I Don't Know About you... but I'm Feeling 22.

Weekly update:
A week later than everyone else around the country my class celebrated St. Patrick's Day with trapping a Leprechaun.  Thanks to all the bloggers, pinterest, and TPT people who helped me come up with a way to motivate my kids to write their hearts out and build traps around the room.  Here's just little taste of our Friday madness.

Alaska Cultural Update...
Every year there is a cultural festival held in Bethel, Alaska (nearest "town" to all the villages in our district) that everyone from the area flies or snowmachines out to see.  It's called Camaii (pronounced Juh-mY) which means "Greetings/Welcome/Nice to meet you" in Yup'ik.  This was my second and last year to join in for the fun, so Mr. B and I climbed on to his "snow-go" and high-tailed it to Bethel for the festivities.

Some of the neat things you're sure to see is a variety of Yup'ik dancing, drumming, and LOTS of native crafts.  Ivory sculptures, qaspeqs, parkas, fur hats... you name it it's probably being sold at Camaii.  Sometimes there's even other non-Yupik dance groups that get invited.  This year there was an African/Caribbean drumming group, Alutiq dancers, as well as a hula dance group from Hawaii!  So cool!

Yours truly managed to spend a bit more than she REALLY wanted to, but I walked away from Camaii a qaspeq and polar bear fur dancing headdress richer.  It was also really nice to spend time with some of the second years before I head back home to Indiana for good this summer. 

Five for Friday Link Up/ "Last Friday Night"

It's official people... I'm addicted to blogging.  I mean I think I've always been a little bit obsessed with reading other teacher blogs, but now I've discovered the possibilities of linking up to other teachers and the addiction has taken over.

But seriously people I'm linking up to doodlebugsteaching Five for Friday Linky Party for the first time, so I hope I'm doing this correctly.  I've seen other teachers post freebies on their Five for Friday, but I've yet to do make freebies worthy of posting. One of my teaching goals for next year is to get better at making my teaching creations worthy of TPT. :)

Alright now for the Five For Friday part of my post.... I tried to make them more about fun than frustrations and fears.

1.   Fun:  This week my third graders showed me how grown up they've become since they showed up in my classroom so many months ago.  When I first got these kiddos they didn't know how to "help a friend" without taking a pencil and giving answers.  Now I've got a group of teachers all about helping one another...  I couldn't help but take pictures of how cute they are when they're being "teachers".

 

2.  Fear:  I literally have put off cleaning and packing for my big move back home to Indiana.  I will do one priority box at a time and then stop because I'm so tired.  (I'll write more about that later.)  Here's what my poor classroom looks like...

Yes, I'm one of those barefoot teachers.  ;)

3.  Frustration:  Behavior.  Dear goodness!  Behavior is probably the biggest problem most 1-2 year teachers have anywhere, but it's REALLY hard out here in rural Alaska.  I use every trick in the book, all the time!  My class is much better than they were at the beginning of the year with getting along with one another and working independently, but we've definitely hit the post Spring Break slump.  I guess that this weekend will have to be spent reinventing the behavior wheel. *Big Teacher Sigh*

4.  Fun:  My class loves reading.  *VICTORY DANCE*  I have a range of Pre-K to 3rd grade readers in my classroom, but every single one of them begs me for more independent reading time EVERY day.

• "Please please please Miss Wilson, just 5 more minutes for DEAR time."  
• "This is a really good AR book!"
• Turns to another student, "Want to read this one with me?"  

We read to our Preschool buddies yesterday!

5.   Fun:  This weekend one my teaching friends out here is coming to visit me and Mr. B in our village.  That's a big deal since he has to take 2 little planes just to visit us for one day.  But, such is the life out here.  The plan is for him to fly from his village, to Bethel, then take another little plane to a neighboring village to see other guys from "The Crew" (my guy friends out here), on Saturday he will snowmachine back to Atmautluak with our NYO team and Mr. B.  After that we'll give him the tour of the village (aka: a trip to the two stores) and then cook dinner and watch a movie.  Then feed him breakfast in the morning before  putting him back on the plane.  Whew, I'm tired just thinking about it and I'm not even the one traveling.  I don't know how he'll do it!  I'll be posting pictures of the weekend if you're interested.

OOOPS. I had to include one more for the cute factor!

6.  Fun:  We have something here that kids with good behavior and perfect attendance get to do.  It's called "Open Gym Thursday".  The kids K-12 who have come to school on time and had good behavior through the week get to come in after school has let out and play in the gym.  Take a look at how cute this kindergartener is!

It's hard to take an action shot and this was cuter in person!

Ok, my post was all over the place!  But, in the words of all 90s kids everywhere, "TGIF!"

*Side note*:  I try to use song lyrics as my post titles, so excuse the strange title in your dashboard. ;)

Better Together... and my first CURRENTLY

So I'm super excited to do this for the first time... feel like a real teacher blogger by linking up to others.



