The First Day of The Rest of My Life

The First Day of School has come and gone.  A day that I have anticipated since April.  In my nearly 14 years in education, I have only worked the First Day once.  Primarily due to being a Substitute when no sub works but also because every other job I had started after First Day.  Having more than a week to set up my classroom, plan lessons, find supplies, negotiate the various computer systems that are the norm for Southwest Regional School District was an unknown luxury.

Because of the age of my class, the 6th grade is in a strange position; not quite middle schoolers, yet no longer elementary.  We are on the cusp, and this year my school decided to take steps to ease us into a more middle school mindset.  I have my guys (non-gender specific) all day except the period after lunch when they go to the Secondary wing for Science like the big kids.  The way my students' eyes lit up when they heard this was delightful.  During this time, I teach 7th grade Health, a subject for some reason all the other teachers balked at.  Personally, I love it but more on that in another post.

I have 12 students total.  An even dozen.  Which leans toward easy ways to break up into groups, is enough to have discussion once the kids realize it's okay to talk (a cultural thing), yet small enough that I really can see what everyone is up to all the time.  Also, three of my students are taken out for roughly half the day to go work in the SpEd room.  Basically, I have one third of the number I would have had in Portland.  And one boy never showed up at all.  According to the rest, he never comes to school so that should make it interesting to create a relationship with him.

Obviously, this is also cause for concern.  These kids have been with each other since birth and things that might not have been a big deal when they were in the Primary wing might suddenly take on much greater significance now that hormones are added.  Hard to say but I hope to keep the drama to a minimum.  When she saw her placement next to a particular boy, Jasilyn* asked why she had to sit next to the "mean boy."  I told her it was so she could teach him to be a "nice" boy.  How her expression changed then from concerned and worried to a girl with purpose!  I expect that boy to be whipped into shape in no time.  By the way, he isn't "mean" so much as "antsy."  Ironically, she left school early to go berrying with her aunt/grandmother/mother I'm not sure which.

Because it was the First Day, my lesson plans focused mainly on procedures, how we do things in MY room, what to expect and what I expected.  So when 2:00 rolled around and I still had 90 minutes and nothing left to say, I did what any good teacher does: took them to the gym to run around for 30 minutes.  At the time, I had an aide, Frieda, working with me (to handle the three challenging kids?) who quickly organized a basketball game.  Basketball is huge here and everyone played with vigor, running out the boredom of a day spent mostly sitting listening to me drone on and on about how only water was allowed in the classroom, not sports drinks.

In the course of the day, I was visited by the Assistant Principal, the SpEd teacher a few times, and the new school counselor.  It was clear that they were all doing the New Teacher Check In, making sure my room, or hair, hadn't caught fire.  It was also clear that since they all left soon after arriving, that, for today at least, I had things under control.  Can't ask for much more than that.



*names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty

The money issue

 

In the time I have been in Alaska, I have eaten new foods (mmmmm boiled salmon roe), tried new activities (filleting a salmon) and learned new words (Camai is Hello when meeting someone for the first time.)  As time goes on, I am sure I will continue to learn more about the people of this area and how to live here successfully. 

One thing many people expressed concern over in my move was the expense of living here.  And it is true, there are some things that make me gasp at the grocery store, the AC here in Tokiak.  Back in Dillingham, I saw a baby loaf of Tillamook cheese that I routinely pay around $5.99 when it was on sale in Portland.  In D'ham, it was $18.00!  The flight in the tiny plane to Togiak was over $200 according to my reimbursement check.  Some of my younger colleagues wail at the cost of rent here, having never paid over a grand for a two bedroom as we do in Portland, if you are lucky enough to find one that cheap.  All of these things do add up but I have found a few ways to keep my new paycheck in the bank.

First of all, one of the things that convinced me I could do this was hearing from Deb, the Manataquk principal who first interviewed me, about Amazon Prime.  By taking advantage of their free shipping, one can buy most grocery items at the same cost as anywhere else in America.  Sure, getting fresh produce doesn't happen with Prime and that sucks but knowing that if I shop carefully I can spend the same money on the same items is great.  The downside is having to guess what is going to sound tasty in two weeks when my food actually arrives.  I am so thankful that I sent two boxes of dry goods and bought a freezer full of meat and protein from the previous 6th grade teacher who was so grateful to sell it to anybody, gave me an incredible deal.

Secondly, not only is my rent fully tax deductible, it includes all utilities.  That means heat, lots and lots of heat.  And water to wash my clothes with my washer/dryer setup, also provided.  And sewer (or septic tank in my case).  And electricity.  My only housing costs are whatever I need to be comfortable.  So tv and internet are on my dollar, but I share both with my next door neighbors who bought the full meal deal and we split the cost, making it crazy cheap for all of us.  There have been some issues getting my tv system to work but one of my new neighbors was a Comcast dude before coming here and has been extremely helpful.  For which I give him candy from the stash I brought in my luggage.  Who doesn't like peppermints?  Nobody, that's who.

