We got our first Produce box the other day. Yay for fresh produce! Each box is about $80 delivered, but considering that one head of cauliflower is $16, that is not too bad. And it is all organic and you get seasonal produce. Right now we have apples, peaches, pears, tomatoes, carrots, acorn squash, celery, potatoes and an avocado. I was finally able to color my hair, thanks to my aunt =) It was a good thing since kids were counting my gray hair! Of course, some of them may have caused the gray hair LOL My boyfriend is finally back! And he brought me roses and chocolate! Flowers are a rare thing here since they do not sell them at the store. So he hand carried flowers on the plane, which is so awesome and sweet!
I will make a real post tomorrow. I am so exhausted from this week. Those teenagers have run me ragged! 3/4 evenings I have fallen asleep while reading or something around 5pm. Only for 20 minutes, but still. I rarely nap or doze like that. Not a bad week, it is just hard work keeping them in line and trying to teach them about the Columbian Exchange while getting through a 90 minute movie and 65 question worksheet. One class finished and every kid who turned in their work got a 100%! So the majority of one class actually listened to me! I feel proud. Of the ones who did not turn work in; one never turns anything in and the other I believe crumpled it up in a tantrum. But I could be wrong and it could appear Monday.
My boyfriend comes back tomorrow morning instead of today because of flight issues and such. He has to stay the night in Bethel. Yuck. And I am unsure if he can get internet and cell service because he is staying with some guy and cell service in Bethel sucks. So I am kind of in the dark about when the flight comes in tomorrow. A quick note - Today I had a 7th grader telling me how to make Brew. Not cool.
I was told today that I am meaner than a grandma. And called an ugly bitch through a note. It is okay, though. I guess doing what I say I am going to do is mean. I said before class that I would take any cell phones I saw during class and I did. I said I would give detention if students did not stop disrupting class and I did. I said I would send really disruptive students out of class and to the counselor office to work and I did. This was all 8th graders. Of course they get over it quickly, so tomorrow they should be fine. I mean Tuesday the sixth graders thought I was mean and threw a tantrum, and the next day they had improved their behavior. I have definitely improved my ability to be stern. I try and be positive and let the kid know when they are being awesome. I just cannot tolerate kids disrupting the entire class so we cannot get work done or disrespecting me. One of the girls who got detention tried to come and stay during my last class instead of go to her own class. I told her to go because she was disrupting the 6th graders and they are already behind. She would not go so I may have been a tad mean, but she did not have my permission to skip her last class and stay with me. So that is when a bunch of them said how mean I was. I have let students stay, but only ones who quietly do their work.
Oi!!! Middle schoolers! At least work is getting done and we may finish our movie tomorrow in most classes. trying to get through a 90 minute movie with kids is almost impossible, especially because I have to stop every few minutes to make sure students got the right answer on their worksheet. Then with the 6th graders, they cannot spell anything. So I send half the class hearing "how do do you spell "burn". How do you spell "october" How do you spell "america". How do you spell "nest". How do you spell "north". On and on. There is only so much you can write on the board. I now have a ton of students who say hi to me and wave to me when I walk through town. Most do like me. It is not a bad week at all, just frustrating! And no one here to vent about it to because other teachers do not want to talk about work once they are home, and it is just me until tomorrow. I did need a teacher to physically carry a 6th grader out of my class because he refused to leave and go home. Then the kid was wandering around outside so I hid. LOL As I have mentioned before, alcoholism is a huge issue in this village, as well as drug use. This is a topic very close to me because of the alcoholics i have known and loved. One of them being my brother who passed away because of it.
