Then the Seahawks dominated the 49ers, which was the perfect ending of the holiday feast!
My boyfriend bought Christmas lights at the store for me, just because I was sad that we had no decorations. On strand of lights cost $20! But i love them!
Today is Thanksgiving and it was an awesome day! We went over to a friends' house along with maybe 13 other people. It was like a pot luck with all of the food piled on the table. We brought a pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin pie, a small ham, and yams. Everything was delicious. Then the Seahawks dominated the 49ers, which was the perfect ending of the holiday feast! My boyfriend bought Christmas lights at the store for me, just because I was sad that we had no decorations. On strand of lights cost $20! But i love them! Plus it snowed! This is the least amount of snow they have ever had for this time of year. I spent the evening crafting to Christmas music and watching Hannibal the tv show. Heaven!
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My boyfriend ended up with pink eye. Yuck! He is the fifth teacher recently to get it. It is like a pink eye epidemic here! And I guess the clinic was complaining about the school sending kids to the clinic to get treatment because "it will go away on its own in 12 days". I spent the evening bleaching everything and opening every door with a clorox wipe. I also stayed a minimum of 6 feet away. It is better now after the clinic gave him medicine. A visiting girlfriend who is a nurse also brought some surplus drops in case someone else gets it. She tried to bring me a flu shot but they were out at her hospital.
My boyfriend has a Benjamen Franklin quote for every situation. That is awesome and sexy!
Friday was another culture night, focused on culture crafts for the little kids, like beading and sewing. Lots of native dancing and I had a good conversation with a native man who helps teach children cultural dances. An elder woman was laughing because my boyfriend was talking about getting a sewing machine since I want to quilt, and then we could sew the traditional clothing from cut cloth. She said that was the lazy way to do it, but that she sometimes uses one as well when she has a lot to do. I would hand sew a quilt and be like Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, but I would be down for using a sewing machine. Plus now I think it would be cool to sew SCA costumes one day. Kids bring those packages of ramen noodles and eat the dry noodles as snacks.... ewwwww
Friday, I was assigned a third grade boy to work one on one with for a week, because he was suspended for saying something very bad in class. Like, would probably get expelled if we were not in the bush kind of bad. Instead of going home for a week, the principal and his father agreed to just pulling him out of class and having him work with me. Suspension at home really does not solve anything here.
Friday was hard because I was also running the alternative classroom, so it was hard to keep him engaged and try and get the other kids to work or at least not destroy the room. Monday was awesome. I spent the weekend gathering materials for him to work on. His teacher only gave a small amount of work, so I searched out stuff for each subject for his grade level. On Friday I noticed he could not read. Monday, I figured out the reason why he cannot read most words is because he does not know the middle part of the alphabet. I made flash cards for the letters and for basic sight words. One thing is the Yup'ik alphabet only has maybe 17 letters, so I am wondering if the ones he does not know are ones not in the Yup'ik alphabet. I am unsure if he was in the immersion program and I do not want to ask his dad in case it comes off as a criticism. Basically I am teaching him third grade math and kindergarten reading, and grade level science and social studies, but I read the material and help him write the answers after we talk about it. I am not sure yet if anything is helping him yet, though he did know what the letter "T" was today after multiple activities involving it on Monday. He is a FAS child, just FYI. I think he is a pretty nice boy, at least one on one. He listens and does his work and does not run away or talk back to me. We are doing way more work then he does in class, so I throw in some fun activities like coloring fun sheets I have or a brief Bill Nye the Science Guy when he seems to be getting overwhelmed or tired. I love how there are so many Seahawks fans in Alaska! I am with my football people here! Seahawks jerseys and hats everywhere! My boyfriend is growing a beard as wind protection. I hate the time period it takes to grow because it is all ouchy and looks scruffy. But only a couple more weeks until it gets past that evil stage. He bought me an awesome Seahawks watch for work! Just because. "What's with you Gussucks and changing your shirts every single day?"
