Weekend in Fairbanks

Following a week long inservice in Fairbanks, we were able to stay for the weekend and have some fun! Two of Sam's buddies from the Army (a life that seems long long ago now, but was really just 6 months ago) came to Fairbanks for the weekend and we all hit up Chena Hot Springs!

We started at Angel Rocks and hiked toward the hot springs. I hiked in about two miles with the guys, then ran back out to get the truck and drove the rest of the way to meet the guys at the hot springs. The run back down from Angel Rocks to the parking lot was fantastic! I haven't been able to run for a long time and it was a beautiful day, so I decided to give it a try. As my my feet hit the ground between roots, leaves and rocks I remembered why I love to run. I love the challenge of pushing my body to the limit and I love taking in beautiful scenery as I run! It was also nice that most of the run was downhill!

Jack stops to enjoy the view along the trail.

A view of some of the granite tors

What do you mean 6.5 more miles? Ryan is ready for the hot springs!

Tony strikes the quintessential mountain man pose.

Ryan, Jack and Tony along the top of the ridge line

It was a hazy day, but up above tree line you could see for miles.

After 8.9 miles Ryan gets his reward!

Yeah, Hot Springs!

It really does take away all your aches and pains!

Thanks Ryan and Tony for meeting us in Fairbanks!

It was great to catch-up and enjoy a weekend of Alaskan style fun.

Fairbanks In-Service & Shopping

Yukon Flats School District throws a fall in-service each year in Fairbanks. The purpose, bring together all the teachers and aides from all seven schools in the district for professional development. The training ranged from integrating technology in the classroom hosted by Apple contract technicians to application of Reading Mastery mandated curriculum. There were also several roundtable discussion groups regarding curriculum and best practices used by the teachers at each school.

This was an extremely rewarding and productive week for me. Coming from five years in the military I know a little about how professional development should be executed. I saw the most productive and least productive "OPD's" during my Army career. This week I learned a lot about teaching Reading Mastery to my students, but learned even more just from conversation with other Language Arts & English teachers. This week has totally inspired me to try a couple new things in my classroom, particularly with my Writing Program.

The other great thing about our visit to Fairbanks was the opportunity to shop. Of course I spent way to much money on books, but that goes without saying... Actually, I bought so many books I will be sending another box to Arctic Village of "Media Mail"!

We also purchased our winter clothes. Despite living in Anchorage, AK the past 4 years, neither of us are prepared for the arctic temperatures we will face in our village. Winter temp's can shoot as low as -60 or -70 in Arctic Village. There are extended periods of -40 and -50 for weeks on end. Gretchen will be traveling to the North Slope, where wind chills get even colder than Arctic Village. I will be traveling to Fort Yukon periodically where temps can hit -75. Needless to say, it is necessary to travel in these temps, or at least be prepared to survive them. Typically schools close when the temps drop below -50. SO, we swung by Big Rays, the premiere outdoor clothing store in Fairbanks. The timing couldn't have been better, we hit the Fall 25% off Carhartt sale!

I purchased the Carhartt Extreme Arctic bib style coveralls. The are constructed with very durable cordura material on the outside with thick insulation on the inside. I will probably layer then with Patagonia capiliene longer underwear and Mountain Hardwear compressor pants when it gets really cold. The key to surviving up here is not buy the coldest jacket possible, but strategically layer with synthetic materials to survive harsh temperatures and wind chills.

My parka/jacket I have not ordered yet, but will be getting the Mountain Hardware absolute zero mountaineering jacket. This is the parka high elevation mountaineers carry up Denali and Everest. It also comes in a full one piece suit version. I tried on an XL at Beaver Sports in Fairbanks and loved it!

Gretchen found a mens Carhartt Extreme Arctic full one piece suit at the Big Ray's Outlet and Annex last time she was in Fairbanks. She's still shopping for her parka, but looking at either Canadian Goose or a Siberian Parka, both full hooded goose down jackets rated for very cold temps. Canadian Goose is the brand you see many Antarctica scientists wearing at the South Pole.