Monday is pay day.  I am very interested to see how that shakes out in this no income tax, no sales tax if you buy everything from Amazon and no restaurants, fast food (not really food but I sure spent a lot on it) and no bars.  Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, I may actually get to pay off some of my student loans!

By the way, today was also the First Day of School.  It was ok.

The Day Before The Big Day

All this week has technically been a vacation week for all staff.  It's referred to as Moosecation because it is the final days of the moose hunt and school is put off until that vital chore is finished.  But I have been plugging away in my classroom, a few hours here and a few hours there every day, attempting to get ready for that holiest of holies, at least for teachers, The First Day of School.

Am I ready?  Ready enough.  Do I feel good about my level of preparation?  No, but any good teacher knows they will never be truly ready and if they think they are, they are either fooling themselves or need to retire.  But lockers are assigned (no locks this year, Sixthies, sorry), desks arranged to accommodate my movement throughout the room, tech doesn't work so all my fancy plans are out the window but at least I know that ahead of time and can plan plan plan some more of how to do what I want anyway.

I am lucky that my school day starts so late (teachers report at 8:30) and I live so close.  I figure if I leave the house at 8:28, I will be on time.  No doubt there will be others who will be there at the crack of dawn but I am not them, and those are not my ways.  My first period is a prep so to speak; kids don't show up until 9:20 and classes start at 9:30.  Partly this acknowledges that the sun will not go down until nearly 10 o'clock tonight and no kid wants to go to bed when the sun is still up.  Neither do I but tonight, I might make an exception.

The plane, the plane

I have a confession to make.  I totally lied when I had my initial interview.  I told the nice lady that flying in a little tiny plane was no big deal.  Actually I guess I didn't lie; it isn't a big deal, it's a HUGE deal.  I hate to fly.  The thought makes me literally sick.  But I wanted the job and so I told the nice lady what she needed to hear.

When the time came to go to the airport in Dillingham to ride the little tiny plane to my new home and school and job and life, the bugs distracted me from getting all worked up.  The "no-see-ums" this year in D'ham are bad enough that even the locals are complaining, not just the tourists.  Clouds of flying biters surround the place.  Regular screens in windows just slow them down.  I was lucky or unappetizing enough that I had only been truly bitten once but the hassle factor of brushing them off my face, chest, arms, everything still made for a pretty miserable half hour waiting for our ride to show.

Once all our gear was stowed, none too gently so it would all fit, I drove with my new asst. principal Dale, the mother hen to our group, Donna who teaches Science and Carol the sped specialist and my new neighbor to the airport up Kanakanak Road*.  The airport terminal I came in initially with Alaska Airlines didn't compare to the individual waiting building for our airline, a local group with one plane that ferries people and dogs and cargo back and forth to Togiak all day.  In fact, mine was one of over 150 flights out of Dillingham International Airport (remember, Russia is just over there).

 Alaska Airlines is more than one room.  This was a single room dominated by a huge fancy carved bar height desk and three chairs of varying age and comfort.  A very nice lady in her mid 60s ran the desk and got us all checked in.  That is to say, asked us if we were ready and had Dale sign a sheet of paper with everyone's name on it.  No security, no TSA, no baggage check, nothing.

When the pilot, a stone faced Yupik man named Tomas, loaded us into the plane a five seat Piper aircraft, one entered by climbing up onto the wing and stepping past the cockpit to the back seats.  Unless one was designated shotgun by virtue of being the new girl.  Yup, I had to sit in the front seat, next to the pilot, with a steering wheel thing in front of me and pedals at my feet.  Luckily, I had packed some medication from home, proscribed to me by my very nice doctor, so I was able to get into the plane without freaking out.  I kept repeating in my head, "I don't have a choice."  It also helped that Carol is claustrophobic so knowing someone else was also freaking out kept mine to a minimum.

Takeoff was easy; the weather was perfect for flying.  It was just like being in a car that occasionally went over a bumpy road.  Except that it was also kind of like sitting on a Sit 'N Spin, that loose twirly horizontal feeling while also going up and down.  It was weird and I didn't like it, but a steady recitation in my head of The Lord's Prayer (Catholic version, sorry Presbyterians some habits are hard to break, especially when terrified) with a few Hail Marys thrown in for good measure, acted like a mantra for me and eventually I was able to really look around to where we were going.  We never went very high up and at times going through the mountain passes, the mountains were higher than we were.  All the tundra was a brilliant greenish color in about every shade I have ever seen, tinted in places by rust that I sure will spread as Fall commences.  Every once in a while, Donna would shout up to me some point of interest, usually having to do with other villages we passed and where their schools were (all red roofed for some reason).