Alaska residents are paid to live here. Right now, in a week or so, that is getting paid out and each resident adult gets $1800 and I think it is $500 per kid. My boyfriend does not get it this year because of the time he spent in Texas. He came back to Alaska a couple months after the application deadline. Anyways, I keep getting told by many people that it is going to be like the wild west here for a couple of weeks once people have money. There will be too much homebrew. I have heard from numerous people that the parents will fly to Anchorage for whatever reason, and just tell their kids to find someone to stay with. So the kids get very worked up and stressed and have an unstable home life for weeks, more so than usual. This leads to them acting out and being angry. It is very sad that money gets abused like that and that parents could just abandon their kids for a couple weeks and not care what happens to them. I know many kids are angry over homebrew, even though many might be drinking themselves in a few years. I read some writings kids did about how to make the village a better place and many wrote "get rid of the homebew and the drugs". I have never seen either but it is here. Chewing tobacco - another huge issue. 8 out of 12 7th graders yesterday said that they use chewing tobacco. Parents will give their elementary school kids a pinch of tobacco in the morning to keep them awake. This is awful and disgusting. I was told people chew because it is cheaper, but there is no reason to be giving little kids tobacco! Make sure you check out the updated Pics page!!! Have any suggestions for the site? Let me know!
Today was day one of substituting for my boyfriend while he is in Anchorage. He is the person who was selected to go to this training about the new evaluation system and then train the principals and staff here in the village, plus some of the school board people who travel a lot and are here for a week or so. It is a good training to go to, he just was not ready to leave the village so soon, especially right before midterm grades are due. I mean, it is two plane rides to get to Anchorage. You spend half the day traveling and with the weather, flights are always delayed. But it is paid for. We both wished that I could have gone, but tickets to Anchorage are around $1000 round trip at this moment. Plus guaranteed sub teacher work/pay for me is a god reason to stay. I make over $100 a day AFTER taxes just working at the school. I think subs for teachers make more. I have mostly subbed for the aides so I have not seen a pay stub yet for what I make subbing for a teacher. But the aides prefer to sub for their teachers for the extra money and stop talking to a teacher if they are passed by for the opportunity. This applies to elementary school mainly because the second floor barely has any aides working in the rooms despite needing them for some students.
My boyfriend and I did not get too much of a goodbye today. He came in the morning to show me what to do with the kids for PE then flew out. But even just hugging and kissing in a chaste manner caused a ruckus from the sixth graders. I mean, I am already asked 50 times a day when we are getting married or girls wanting romantic stories. The kids are obsessed. But you cannot get them started because then they never stop. I confiscated a sharpie marker in gym class from a student and forgot to give it back at the end of the day. He came by my house looking for it. That is how it is here. Kids just come by. I also had girls come by wanting to draw pictures for me. Possibly for money, I am not sure. Kids come by selling crafts. Adults come by selling crafts. What I really want is being sold by a teacher and it is carved chess board made from whale bone with ivory pieces. But is is $1500. My boyfriend and I both drool over it though. The crafts the native teachers sell cost more than the people who come to your door. The day went pretty well for the first half. Kids worked, no one called me a name, no one asked me a sex question. I did lose one 7th grader and did not notice until the special aide teacher came by, asking me what I wanted done with the student having a melt down by the stairs. Oops. I needed the tech guy to fix the projector, so when he had the door open, a bunch of kids tried to run out to the hall. That is how she snuck out. I would not let a kid go to the bathroom and wash off a giant jaw breaker he dropped on the floor during the movie. He responded by knocking all of the papers off of the table. I took away the bathroom pass for one class because they would not settle down and do the movie worksheet. If the kids are good, they get skittles at the end of class and sometimes students who are working get them during class. All morning most students got skittles. The kid who knocked my papers down did not get any. Kids who were really tardy did not. If the kid did not do much work they got maybe one depending on if they were quiet or disruptive. Actually one 7th grade was perfect the entire hour. In the afternoon, one the grade class got no skittles for anyone because as a whole, the class would not settle down. I could not keep kids