Tuesday, April 3, 2012

My New Piece of Native Art





This is my new doll and piece of Native artwork!  It was handmade by one of the Native ladies who works at the school.  The face, hands, and dance fans are made of seal skin.  The fur around the face and on the dance fans is rabbit fur, and the fur on the boots is seal fur.  I am so amazed by the skill, time, and patience it must take to make one of these.  When I told the lady this, she said that once you become an expert it gets a lot easier.  I wonder how many dolls it took her to become an expert? :)  I also think that it is really neat that I can say I know the person who made this.  I didn't just buy it in some Alaskan store.  I am so excited to add this to my small collection of Cup'ik artwork!

Friday, February 17, 2012

Sometimes I Wonder

Last week, I had 2 pretty funny things happen in my second period class.  Well, they're funny to me at least.  I don't know if you'll agree.

First of all, we were doing a worksheet on reading maps.  It was our extra skill for the week that was not a part of our main skills, but I thought it was a good thing to practice.  The map that we were using to answer our questions was of the western United States.  An answer to one of the questions was Nevada.  I was going over the page with the class and read the answer aloud.  My student that I can always count on for a good laugh (the one that says potty station and tentacles) said, "That's how you say it?  And all these years I thought it was knee-vuh-duh!"  Oh dear.  My aide and I busted up laughing.  In all fairness, there are some ladies here in the village with the name Neva (pronounced knee-vuh), so I can see how she would get confused.

The other thing that happened was not quite as laugh out loud funny, but it just made me smile to myself.  My students know that I am from Alaska, and sometimes they will ask me questions about what it is like in my town.  Well, the other day one of the boys in my second period class asked me what time it was where I'm from.  I tried not to smile too big as I calmly responded that it was still in Alaska, so it was the same time as Chevak.  Some days I just shake my head to myself.  Maybe we need to review some social studies concepts.  It's always good to have something to smile about though :)   

Porch or Snow Cave? Sometimes it's Hard to Tell the Difference


 

This is a video to show you what it is like to get into our house.  Sometimes it can be quite tricky.  If you can't hear what I'm saying in the video, I'm explaining how the maintenance men from the school made us some very nice snow stairs to get into and out of our door.  They needed to get to the door between the apartments, so they shoveled most of the porch out, which we hadn't seen in weeks because of all the drifting.

Below are some pictures to show you what our door and porch looked like before they shoveled it out for us.  We were basically in a snow cave.  We literally had to crawl up and out of the door in the morning, and then we would have to slide down the other side on our tooshies since the drifting had basically created a mountain of snow outside our door.  If we tried to walk down we would just end up falling anyways, so it was just best to sit and slide.  Some mornings we still have to slide down the other side of the porch, but for the moment we don't have to crawl out of the door anymore.  One morning, another one of the teachers saw me sliding down from the porch and she asked me, "Now how many people can say that they get to do that when they leave their house to go to work?"  That is one way to look at it I suppose :) 

 I had shoveled out a small area in front of the door enough to get it somewhat closed, but then we had to climb up the drift to get out the door and over the porch.  As you can see, this is worse than the previous post where the pictures show the snow in front of the door growing, because we were completely surrounded by snow, it wasn't just blocking the door anymore.  And it isn't just the stairs on the porch that are nonexistent, the entire porch itself is nonexistent.  I'm not sure if you can quite see it, but there is a string tied around the door handle in this picture.  We asked for help from the maintenance men when we couldn't get the door to close.  They tied this rope around the handle to help with pulling the door closed from the outside.  It comes in quite handy some mornings.

 Footprints from where we had to step up to crawl out.  Every time we would take a step, more snow would fall into the doorway, making it impossible to close the door.

 I was trying to take a picture to show the cave like quality of the door.  We were literally surrounded by snow on all sides.  At one point we could actually slide into the apartment as well as out of it.  Honestly, it was kind of fun.

I think this might have been the day when there was just so much snow falling into the door that we couldn't close it.  I propped up a kitchen chair behind the door when I left for school so it wouldn't completely blow open, but inevitably some snow still got into the entryway.  That was a long day of shoveling. 

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Shovels and Snow Drifts

For the past several days we have been having some serious wind in Chevak.  For whatever reason, it seems like the weather choices here in the winter are either extremely cold (like -50 degrees) and calm, or warmer (that's relative of course, warmer means like maybe 0 to -10 degrees) and super windy.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages.  

