Pumpkin Carving

Yesterday in art class we carved pumpkins. I had some reservations about letting students use knives in class, but they did a great job (and no one got stabbed). I lit them up last night and they're sitting on my front steps. Here are a few of the jack-o-lanterns.

I'll be home for Christmas

I just purchased my ticket home for Christmas. I have about three weeks off and I've decided to spend that time back in Providence. Weather permitting, I will be back by December 22. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of people back home. :)

I can teach in the dark

So today the power went out during school. No electricity. No internet. No cell phone reception. It was kind of scary to think that we were temporarily cut off from all of the outside world (as I like to call it). There was absolutely no power at all in the entire village. My room has no windows, so my Alaska Studies class at the time was hit especially hard by the outage. It was literally pitch black in my classroom. My first reaction?

"Everyone take out their cell phones and wave them in the air so we can see."

 I pretended to get a little concert vibe going and one of my students even took out a lighter. I ran to get a flashlight and make sure the world wasn't ending. Most classes weren't phased as much because they had windows to rely on. I was going to take the class outside but it was raining and pretty cold. I settled on plan B which was to continue to teach with my flashlight. I took the opportunity to goof around like I was telling a ghost story around a campfire. It wasn't my finest lesson, and I'm not sure how much my students retained about Russia's occupation of Alaska, but now I know I can teach in the dark. I might file away this lesson plan, because evidently these outages are just another part of living in rural Alaska. 

Flying in Alaska

I'll admit, I have a lot of time to think up here.

One of the things that I've been thinking about lately, and something that fascinates me about living and teaching in the Alaskan bush, is just how much people rely on planes up here. Everyday I hear planes. Everyday I see planes. The only way in and out of the village is by plane. They're like expensive taxis. Whenever I have training at the district office, the district pays for me to take a bush plane 40 miles east into Bethel. Forty miles is less than the distance between Providence to Boston to put things in perspective. It's hard to imagine taking a plane from Providence to Randolph, Massachusetts, but that's essentially what I'm doing out here.

When I receive amazingly untarnished postcards in the mail, I think about the incredibly long journey they take from Providence, Rhode Island to Tuntutuliak, Alaska. I imagine they start off in Boeing 747s and hop into planes progressively declining in size. It's like one of those Russian dolls that keeps getting smaller and smaller when you pull it apart. Eventually that postcard arrives in Tunt in a four-seat plane slightly bigger than a mini-van. Maybe it's a simple thing (often taken for granted), but only paying 42 cents for a card to go that far impresses me.

Another aspect of air travel in Alaska is the bush pilots. I've seen clips from the show Flying Wild Alaska, but now I've been in those planes with those pilots. Whenever I get on board, I like to make conversation with the pilots. They all seem to be very unique people. I was chatting with a pilot who had a beard like Giants closer Brian Wilson. He told me the job is hectic and dangerous. He was saying that there is a lot of stress put on them to get mail and essential goods to all these villages several times a day, often in gnarly weather. More importantly, when people get seriously ill or seriously injured they must get to a hospital. There are no hospitals in villages. There is rarely ever a doctor. Bush pilots go on medevac missions in Alaska when someone needs serious medical attention. You almost have to have a cowboy mentality to be a bush pilot in my opinion. Dealing with snow and extreme winds is something that makes flying challenging and often not possible. He mentioned that when the weather is too adverse for flying, the airport basically turns into a fire station, with pilots hanging around just waiting for some action.

One of my most memorable experiences in Alaska (so far) came on a bush plane with one of these unique bush pilots. It was a day with rough winds and I was flying from Bethel to Tunt. My pilot was a guy in his early 20s with ripped jeans, a light weight zip-up hoodie, and a backwards baseball hat. He looked strangely out of place, like the kind of guy that would be surfing in southern California if he wasn't flying planes in Alaska. I chatted with the guy before the plane took off. He asked me how the school year was going, assuming correctly that I was a teacher. When the plane took off, I could feel the powerful winds outside. The plane was swaying back and forth the entire time. It was a scary flight. I looked at the pilot, trying to pick up on his body language. He had his right arm flanked over the passenger seat, like he was taking a joy ride on an empty street in a new Cadillac. He reached into his backpack in the middle of the flight, pulled out a Mountain Dew, and downed the entire can of soda in one long swig. The pilot's behavior was so bizarre to me that it actually distracted me from the wind rocking the plane. The same flight that made me nervous was clearly nothing for this pilot. A memory that is vividly engrained in my head was just a daily caffeine break for the bush pilot. A thousand thoughts were going through my head at that moment and this pilot was just focused on his soda.

Plane taking off from Tunt

A village (not sure which one) from above

A bush pilot

Someday Robots Will Take My Job

It's Columbus Day. But for us Alaska teachers, it's still a work day. There's a district wide inservice, which means the teachers are all here (but no students). All the teachers are breaking off into groups according to their grade level and content area to participate in training. My training is a webinar and conference call to introduce a new type of teaching software that grades papers. This sounds boring on the surface, but I found it disturbing enough to write about.

I use the word disturbing because when I say that the software grades papers, I don't mean it grades multiple choice tests like a Scantron machine. I mean it grades essays. I don't know exactly how it works, and I don't particularly know if I want to know, but essentially an essay is put into the computer and a grade is almost instantly pumped out. Sure this makes my job easier, but what does this mean for the future of teaching?