For footware Gretchen and I both have Sorel boots rated to -50. We purchased these a couple winters ago but only really used them for shoveling the driveway in Eagle River. I wore them on a couple cold days riding snowmachines in Willow and was very impressed. We're still in the market for another pair of cold weather boots, I'll probably get two sets of military surplus "bunny boots", as seen in the photo below. These are a favorite of dog sled mushers and hard working Alaskans in the winter. You can essentially get the boot soaking wet, take off your boot, pour out the water, put on dry socks, wipe the boot out, and you're good to go. Its completely rubberized and insulated. I used them for a couple winter airborne jumps while stationed at Fort Richardson. My coldest jump was -10 and they were great!

We also got to do a little school shopping. Wednesday night Gretchen, Arin, and I bought $800 worth of school supplies from Fred Myers. We drug four shopping carts worth across the store for three hours stocking up on materials to ship back to Arctic Village School.

Fall Colors

Part of the freedom of teaching in rural Alaska is deciding to take your kids on a hike during class. So this past Thursday Gretchen took the students into the woods around the school to collect leaves.
This was an activity I always enjoyed as a student, so I was every excited to share it with my kids. To my surprise a lot of these students had never made a leaf print.
Using colored crayons of all the fall colors we made impressions of the many leaves found around Arctic Village and interior Alaska.

We then framed the prints on colored construction paper and hung them in my classroom.

1st Field Trip- Stick Pull Competition

Alaska has several sports as unique as the state itself. The "stick pull" is one of the main events in the yearly Native Youth Olympics.

Students sit facing one another, touch feet, place one hand behind their back, and grapple over a piece of wood.
The first person to let go looses.
Arctic Village hasn't won the stick in at least 2-3 years. My student that won is only a middle schooler, and beat out three other high schoolers.



As tradition goes, Arctic Village brought the stick back to our school for display. We will keep it safely until next years competition.

1st Field Trip- Chaperone to the YFSD Voc Ed Gathering

Just like in the military, the new guy, or new teacher gets "volun-told" for all the extra taskings and last minute jobs that arise. This time I was asked to chaperone four students on a three day field trip to Fort Yukon for the yealy vocational education school orientation. Essentially its a day long conference with motivational speakers, sports, and introductory Voc Ed classes.
The first night kicked off with a little live music. One of my students from Arctic Village and his Grandfather on fiddle, along with two other teachers played some good old fashion fiddlin bluegrass for about 1 1/2 hours.

The students had a "call" and "jig" competition.
You would think middle and high school students would be to shy to line dance like this, but they had a good time.

Student Work: A Tri Color Piece

One of the courses I teach for middle schoolers is "Writing & Art". I decided to start my kids out creating a design with three basic colors. Using Red, Green, and Blue construction paper students had to create an abstract collage to decorate binders.
One student decided to modify his notebook cover. He also wanted to pose for the photo.



This was one of my favorites. I call it "Broccoli Man".

Stocking up for the Winter

Ever wonder what $120 worth of firewood looks like? A cord of wood in fairbanks costs $185. For perspective, a cord is approximately 4ft high, 4ft deep, and 8ft long. I paid $60 for a 4wheeler cart full of wood.

Upon delivery I noticed the wood looked freshly cut. The villager explained they usually cut down the trees during breakup, around April. The wood seasons on the ground until fall when it is cut to burn and heat our home.

Health Class - Dissecting a Heart

During health class yesterday afternoon, Linda, the special education teacher, and I dissected Caribou hearts with the kids!

It was definitely a neat experience for us as well as the kids. We had talked about the human heart and labeled the parts on a picture, but to hold a caribou heart and actually cut into it to see what an aorta looks like and what a chamber looks like is really cool!

A caribou heart is a lot larger than a human heart, but has pretty similar anatomy.

It isn’t everywhere that you could send a kid home with a homework assignment of bringing in an animal heart and he shows up for school with one in a ziplock bag. His cousin just shot that caribou the day before!

In most groups of kids there would at least be one who is squeamish or grossed out by dissection, but not here! They all were so comfortable with cutting caribou. It was only me, the city girl, that thought it was a novel thing to do!

The kids thought it was really funny to try and convince me that they would eat the raw heart. They do really eat heart, but they cook it first.

Dinner is served!