in seats and they wanted to run around during the movie or sit in the window. Tomorrow I might start adding more names to the detention board. It was funny because I had 7th graders wanting to stay in my class for another hour because sometimes the special ed kids can go work elsewhere if they are having a rough day. So I had kids keep coming back. The last 6th grade class started off doing well and got skittles. Part of this was because I sent a problem child downstairs to work. He came back and then everyone went nuts. I had kids trying to steal batteries from the remote, trying to take stuff from the desk, kids stealing other kids homework, etc etc. So I denied them skittles as an entire class. This led to papers being crumpled up and thrown, trash thrown in general and whining about how mean I am. They actually were so upset that they did not finish cleaning up. Each class earns check points that go towards a pizza party. They need 100 checks. If a class is nice and cooperative with me, they will get 10 points automatically. If not, they get zero. I seriously have to keep everything in my pockets. I cannot leave out dry erase markers or pens or the remote. They write on desks daily so need to keep pens away from them. They start writing on the board if they get a marker. And now i guess they steal batteries. I am better with discipline, but when it is 3/4 of a class, you cannot send the entire class to the office. Today I worked with second graders. It actually went well and I did not lose any kids! I walked boys to the bathroom multiple times and they walked in a line and did not run, screaming down the hall! Progress! I even walked a kid to the office and he did not cry or scream or avoid it. One kid peed on another kid, which was the main drama of the day. Had to find extra pants and the vice principal had to figure out the discipline measures for peeing on someone. Thankfully, I did not laugh until I was home, just because it was such an odd issue! After my shift was done, I hung out with the six graders in my boyfriends class so I could see how much time he gave them for different assignments. Those kid were nuts! There was chair throwing (well, knocking over in a mad manner) and homework being crumpled up and general disruptive behavior from almost all! Yikes! They got through maybe 8 minutes of the video. It was madness. I actually feel a tad better when every teacher experiences days where the kids go nuts, so it is not just me being unable to handle them. It is frustrating because the the graders are so behind right now. Not even just because of behavior, but because school has ended early multiple days for sport or meetings or in-services, so the last two periods of the day have been shortened or just cut out.
There was a community meeting at the school at night for parents to attend. Thankfully maybe six parents showed up and two even came to visit with my boyfriend. They seemed happy about all of the Yup'ik culture stuff that has been put up, and that he teaches them stuff about the village. There is even a Disney movie he has that was filmed here. I did not get the tech job, which is not a surprise considering I hate Apple computers and do not use them. Waiting for the school district to approve the library job being reposted in the village. Waiting for the form for the early childhood education job. The woman in charge just wanted to hire me since it is grant money, but the council did not approve of that and is making her post it for the ten days. Tomorrow I take over his classes for the rest of the week! Because of how long it takes to mail deposits, I have been trying to open an Alaskan bank account. Unfortunately, our village has no bank so I need to do it online. My boyfriend was going to make the deposit in person in Anchorage, but everything is stalled because I have an out of state ID at the moment and cannot do anything about it until I can get to Anchorage myself. The issue is they want mail with my physical address on it, like a utility bill. Since we are in the bush, we do not have physical addresses and we do not pay for utilities so we get no bills like that. All i have is my check that has a PO box on it. So waiting to hear back about it tomorrow. If they do not sort it out tomorrow I will just have to cash my paycheck here. Also trying to get a cell phone, but there is no buy online option. You need to go to Bethel or Anchorage it seems. Now that I know what I am making, I am getting a cell phone, hopefully.
Nothing too much going on. The weekend was spent watching football and my boyfriend preparing lesson plans for next week. We did volunteer at the store Saturday selling hot dogs to raise money for a student's memorial fund. He passed away in June. My boyfriend grilled and I served the hot dogs. A lot of money was raised, and it was nice of the store to donate all of the food. Plus it was a great deal. $3 for a hot dog, chips and a drink. We got some great yearbook pictures of the event. |
AuthorI am a Colorado native who moved to Alaska for love and adventure. This journal is going to track my journey. Archives
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