One of the reasons why I became an English teacher because I enjoy its subjectivity. It's not math. There's more than one answer. There's countless ways to analyze a piece of literature. This essay-grading supercomputer is taking away that subjectivity in my opinion. What now defines a good paper? A set of key phrases that the computer is programmed to recognize? It just feels wrong. Sure, the counter-argument will be that eliminating subjectivity is a good thing. A student's grade will no longer be determined by what type of teacher they get and "how hard" they grade papers. We've all been in situations where what was good enough for an A in one class was barely good enough for a C+ in another. That's certainly not a good thing, but teachers should be able to recognize what makes good paper. By putting data into a machine, we take the responsibility away from teachers.

Teaching jobs seem safe from outsourcing, but for how long? More and more college students take online classes every year. How long before we have high school students taking classes from home? Will we see a University of Phoenix Online Middle School pop up? I love using technology in the classroom, but I sometimes wonder where it will stop. The technological toys that I have in the classroom sometimes make me forget I'm in the middle of the Alaskan tundra. Our school already has math classes taught on a monitor by a woman 40 miles away.  I traveled almost 4,000 miles to teach up here. Will teachers in the future always have to make that journey?

Weekend in Russian Mission, Alaska

Tonight I got home from a weekend in Russian Mission, Alaska. I was invited by a fellow teacher in my village and jumped at the opportunity to explore a different part of the state. Russian Mission is a little over 100 miles north of Tunt. It's a small village like Tunt, but it has an entirely different landscape. First of all, there's trees. I hadn't seen a tree in two months till this weekend. Tunt is flat tundra surrounded by lakes and rivers. Russian Mission is much closer to the Alaska you see on postcards. There's miles and miles of Christmas trees with a mountain range flanking the back of the village. The wildlife is also much more diverse. This area of Alaska has plenty of moose, caribou, beavers, and brown bears. The brown bear population in this part of southwest Alaska is one of the highest in the world. Unfortunately (probably fortunately it comes to the bears), I didn't see any of this wildlife.

 The reason for the weekend in Russian Mission was a religious retreat. I'm not the most religious person out there, but I didn't think it was a bad thing to say a few prayers. There was a preacher that gave several sermons during the weekend, but I only went to one--with good reason. I felt like I was watching a bad movie with an agenda against organized religion. The preacher was judgmental, rambling, and very, very boring. He kept bragging about a record deal he just got with some mom and pop recording studio in Oklahoma. He went on and on about having humility when he wasn't bragging about his blossoming music career. He said with an absolute straight face, "Bet none of you have been in the same room with a recording artist." He was 100% serious. This was not a joke. I cracked a smile and looked around the room for someone to share this moment with. I made eye contact with a girl who was trying to stop herself from laughing.

I have nothing against preachers, but I don't care for people who are too pushy with their agenda. I heard the word heathens for the first time in a discussion. It made me check out. I've had an open mind since I arrived here and I was curious why he couldn't do the same. I decided I was going to spend my time hunting and hiking instead. Several of the teachers from other villages joined me. We went beaver hunting on Friday night and hiked to the top of a mountain on Saturday. I stayed in a cabin and built a fire. I'm becoming more of an outdoorsman up here. And it's out of necessity. I used to go camping, but being out in the middle of nowhere in Alaska is different than the I'm-camping-but-if-I-really-need-something-I-can-get-in-the-car-and-drive-to-Walmart type of camping that I'm used to.

The final word: I survived another weekend of roughing it in Alaska. I'm taking one day at a time and trying not to judge. Amen.

The Crew

One of the most pleasant surprises that I've had while up in Alaska is the camaraderie and support of a group of fellow new teachers. When I arrived in Bethel on the first day of August, I looked around the tiny airport at a group of twenty-something-year-olds. I could tell, strictly by the looks on their faces, that they were new teachers. I'm sure I had that same befuddled look at that moment, waiting and wondering to myself, "What the hell did I get myself into?" Little did I know at the time, that I would quickly become friends with several of these new teachers, and they would make the transition of being in a new place (all alone) a little bit easier.

After being ushered out of the airport, the new teachers were transported in big, dusty vans to a college dormitory. I was placed in a cramped dorm with three other guys and our mountains of luggage. It wasn't the most comfortable situation, but no one who cares that much about comfort moves to rural Alaska. Over the next couple of days I got to know this group of new teachers. We all could relate--we were young, we wanted an adventure, and we didn't fully know what to expect.

I've been back and forth from Tunt to Bethel several times for new teacher in-services. It's always a good time, because of the group of teachers that I've gotten to know. We've actually formed a pretty tight-knit crew. I believe we bring the most interesting Friday nights Bethel has seen in a while when we're all in town. Do I know why we mix so well? A lot of it has to do with the fact that we're all in the same situation. It also has to do with the fact that we bring a good mix of personalities together. No one takes themselves too seriously. Everyone has a role in the group.

Our crew of new teachers is actually planning a trip to Anchorage for Thanksgiving. We can't go home to our families in various parts of the country, so we're going to let loose over the long weekend together. 

Thanksgiving is still pretty far away, but I'm excited for the trip. I can't wait to get back to a city for a few days. 

I'm into my third month of teaching in Alaska. The days and weeks are flying by. I wouldn't say I'm thriving, but overall things are going well. I like my job. I've made mistakes, but I keep adjusting. Everything is trial and error. I feel like a real teacher for the first time. I've made progress in the two-plus weeks since my last post (I need to post more often). One of the things that really helps is the fact that I'm not alone in this process. I now have friends that are going through the same grind everyday. I know I can mention something that's going on in my classroom or in the village, and they'll immediately understand. Even if these people aren't in the same village, I know they're out there. That's a good feeling.