~Gretchen

The Substitute Teacher

For the past two days Sam has been in Fort Yukon chaperoning four students on field trip with the district’s vocational education program. While he is gone, I get to be his sub! Although I have worked in schools for the past few years as an OT, I have never actually subbed in a classroom. It has been an eye-opening experience to do Sam’s job for the past two days!

Have you ever done your spouse’s job for a day? Even though you can talk about your day with your spouse and feel like you know what is going on in their work life, it is a whole different experience to actually do their job for a day!

You may be wondering, how did I end up getting volunteered/asked to sub? Well, in a small village such as Arctic there aren’t many people willing, able, or qualified to substitute teach. So I said I would give it a try. I already knew most of the students, how hard could it be?

Sam left me clear directions and detailed lesson plans, but nothing could prepare me for the challenges of instructing a classroom in which you have multiple grade levels, ability levels and a wide variety of attention spans. Not to mention the fact that I had the same group of students all morning and was supposed to cover content for three different subjects! I felt like a Ring Master trying to put on the whole circus all by myself. One moment I was the lion tamer and then the next I was the lady in sequins riding on the back of the elephant, meanwhile I was also supposed to be swinging from the trapeze! How does Sam do this every day? It is not like a big school where the teacher may get a few minutes to set up materials between classes or can teach the whole class the same lesson. I recently read the book “The Kids from Nowhere” and now I really understand some of what that teacher describes from his experiences teaching in rural Alaska.

I found in the midst of it all, the most important thing was to take a breath and try to spend a few minutes connecting with each student. The biggest hurdle was not what I was teaching, but helping the kids to see themselves as capable of learning it and motivating them to do so! It was also very important to go do some laundry for the kid who went fishing last night and smelled so bad of fish guts that the other kids would not sit next to him!

After my first day of subbing I was exhausted, but I stayed after school to work on a personal project, sewing curtains for our cabin. We have been doing a little cabin makeover; personalizing our cabin and making the most of the small space. Two of the middle school girls were very interested in what I was doing and hung-out after school to watch.

When I offered to let them do the sewing they were so excited! They had never used a sewing machine before and thought it was really fun. We were there for at least three hours pinning fabric, sewing, ironing it and sewing some more.

Maybe it was actually the best class I taught all day! Later that night, I hung the curtains in my cabin and beamed with pride. Those curtains mean the world to me because of the time I shared with those girls while they helped me make them!

Fall in Arctic Village

It was another beautiful Fall evening in Arctic Village. Last night was our first heavy frost. Temperatures dropped to about 35 over night, rising to around 55 during the day. Yesterday afternoon rain storms rolled through, dropping termination dust (light snow) on some of the surrounding peaks and meadows. It generated a lot of excitement around school, unfortunately I didn't have my camera ready.

The peak on the right is Nichenthraw Mountain (6458ft) and Yasuda Mountain on the left. Due North of the Village.

Fishing boat parked along the Chandalar River.

Caribou Curry

I call this, "Caribou Curry".

Surprise Field Trip

They say teachers make 200 decisions a day, that seems about right. After 5 years in the military i'm a bit used to making instant sound decisions. You never know who is going to show up in Arctic Village. Yesterday three individuals arrived at the school requesting help for a project to monitor permafrost. One of the girls was from the US Geological Survey based out of Boulder, CO. She was actually an anthropologist working for USGS with a team of two other scientists. The scientists worked for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council based in Anchorage, AK. This agency has many facets, but were brought here to monitor permafrost throughout the Yukon River watershed. Arctic Village is on the shores of the Chandalar River which feeds into the Yukon River.

Two of my High School students wait for instruction on how to use the permafrost probe. We discovered about 1/4 mile from the school the permafrost layer started about 100cm from the surface.
Another student probes along the grid for permafrost.
The shallowest point to the surface was about 60cm, other spots were deeper than the probe at 120cm.
The anthropologist shows a student how to use a GPS. Two more watch in the background. You might ask why is an anthropologist part of the survey team. She communicates with the indigenous people their observations of climatic change and permafrost The sensors buried in the ground only provide so much data, the people that have lived on this land for generations know so much more.

There will be 20 permafrost data collecting stations located along the Yukon River watershed.