The empty room

Each year seems to begin and ends with an empty classroom and it always reminds me of the possibilities....

Each year is a new beginning, new hopes & dreams... new goals and passions...

I leave the classroom excited for my next adventure, but sad to leave these students & community behind. They have really expanded my world and I hope that I have done the same for them...

Will I see them again? I sure hope so, I'd love to see if they meet their beginning of the year goals to play basketball and get scholarships... I hope one of my students stays interested in coding and decides to go to Stanford like he talked about... I hope that they stay engaged and creative...

The first year I was in the preschool classroom was 2004 and I still wonder about those students... Each one affects you and becomes a part of you... I am so grateful to have met them and learned from them all...

Last Daze...

It is unbelievably busy getting ready to move out of here. Buying some beadwork is high on my list. 

Cute teacher appreciation gift. 

The girls helped with the cleaning of the classroom... They made a mop and a "mini-dry mop" Reminded me of movie, Joy. 

What a reminder of what a gift music education is. We have to fund the arts. Its not fair that some students dont get exposed to it on a weekly basis... 

Last Day water balloons. I gave the kids envelopes with my new address on it. I told them it cost about $.047 cents to mail it at the post office. N exclaimed "That's the cheapest thing I have ever heard of!" 

Field day.. races in the middle of the road! lol 

Diane Bridges has retired. She worked here as a book-keeper, TA, and then as a teacher for 29 years. In a district where the average teacher stays 0.75 years (yes, we had 2.5 leave mid-year)... its huge, having homegrown teachers... 

Speaking of which... The Valedictorian this year, got what might be the last Alaska Performance Scholarship. She will study Elementary Education... So happy to hear that...

I have loved the quarterly awards ceremony. Its a chance to say something positive about each of the students. They give quarterly $10 for perfect attendance. Only 2 students out of the entire DISTRICT had perfect attendance all year, so they each got $100 and a new bike.

#50statechallenge

We did it! We #mysteryskype with classrooms in all 50 states! (I had a hard time tracking down LA, WV, and NM and we did two classrooms in Alaska for Alaska Day: http://arctic3.blogspot.com/2016/10/happy-alaska-day.html and we did a couple States a couple times because of all the requests we got such as: Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky, California...)



Here are some screen shots of Skypes #42-50

Skype 42 was with Hawaii! They taught us how to say the colors in Hawaiian! They also made a youtube video of our encounter! http://youtu.be/H_LTHFrVCHE

Skype 49 was in NM. They taught us how to count to 10 in Spanish.

Class in South Dakota

This class in South Carolina had a uniform, but they could between pick red, white, or blue versions!

My students were so excited they "beat" the High Schoolers in Wyoming!

Showing our almost complete skype map to the Class in Arizona

Skype 47 in Montana had no sound because their mic was broken, so we got a cool typed transcript!

Skype 48 in Louisiana had video blocked at their school, so we typed questions back & forth

Just an amazing project!

I had tried to hide our state map as we got down to the last 10 states, but the students had it memorized.

By Skype 50, they already knew who it was... But, they planned out questions to still make it fair. 

It is just incredible to think about that our little class in our Arctic shared Alaska facts to over 50 classrooms (We did a couple states twice and a couple overseas locations) 

Its amazing that so many classrooms have now heard of: Fort Yukon. "A village of 600 people. Accessible only by boat and plane. No roads" 

The number 1 question we were asked: Do you live in igloos? "We dont live in igloos. That' further North" 

 Classes in the Southern States thought it our low temperature was incredible. We got to show several classes the snow outside our classroom.

 The students counted to 10 in Gwich'in and shared the colors and some words like "Nenahalia" to the classes we talked with. I really saw their pride shine as the year went on :) Language wasn't just something that they did in language class, it was something unique to them :)

Gwich'in Culture Week

Our last week of school is Culture Week, where community members take over the school and teach the students traditional skills such as music, native games, storytelling, jigging, cooking, and beading/sewing.

We haven't had formal music education all year, so it was a BLAST learning to play fiddle. I got to learn too! (Learn more about our music teachers: http://dancingwiththespirit.org/news_Nov_15.html)

The students had fun learning Indian Leg Wrestling and no one got hurt!

Lots and lots of jigging!

 Learned to cook fry bread, salmon nuggets, and muskrat!

Sewing some wall hangings!

Day 2: Learning Guitar and how to sing some songs in Gwichin

The one-legged high kick

Storytelling with an elder. We heard about Visagizak and the ducks.

Cooking on the grill outside.

#CincoDeMayo2017

The students have been curious what Cinco De Mayo is since I put it on our May Calendar. I explained it was a Mexican Celebration over the French Army that has become more of a pop-culture celebration. They had never experience it before. 

We started making Pinatas on monday using leftover scholastic forms. This morning, I did an activity with Spanish Numbers "Hey, Uno like the game uno? That means one?"

I had a playlist of Spanish music including the chicken dance, Mexican Hat song, and La Cucaracha. Even my student who doesn't normally likes music, got into the spirit. I love how music changes the mood. 

I think no matter your age and where you live: Pinatas are just fun! So glad I got to share this tradition with them.