Big Post, Lots of Info!

I just got back from training session #2 at Unalakleet (40 miles south of Shaktoolik), and I feel great! I had multicultural training, training in my reading curriculum, and training with the BSSD instructional model. Quite a different instructional model, given the small class sizes. To my fellow teachers, imagine not grading students, but having a list of all the GLEs for every student, and marking each GLE off individually when it has been demonstrated that they know it. So basically, if the standard says, "Student knows how to multiply fractions," and I give them a test on multiplying fractions, if they score over 80% I check it off their list. Way cool.

We even had a BSSD fun run with a lot of the staff members, and I came in 4th place! Kim "The Ironwoman" passed me at the 3 mile mark, but running 4.4 miles in 30 minutes is alright in my book. I celebrated with some new friends from Stebbins (another school) by eating some pizza from the only restaurant in town, Peace on Earth. $30 seems like a little much for a pizza, but it's only an extra $10 to have it delivered to Shaktoolik! The only problem is, if for some reason the flight is cancelled, they just throw your pizza on a chair and deliver it with the next plane, which is typically in a couple of days.

I feel strange in Unalakleet because they actually have a grid of roads. You can actually walk "around" town instead of just "through" town. I asked an old man on an ATV outside of Shaktoolik today, "Hey, which road are you taking?" He just looked at me real funny and said, "THE road. I'm going to go down THE road."

Now I'm sitting here in my classroom, silently pondering how class is going to run in 5 short days. I'm sharing a room in the school with the Special Education teacher, so it feels a little cramped, but the 15 foot ceiling makes the space feel enormous. The 8 classrooms in the school are well furnished with bookshelves, desks, computers, and everything a modern classroom would have. I remember asking a returning teacher what kind of supplies they had at the school, my thought process telling me it would be like a third world country. I couldn't have been farther from the truth! My desk is overflowing with sticky notes, pens, paper, markers, and stationary. I have two 8-foot white boards at the front of the class and six computers lining the walls. There's also enough math curriculum here to build a textbook fort the size of a small castle. With manipulatives, workbooks, games, supplies, and a slew of textbooks dating from the Nixon administration to a few months ago, I've got enough material to last me until May of 2029.

As soon as my camera cord arrives, I'll make sure to post plenty of pictures of the town/school/my duplex/everything!