When the weather is -50 degrees and calm, it really can be very beautiful.  We have had some amazing (but absolutely freezing) sunsets.  And at night it is so crisp and clear, and the stars are super bright.  However, when your heat decides to go out at 50 degrees below zero, it gives you a whole new appreciation for having a warm house.  You don't realize that it's a luxury until you have to go without it.  Falon and I got to have that experience a couple of weeks ago.  As we were standing in front of our oven trying to warm up, we realized how blessed and fortunate we are for the things that we have.  It's amazing the things you can take for granted without realizing it.

Now on the other hand, warmer, windy weather means wearing goggles to school so that you can see.  It means trips from the post office are 3 times harder because walking against the wind hauling a sled full of boxes is no easy task.  Windy weather means weird noises in the house and the carpet blowing up under your feet.  But most of all, it means SNOW DRIFTS and SHOVELING!  

When the wind blows, so does the snow...and it can leave behind some crazy drifts.  It can be weird because the landscape changes from day to day.  One day there will be a drift in one place, and then the next day it will move to a new place.  It makes for very interesting walks to school in the morning when it's dark.  I have been surprised by a new snow drift on more than one occasion and fallen into the deep snow.  It can be very difficult to get back up again, and probably rather humorous for an observer.  I tell myself that no one has seen me when this happens, but I'm not entirely sure that's true.  At least no one has told me they've seen me...

Many of you may be familiar with snow drifts, but I'm not sure that you are familiar with the kinds of snow drifts we have in Chevak.  The other day, my brother told me that they were having bad wind and drifting snow at home.  Now that may be true, but I highly doubt that it was causing anyone to be trapped in their house.  I say that because just yesterday the 5th grade language arts teacher was trapped in her house by a snow drift covering her door.  Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what things look like around here because of the wind.        


 This is the snow in front of our apartment.  
It's actually worse than this now, because this picture was taken a few days ago. 

 These were our stairs.

 The snow in front of our window and on the side of our house.  
I really think I'd like to try sledding down one of these drifts. :)

 The snow in front of our next door neighbor's window.

 This drift is covering the entire door of one of the teacher apartments.  
Luckily there was no one in there at the time, or they would have been stuck.

 Here is a better look at the snow drift blocking the door.

 Our row of teacher housing.  As you can see, most of the apartments
have snow drifts in front of them with differing degrees of craziness.

 Our stairs again.  Now they have completely disappeared.

  
This is how the snow started out in front of our door...easy enough to step over.

         And then it grew...                
 
 

And grew....

 And grew....



 
 And grew until we had to use a kitchen chair to get out of the house.  Let's just say, it's a good thing the doors open in instead of out, or we would never get out of the house. As you can see, the imprint of the door is in the snow.  If you look closely, you can see that the snow moved up to the second set of rectangles outlined in the door and you can see the spot where the door handle went.

And then finally.....  
 
Yesterday when we came home this was what our door looked like.  Somehow the neighbor's door seemed to be completely clear of snow drifts....so unfair.  We had to dig ourselves in instead of digging ourselves out.  Falon dug enough of the snow out so that we could get in the door, which took a while....as you can see from the picture, there was quite a bit of snow to clear out of the way.  We still had to jump down off of the snow drift to get inside.  Then once we were inside I tried to dig from the inside out so that I could clear a spot in front of the door.  Let me tell you, shoveling snow is no leisurely activity.  It's a stinkin' workout!  My arms and back were pretty sore the next day.  I actually felt kind of pathetic, because for as tired as I was after digging and digging....I really hadn't made that much progress.  So....we gave up and called some of the high school boys and paid them to finish the job.  They did excellent!  They did a WAY better job than what I would have done myself.  I would have been satisfied if I could have just gotten the door to close.  But they got all the way down to the porch and even cleared off some of our stairs too!  It was so worth it.
 
Today it is much less windy, and I'm hoping it stays that way for a while.  I am ready for a little break from the snow drifts :) 

So the moral of this story is (you probably didn't think you were getting a moral, but I've got one).....leave your shovel inside in case you have to dig your way out!