Soon enough, too soon, finally  45 minutes later, we landed on the airstrip that conveniently runs right into the ocean if you go too far thankyouverymuch.  Didn't like that.  What was funny when we got out of the plane and Tomas started unloading our gear, both Donna and Carol moved away from the plane very quickly.  I heard Carol say, "Thank God, I thought we were going to die for sure."  This startled me since I thought it had been a smooth, featureless flight.  Donna explained that the fuel smell I assumed was just part of a small plane experience actually meant a fuel leak and that we had been in real danger!  "Didn't you see Tom fiddling with all the knobs?  He was trying to figure out where the leak was from."  I thought it was part of the whole flying thing, not something out of the ordinary.    Ignorance is bliss, I tell you!


*The longest place name that is also a palindrome, in the world! 

The Bunkhouse vs the Bristol Bay Inn

My first few days in Alaska were spent in a building referred to by all as either The Bunkhouse or The Condo.  It is a double wide trailor broken up into a kitchen, small living room, bunk room with four sets of double bunk beds, two bath rooms with showers, and three smaller rooms.  I am pretty sure that my room and the room next to me were once a single but later split into two by a thin sheet of plywood because I could hear everything going on in there and vice versa.  It was like living in a large tent but not the lavishly-styled one in the Harry Potter books.  It was also about twenty steps to the conference room where all my trainings happened.

I shared the Bunkhouse with three other female newbie teachers, one of whom was also going to be teaching in Togiak.  All three were in their twenties and, for Katelynn, age 22 from Montana, this was her first job.

The days passed in a blur of paperwork, revisions to paperwork and the kind of training one might see at any school district in the country.  Except that at night, the sun didn’t go down until well after ten o’clock and a bag of salad cost over $5.

Because this is the first year that 6^th grade is considered part of middle school, I was shuffled between two groups; elementary and secondary.  Most of the time, it was fine, though I enjoyed the secondary people more.  They are more likely to be sarcastic and wry and jaded in a way that the elementary people are not.

Although we were given a tiny per diem check on the first day (I literally walked into the district office and was handed a check), we were also given breakfast and lunch each day.  I learned early on that fresh fruit was to be hoarded whenever possible and that after a week of Lunch Lady food, it was totally worth it to spend ten bucks on a real milk shake in the restaurant in the motel where I spent the second half of my time in Dillingham.  It was the best thing I have ever had!

The Bristol Bay Inn is a basic motel with clean comfortable beds, no internet or mini-fridge and the scratchiest towels I have ever encountered.  It was like a loofah every morning!  My skin never looked so good.  Too bad it didn’t match my hair, which was badly in need of a wash with shampoo.  I tried to get on the Never Use Shampoo bandwagon this summer but my hair is too thick and I gave up after a month.  Now I was back on the greasy train, and didn’t want to risk a bottle of shampoo getting confiscated by the TSA.  But no one seemed to notice and the weather leant itself to pony tails.  And no, there were no little bottles of shampoo appearing in the bathroom every day like at an average Holiday Inn.

At the Bristol, I had a longer walk to trainings and a roommate; this time a Language Arts teacher from Manatauk, a school of around 80 kids in a village smaller than Togiak.  Joanne was nice enough, had been with the district for a while (more than 5 years, I think) but lost me when she admitted she thought Donald Trump might be onto something with his presidential candidacy.  Luckily, she was a social gal who hung out with the other Manatauks and most of the time, I was in bed asleep when she got home.  We were both concerned that my nose hose would keep her awake but she found it to be soothing in a ‘white noise” kind of way.  Good thing because I do not sleep without it anymore.  Common courtesy doesn’t extend to dying from not breathing all night long.

By week’s end, I had learned many of the ins and outs of this particular district, the names of everyone in the office and what time to go to the gas station for a cup of real coffee in the morning.  I had watched a line net hauled in with dozens of fresh salmon in the pouring rain, cut one up myself with an ulu (pronounced “uuuu-loooo-uck” in Yupik), learned a Native dance that we newbies performed for the entire district and that the entire district could fit into one gym with only ten tables set up.  The other thing I learned that was crucial for my peace of mind was that I never heard anyone seriously gripe about the district.  That was very new!  And most welcome. 
 
 

Getting to Alaska

Deciding what to wear takes on a whole new meaning when thinking in terms of the next ten months.  In packing for this trip, I had many things to keep in mind: teacher vs play clothes, durability of gear, cost of alternative shipping, and the cost of taking stuff on the plane.