-Remember, most wear the same clothes for days on end, sometimes weeks. Even adults wear the same clothes all week. It is actually how I identify kids sometimes, especially when kids wear a jersey or a unique shirt for a week. But then when they change clothes, I have no idea who they are. I took the HELP (Para-Profesional) test yesterday. A man from the District office flew in to give five of us the test for free. This way if there were any technical issues, he could solve them. If people get a job because of this test, the money is taken from your paycheck. if not, then it is free. I got a 480, which is the highest score you can get. There are three positions open that require passing this test, but I am unsure how others did on theirs. I know that some of current teacher's aides had to take the test 3-4 times to pass. So while I want people to pass and do well, I kind of want first dibs on a job since it is hard for me to get hired. The job I want has an anti-Gussick woman from the tribal council demanding to sit on the interview board for the job, maybe because of me since I was chosen before. She came in demanding that she be chosen over the others. Having a top score makes me highly qualified though and technically I am now certified as a teacher's aide.
Monday, we were sent home early from school because of flooding, but the water never crossed the road. It is frozen near the school and I want to try and get some pics of it soon. That depends on weather. Thursday and Friday, I worked as the sub for a 4th grade teacher and a fifth grade teacher. No aides in the classroom, just me. Honestly, I was not sure if I could do this because you teach all subjects, same group of kids all day. Upstairs, when in doubt you can always throw on a movie because you only have each class of kids for 50 minutes. I mainly agreed on Thursday because my friend was sick and he needed to go home, but could not go home until he found someone to cover his class.
The 4th grade class is a rough class anyways. I have been in there multiple times as a traveling aide, but never alone. Thankfully, there was a detailed schedule of what the kids needed to do. Within the first five minutes of class, I had a boy throw away the work he needed to be doing. When I told him to pull it out of the trash, he spit on every piece of work. Because of that, I wanted to send him to work in the counselor's office where bad children go, but I could not get him to go there. No one was answering in the office and I could not leave the class alone and bring him. So this whole time he is causing a huge disturbance and running in and out of the classroom. The SPED aides would not help me just escort him down to the office, so they told me to call his grandma who works in the school. I did that, and the boy took off running through the school. Grandma did find him and he ended up in the office until right before lunch. I let him come back the last 30 minutes and he was good, but he did something during lunch and got sent home. I got the class through every assignment and only had five who were really disrespectful (to each other and me). The teacher next door came in and yelled at them for being noisy and disturbing her class. She came by randomly to make sure they were behaving. I had another friend come by just to check on if they were listening to me. I had to send another student away for destruction of property in the hall and not listening. I somehow made a boy break down and start screaming, crying, and kicking in the gym because I wanted him to wait 2 minutes before getting a ball because he was not listening to me. I shut the door to the ball room and he went nuts. Three adults came rushing in to see what the tantrum was about. Then the principal got involved and wanted to know if I wanted the kid back in class. The kid got over it, but then at the end of school was climbing on something and fell and started crying again for 5 minutes. He was not hurt long term, but it was a bad fall. For random information, this is the boy who tried to steal from my apartment in August. After school he was peering in my windows and waving at me. While I think the 4th graders were better behaved than the middle schoolers Monday and Tuesday, the teacher was not happy that five of them were pretty bad. He had the five give me a public apology for being disrespectful. Now Friday was a half day. I did not think I was working, so I was getting pizza rolls ready for the 7th graders pizza party. But I guess the planned sub for 5th grade never showed up, and no one noticed until the bell rang and there was no teacher. So I was asked to sub. Those kids are always good so I said yes. But I had no sub plan, no work sheets, no schedule, nothing. So I had them do some multiplication, took them to the library to find books, had reading time, computer lab, then we just watched a movie the rest of the time. I felt like a slacker teacher, but I could not find anything for them to work on. I did grab a geography word search from another teacher and they did that as well. It is weird an aide or native did not sub for the teachers. They make $5 more an hour for doing it, while I do not because I am on the 6 month probation period. That is why I rarely sub for a teacher other than my boyfriend. The reports say the Bering Sea is getting a giant storm because of Typhoon Nuri. I know it is hitting the islands but unsure if it is coming here. I do not think we will get a storm, just flooding. The sea is very high right now. I can look out the front door and see it. Normally I can barely see the sea until I start walking to school, but right now it looks doubled in size. There is usually one giant flood a year here. It can flood over the main road to the school and sometimes go all the way to the store. The buildings are all built to withstand flooding and are on stilts.So even if a storm causes severe flooding we should be safe. You have to climb stairs to get inside any building. But it would keep us inside though. It is sunny but frigid right now. |
AuthorI am a Colorado native who moved to Alaska for love and adventure. This journal is going to track my journey. Archives
March 2017
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