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

That's Just Gross

So I thought that because I teach older students I wouldn't have to deal with things like puke and kids peeing in their pants.....  Well, apparently that is not necessarily the case, even with 6th graders.  I definitely had to deal with some gross bodily secretions today.  And I didn't just have to deal with them......no, no, no.  I had to deal with them ON me!  Let me explain....

During my second period class today I was up in front of the class getting ready to go over a worksheet with my students.  I was standing in front of the desk of one of my students waiting for everyone to be ready.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fling something to the ground.  I thought it was just a spit wad or a piece of crumpled up paper.  Regardless, he threw something on my floor, so I gave him "the look" so he knew he'd been caught.  He said he was sorry and then looked down, somewhat embarrassed.  This student can tend to be chatty, but he doesn't purposefully cause mischief on a regular basis, so I figured a stern look was good enough for the first offense. 

I began walking around the room and happened to look down at my leg.  Guess what he had flung?  I'll give you a hint, it definitely WASN'T a spit wad!  I wish it had just been a spit wad.  Stuck to the leg of my pants was a big, giant, nasty, juicy, slimy BOOGER!!!  It was seriously DIS-GUS-TING!  The thing was like an inch long.  It would have been one thing if it was just a dry crusty booger, but this was no dry booger, I assure you....otherwise it wouldn't have stuck so firmly to my pants!  I immediately began yelling about the booger on my leg.  I wasn't yelling in a mean way though because I knew he hadn't done it on purpose, it was more like in an "Oh my gosh there's a booger on my leg!" kind of way.  Clearly, I wasn't being that mean, because all of my students were laughing at the situation. 

I told the student that he needed to come here right away.  I asked him why in the world he had been flinging a booger on the floor, because even if it hadn't landed on my leg, he shouldn't have been flinging boogers!  His response was: "It was hard to get off my finger."  (This student can be a bit aloof at times.)  I told him that boogers should go in tissues.

After my brief clarification of the situation, I held my leg out and told the student that he needed to get a paper towel or a tissue right away to wipe the booger off my leg, because I sure as heck wasn't going to touch it.  He did as he was told, but after he wiped my leg off, there was still some leftover booger residue.  So I promptly proceeded to the classroom sink where some of the girls helped me to get a wet paper towel and soap and more thoroughly clean off my pants.  After I was done scrubbing, they held out the hand sanitizer for me to disinfect my hands.  It was actually very sweet of them. 

After the booger was removed from my leg and my pants were as clean as I was going to get them without a washing machine, I returned to the front of the classroom.  Before proceeding to the lesson that we were about to begin before this whole ordeal had happened, I got up on my soap box and gave a little lecture about the proper place for boogers and what a tissue is for.  I repeated multiple times that when you have a booger to get rid of it should go in a tissue, NOT on the floor.  I purposefully directed this lecture at the student who had done the booger flinging.  It wasn't like the whole class didn't know he had done it anyways, so he really wasn't that embarrassed by it.  (I have been discovering that the kids in Chevak don't have the same embarrassment level about bodily functions as other kids I have met.)  Plus, he was laughing along with the rest of the class, because, let's face it.....if you think about it, it was pretty funny.  I can't say that I want it to happen again, but it certainly gave me something good to put in my blog :)  I guess it's good to be able to laugh about these situations.

Oh, and those pants went straight into the laundry basket when I came home.          

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Handful of What?

So I am sitting in my classroom waiting for parents to come in to talk to me, and my student that is often goofy and says silly things walks in.  She asks me when parent-teacher conferences start, and I tell her that they are going on right now.  So she walks over and sits down in the chair across from me and says, "I'm here to talk about my student.  How is she doing?"  And I say to her, "You are so funny, but sometimes you can be a real handful."  Then she says, "A handful of what?  Candies?!"  I didn't even try to hide my laughter this time.  I didn't have any parents in my room or waiting outside my door, so I had to do a blog post quick before I forgot exactly what she said.  She seriously cracks me up....when she's not being a grump, that is :) 

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Tentacles

Today, one of my second period students got kicked in the boy parts during recess.  I don't know exactly what happened, but he needed some time to recover, and ended up not returning to class.  Since he had been in class previous to that incident, my second period students asked where he was.  I responded that he had gotten hurt on the playground.  The same student that calls the bathroom the "potty station" shouted out, "He got kicked in the tentacles!"  I couldn't help but laugh.