  Because I was able to join the 49ers club on Alaska Airlines, I was able to bring two bags free of charge.  I had two traditional carry on bags (a large soft sided duffle bag, my all purpose sub bag) and my CPAP nose hose case.  Because the nose hose is technically medical equipment, it flies free.  The total weight of all these bags I will find out when I fly to Togiak in the little tiny plane because there is no such thing as free bags on the little tiny planes.  Everything I brought will be subject to a .95/lb charge.  In cash.  But the upside (Hi Lindsay!) is that I will get an accurate total of just how many pounds of stuff I brought with me for my new life.

The first flight was uneventful-yay- and reinforced that flying need not be scary at all.  But I got to the airport at 10:30pm.  My next flight was scheduled to board at 5:20am.  I decided to not pester any of my dear friends and relatives with picking me up, taking me home only to have to get up a few hours later to bring me back.  "I can sit in the bar all night or watch Netflix on the airport wifi" I thought.  Only to find out that everything at SeaTac International Airport shuts down tight at 11pm.  EVERYTHING.  Ok, Netflix it is.  Except that I couldn't get the wifi to work on my nearly outdated laptop.  Okaaaaay.  Read a book.  That lasted until about 11:30 when I got bored/tired/nervous/bored.

When a long night starts, it's best to go with it.  I lounged.  I followed the example of my fellow travelers by making a cozy little next on a row of seats.  I watched the volume free tv.  And I thought.  I thought about my friends and family and the wonderful party they threw me to say farewell.  I thought about lesson plans.  I thought about what my new students would be like.  And decided, it was all going to be fine.



My flight to Anchorage was also uneventful, as was the one to Dillingham where I was met by no less than the Superintendent of the district.  He took me on a tour of the town, and to my new lodgings for the first few days, the Bunkhouse. 

To be continued...

The inevitable post about packing

We all knew this one was coming so best get it out of the way now.  I need to pack.  For a ten month trip to a place I have never been.  I have been told many things about Togiak, like how they get upwards of 100 inches of snow per year, possibly 20 inches in a 24 hour period.  But that it was a "brown winter" with very little snow this past year.  Compare that to Portland, or Seattle where I grew up, where it snows 6 or 8 inches per year every couple of years, and the whole city shuts down until it is gone, usually within a day or two.

 In fact, here is a picture of a snow day in Portland from Feb, 2014.
 As you can see, the snow didn't even come up to the wheel well, and yet, school was closed for nearly a week.  It is true that ice is more of a problem in Portland when it snows and it really isn't safe to drive but you get my point.  "Snowing" takes on a whole new meaning.

I have also been warned that gale force winds and rain blow a lot this time of year in Togiak.  I was advised to bring a good waterproof coat, waterproof pants and a sturdy hat with a chin strap, especially for our new teacher training fishing trip.  Luckily, a fellow teacher taught me the benefits of buying a truly waterproof coat when she heard that I was going to be doing daily recess duty as part of a job I had a few years ago.  Rain, I am familiar with.

But one thing that made my brief job in Medford wretched was that I packed for a week, and wound up staying two.  I was so sick of my teacher clothes by then, I wanted to chuck them all, and though the job paid a lot (I mean, a crazy lot even if it was to work a strike), it wasn't enough to redo my entire work wardrobe. 

Now I have the added difficulty of bringing not just teacher clothes but regular everyday clothes as well for a new climate.  Because of weight issues with the planes, I also need to weed carefully.  The tiny plane that will take me from the bustling metropolis of Dillingham (population 2400) to Togiak charges .95 cents per pound for all my luggage.  This means I have to pick and choose which sweatshirts I absolutely cannot live without, which shoes are most practical, which jeans will fit until I lose all the weight I am bound to drop while living in a place with no fast food, which skinny jeans to take to wear when I lose said weight.

Plus there are the little things I take for granted around my house.  A bath mat, perhaps.  Or more than one kitchen towel.  And don't even get me started about pillows!  I am an unabashed pillow whore.  Currently, I need four to sleep well: one under head, one under knees and one on each side to hug when I sleep on my side.  (Sure, "get a girlfriend" takes care of pillows 3 & 4 but work with me here.)  I know I have two pillows waiting for me that the woman who used to live in my apartment left behind but who knows if these are adequate, the right softness, the right rigidity, the right material.

I also have to keep in the back of my mind that this is a solo trip.  There will be no one but myself to haul all my gear from car to plane to motel to plane to new apartment.  So I have decided to bring one suitcase on wheels (thanks for the loan, Mom!), one Europe Through The Back Door backpack that I can wear, one carry-on duffle, and my nose hose (a specialized piece of medical equipment that keeps me from not breathing when I sleep, because sleep apnea is sexy) that thankfully flies free.

Into these, I must pack up my life.  Yah, okay.