Right now I'm enjoying the last full day of my spring break.  Here in rural Alaska we don't get a whole week off for Spring Break.  It's really a long weekend with Friday and Monday off.  Thankfully that was enough for me to catch up on much needed sleep and cleaning.  I'm rediscovering music from high school and college.  Where has all the good music gone??  And I'm getting ready to move back to Indiana.  Yes.  This 2nd year teacher has decided to make the transition from Alaskan adventurer back to Hoosier lady.  Hence the cleaning, packing and fountain diet coke reference.

My like, love, and hate are as follows:
LIKE:  I like donuts... especially Long's Bakery (local Indy bakery I've been craving.)
LOVE:  I love to dance... especially in parking lots with my sweetheart.  Gotta love romantic gestures.
HATE:  I hate degrading words... The R-word, N-word, B-word... you name it.  If it's meant to hurt someone instead of build them up, I probably hate it.

Alright *whew*  there's my first "Currently" post.  Thanks to the teacher blogger Farley for creating something so cool! 

Wave your hands in the air if you feel fine, we're gonna take it into overtime. Welcome to the Space Jam!

These past few weekends have been quite busy!!!  Such is the life when you become one of the two chaperones for the school.  If I haven't already explained in past blog posts, part of living out here is that you are enlisted in helping run events that are hosted at your school or you travel to various villages/towns/cities in order for students to compete in sports.

Two weekends ago I went to a neighboring village, and cheered on the Lady Falcons to 1st place during the girls  regionals basketball tournament.   The picture above is our winning picture, complete with qaspeqs (cultural clothing item).   The weekend before that our school hosted the boys tournament which our Fella' Falcons pulled out their own 1st place!

We're part of the Kusko-Delta League, which means we play other 1A tundra villages.  Those teams who play well enough within their own leagues get the chance to compete at the district tournament in Bethel. That tournament is a whole different experience!  Due to the remote location of these villages, athletes and other after-school activity participants must travel various places to compete or go to conferences.  And when I say travel I mean they fly places, stay over night laying on classroom floors, in sleeping bags, and then fly back.  Imagine sleep away camp every other weekend as an athlete and chaperone!  You can guess how exciting and exhausting it can be.  Back to the story of the weekend.  On Wednesday afternoon the boys and girls coaches, athletes, and myself all bundled up and took our gear to the airstrip and flew into Bethel for a 4 day weekend.  Flying with the teams is actually half of the fun of the whole trip.  Little planes are actually more fun and relaxing to me than big planes now.

Wednesday night was mainly getting settled into a person's classroom for the next few days.  We made the "absolutely necessary" trip to the nearest store to stock up on junk food, pop, chips, and energy drinks.  (HEALTHY!  I know!)  Then it was time to practice and get ready for the games on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.    One of the great thing about living out here is the friendships you make with other teachers.  The girls coach, Pat, for that team has become one of my closest friends out here.  Most of the weekend was spent with his team or my girls.  We did lots of hair braiding, magazine gazing, a massive amount teeny amount of grading, and a lot of hanging out.  The hair style picture to your right, is just a taste of the hairstyles we managed to try out during the weekend.



I took this picture before their first big game.  A parent had made each of the girls and me a headband in support of the team.  I must say the headbands are quite the fashion statement out here.  Just look at how awesome we all look?

The girls team lost their first and second games which put us out of the running for placing in the tournament.  It was kind of a bummer, because there are two senior girls on the team who'd been hoping to take it all the way to state, but we managed to have fun the rest of the weekend.  Our boys team lost their first game, but pulled out a win during their second.  That allowed them to play on Championship Day and an unexpected win put them at 5th place. The final teams (Chefornak girls vs. Kipnuk girls/ Tooksook Bay boys vs. Chefornak boys) played in the last two games on Saturday both games were very very exciting to watch... and more so exciting to see the all the villages max out the capacity of the gym to watch the games.  People were watching the games on the bleachers, on stairs, against walls, and even some on the floor of the gym.  The sounds were deafening in the gym and school spirit reigned supreme.  Yours truly even lost her voice by the end of the weekend.  The district winners were the Chefornak girls and the Tooksook Bay boys!  They'll competing in the state finals.  Here is a news article with pictures of the big games!

Saturday night, following the excitement of the games, there was a high school dance for the boys and girls basketball players.  From 11PM -1:30AM the school was "bumping" and I was dancing the night away with a few other chaperones and my players.  Chaperones are actually encouraged to go out and dance, because the kids are less embarrassed to dance if their teachers are already out there making a fool of him or herself.  I wish I had pictures of the chaos and fun that was had, but you'll just have to trust me when I say it was a blast.The next morning was spent overhauling the classroom and making it look the way we found it.  We packed our things and spent 3 hours at the airport waiting on the 4 planes for all of our players and coaches. 

These kinds of weekends are the experiences that I will never forget. No other place I know has adventures like this on a regular basis.  No other elementary teachers spend their weekeends getting their hair done by high school ball players or sleeping on the ground with them.  I truly am blessed to have had this opportunity.