoboards and geobands. I can't wait to see kids discover things on their own instead of me telling them like I have done in the past. The kids this year came in knowing more of their shapes and colors too!
This week is going to be even more busier: IEP meeting, VTC (video conference on Kindergarten testing), Solution Team meeting, and an extra day of school to plan for. It will be interesting. Later, I'll be staring Battle of the Books with Kindergarten students. The students and I read 5 books before January. We act them out, do simple trivia about the books such as, "In which book is there a red sock?" We have some great books like one about owls and that is all I can remember now. Then in January we have a video conference battle between other Kindergarten students about the books we read. IT shouldn't take too much time but any time I can get to plan is precious! Then testing will start in September and usually takes me 2 full days of having a sub. Then also around the same time I will be traveling to Unalakleet for a curriculum instruction meeting. We are going to be discussing in depth different pathways students can take to graduate without lowering the standards. So it should be interesting!
There is school in a nutshell!
On the first day of school we had a picnic down at the beach. It was gorgeous day out! I helped plan and organize this community event, which is part of my second job as Solution Team facilitator. We had a scavenger hunt planned along with, caribou, caribou, Eskimo baseball, and a water relay. I was encouraged by our principal to get as many student helpers/leaders as I could. Well, it was amazing to see how willing the students were to take leadership roles, even as young as Kindergarten and first grade. We didn't get to the scavenger hunt or Eskimo baseball because we had to wait for the food for a while (happens every year). The water relay was the hit! It wasn't my idea though. IT was neat to see older kids helping younger kids and seeing them all working together to fill the container with water from the river.
The first week was a blast! There are many things to celebrate. The kids were a joy to be around, awfully quiet though and that is something I don't remember from last year. THey helped each other a lot and me in the classroom doing little jobs, shared, took turns, caught onto the procedure really well. I think my favorite was seeing them "come alive" when we read stories together. They became so talkative! They made great observations about the pictures, had good ideas to questions. Their excitement motivated me! We start learning our sounds next week. We've been working really really hard on practicing procedures in the classroom. There are a lot that need more clarifying and some we have not covered yet; for example, how to sharpen pencils, use some of the materials and where they go.
I'm super excited to start this week in Math. I get to use a new curriculum that I got trained in this summer called Bridges in Mathematics. Last week, I let the kids explore the math manipulatives. This week is still exploring but also discovery lessons on shape attributes, graphing, sorting, counting to 100 using bugs. This whole math curriculum uses fun visuals and manipulatives like geoboards and geobands. I can't wait to see kids discover things on their own instead of me telling them like I have done in the past. The kids this year came in knowing more of their shapes and colors too!
This week is going to be even more busier: IEP meeting, VTC (video conference on Kindergarten testing), Solution Team meeting, and an extra day of school to plan for. It will be interesting. Later, I'll be staring Battle of the Books with Kindergarten students. The students and I read 5 books before January. We act them out, do simple trivia about the books such as, "In which book is there a red sock?" We have some great books like one about owls and that is all I can remember now. Then in January we have a video conference battle between other Kindergarten students about the books we read. IT shouldn't take too much time but any time I can get to plan is precious! Then testing will start in September and usually takes me 2 full days of having a sub. Then also around the same time I will be traveling to Unalakleet for a curriculum instruction meeting. We are going to be discussing in depth different pathways students can take to graduate without lowering the standards. So it should be interesting!
There is school in a nutshell!
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