My first couple of days in Manokotak were pretty hectic. I was basically given my keys to the school and told to figure it out. Not in that way necessarily, but that is what it felt like. I had to go through my classroom and reorganize somethings and make sure I had enough materials for the first few days. Everything went rather well after I tore the room apart, it looked like a disaster area that is for sure. You would not be surprised to learn that many teachers like to stock-pile materials and resources from the last 4 decades. "Just in case," is what I have often said and have heard others say as well. So I went about clearing out my "extra materials" and decided garbage bags were the best way to organize these materials. Forgive me for destroying these materials all you teacher out there. After the organization I had my first day of school as an official teacher. Wow, that was intense. A million questions from my students, trying to figure out what what they were capable of doing and making sure we covered the basics of the first day. I am sure I forgot something but who will ever know. I know that I pretty much have forgot what happened that day. I don't know if it was because it was so traumatic or if it actually went rather well and it doesn't matter anymore. After the first week of school was over and we were well on our way to getting in the routine of things I learned a lot about my students and what I can expect from them.
School has been going rather well and I just had my first parent teacher conferences. Finally able to meet the parents of my students and voice some concerns and also some things that I have really seen improvement on throughout the first couple months. It was very interesting to see how parents reacted I have never been on my own for parent teacher conferences. I have always been the one to kind of sit back and watch while my supervisor conducted the conference. It was really nice to be in charge but also very scary with some of the parents.
Not all of the time I have been spending here has been completely on school, although a large portion has been. I have been able to meet a few of the Manokotak natives and get to know them. One of the other teachers and her husband were kind enough to allow me to tag along on a 2+ hour boat ride up the river, that runs along the village, to the lakes where the people catch the spawning salmon. It was a beautiful trip. I had to sit under a tarp for the majority of the trip back down river due to the stinging rain. While we were at the lakes we turned drying fish on the fish racks and also went berry-picking. We followed a bear trail through the woods to get to the berries which I thought was kind of the opposite that we had been taught during inservice. During inservice we were told to go the opposite direction of the bear not towards them. Oh well it was still an experience that I wouldn't take away. I really did enjoy making the trek across the tundra to get the few berries we did find. Oh, for those of you who don't remember what tundra is like let's just say it is like a marsh. When you walk on it it feels like you are walking across a very thick and extensive sponge. It is really an interesting sensation. It is almost scary because when you step onto it you sink in and you never now how much you will sink in.
I have had many experiences in the last two months and I will share some more in the next post. Hopefully this one will be sooner than the last few!
Take Care!
