Lesson Planning

Coffee from (the) Jana Howard

Coffee from Mom

Spices from Mom

Hey Friends! If you're wondering why I haven't posted anything on this blog in some time, the answer is simple: I've been planning lessons and teaching! This makes a lot of sense when you think about it, as I'm going to school to be a teacher. More on that later.

So Jana Howard gets the prize for sending me my first care package. COFFEE!! And just in the nick of time, it was getting bad. Then, the very next day, Mom sent me coffee and SPICES. Needless to say, I haven't slept since then, which is just fine because I have lots of work to do! I'll be done with summer school in two weeks. Yay!

Tomorrow is summer solstice and let me tell you that I am more excited than EVER. Not for the usual reasons (partying, body paint, festivals, body paint) but because the sun is driving me bonkers!! Not something that I am proud to admit, but it's true. I'm going to try to get in some trouble tomorrow night if my work load allows. Pictures to follow, I'm sure. If not, rest assured people, I'll be done with school soon enough and the real Emily will return. Stay posted.

Thanks again Mom and Jana!!

Check this out

Here's a link to an article I found about the district I'm working in.

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/26/136640253/the-weekly-standard-an-alternate-alaskan-education

The Struggle

Struggle: to make strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition. This is also the name of my memoir that I have been working on for the last two decades. This is what life is all about, right? How boring would it be if life didn't have any obstacles?

So this past week The Struggle included an inability to sleep, trying to ride bikes in Anchorage, and a mini-lesson gone awry.

All of my issues this week are rooted in the fact that I have had a very difficult time sleeping since I arrived. And when I say, "difficult," I mean that I haven't slept more than six hours straight at one time and the majority of the time it's more like four hours and I wake up all the time. It's annoying to say the least. I've found that my patience and critical thinking skills diminish with every lost hour of sleep. I've had had a lot of time to think (mostly at night) of why I'm having such a hard time sleeping. I think that there are three main reasons. First, I'm in school ALL DAY (7:30-5:00), I'm not getting much exercise, I'm overwhelmed with student teaching and going to school, AND the real culprit is the GD sun. It just won't go down. I guess that is four reasons. I'm super sad to admit this but the sun is making it very hard to regulate my schedule.

Trying to ride a bike around Anchorage is extremely annoying! The main reason is because Alaskans don't ride bikes in the street like normal people. They ride on the sidewalk. So as a result any bike trip includes the awesome experience of dodging pedestrians and other bikes. Ant that's just the beginning, because you are on the sidewalk and not on the road, you can't flow with traffic, you have to stop at every intersection, get off your bike and push the crosswalk button. ANNOYING! It's makes any trip take about twice as long as it should.

Now, why it is beyond annoying to commute around Anchorage, it should be said that they have miles of bikes paths that are totally awesome and beautiful and for this I am very grateful. The only problem with these trails is that sometimes they turn into dirt or gravel, which would be fine if I was on a mountain bike, but I'm not. This explains why I've hardly seen any road bikes.

This high-light (for story telling purposes) or low-point (if you consider the fact that it's a true story) of the week came Thursday when in front of a group of my peers, I destroyed my lesson on finding the percent of a whole number. When I say, "destroy," I mean that I couldn't do the problems that I created and couldn't really talk, and spent the last five minutes trying not to cry, only to sit down and completely lose it when one of my colleagues tried to comfort me. It was MORTIFYING!

I came home Thursday and realized that my life had once again gotten way out of balance. I haven't been sleeping nearly enough, haven't been eating regularly, and haven't been doing much for exercise. Since then, I've gone for several bike ride, went to a yoga class, bought some sleeping pills and took a bath. I'm doing a lot better now. I think that this experience was a real reminder that I need to take care of basic needs before I take care of the world. So don't worry, I'm taking care of myself.

I still love Alaska and my program. I am surrounded by some really great people, more about them soon. Life is good.

Pic: This is my attempt at looking crazy.

I will leave you with this quote, "Opportunity follows struggle. It follows effort. It follows hardwork. It doesn't come before."

~ Shelby Steele

Lucky

Sorry for the lack of posts. I'm busy, people. This whole teaching thing is really hard and time consuming. I'm considering a new profession. JUST KIDDING!

For those of you who haven't heard the FABULOUS news, I got a job in Coffman Cove, after-all. It's a really long story but the long and short of it is that they offered me .5 (part-time) position teaching that might be a .75 by the end of summer. So I might have to change my blog to, "Ballin' on a Budget," but it will be worth it because I'm moving to Prince of Wales Island!!! Here is the link to the adorable little school I will be working at http://hv.sisd.org/Coffman_Cove_Howard_Valentine_School/Coffman_Cove_Howard_Valentine_School.html

In other news, I went to Wasilla last night. It was cloudy so I couldn't see Russia but I did manage to see every person in Alaska that I'm related to. It was awesome. Good food and family! Thank you Michelle for coordinating and Aunt Vicki for transporting me!

The girl I'm living with here in Anchorage, her parents, Betsy and Rick have been in town from Eugene all week. They are awesome! In addition to buying us food and furniture for our place, they fixed both of our bikes!! Now, if you are an avid blog follower you might be asking yourself, "What is wrong with Emily's bike, I thought that she was already back in business with the bike?!?" Fair question, after I got the flat tire fixed, my pedal/crank literally fell off as I was riding (to the bike shop mind you) because I never did find that 15mm socket wrench to tighten the bolt. No worries, Rick to the rescue!! He found a bike co-op and gave it tune up. Now I don't have to worry about my crank arm falling off. What a relief!! The picture above is of the note I found when I got back from Wasilla this morning.

This girl is happy. I am so grateful for everybody who helped me move up here, and everybody who has been taking care of me since I got to Alaska. Special Thanks to my homegirl/room mate Kym Bronson. She is so bomb Here is a pic of us from a hike we did last week.


Okay, I'm going to try to be a little more regular with my blogging. Please know that if I'm not blogging it's becuase I'm either teaching or studying.

All the Peace

Revelations

I was so jazzed on Friday to ride my bike across town to catch a ride to school with another person in my program. Things were going great until I was half way there and got a flat tire. This is only the third flat tire I've had since I obtained this bike three years ago, so I'll take it. I have a tube, now all I need is pump and I'll be back in business the bike.

I have to say that I am really happy to be in Anchorage right now to be part of this program. In some ways I'm kind of honored, I am in a room with a lot of really talented, incredibly educated people. One of the great things about this program is that they require us to reflect and journal every single day. What a concept!?! I have to share my journal entry from last week, it's kind of funny, probably won't surprise most of you, but really, it's GD ridiculous. I can hardly believe that I shared it with the people I'm working with. Here you go:

Friday, May 27th, 2011
I had a revelation today as we were asked to define our teaching philosophy. It’s something that I am not proud of and definitely need to work on before I have my own classroom. I’ve had this realization before but dismissed it because it didn’t think it was important. I realized that part of my education philosophy, and I don’t want to say the reason I want to teach, but some part of me believes that if more people thought about the world the way that I did, then the whole world would be a better place. I feel like I arrived on my beliefs through a variety of channels, but mostly just exposure to information. Now, I know that this is not entirely true! There are so many factors that make-up my belief system. These factors include my upbringing, where I’m from and where I studied. I did not individually come to these conclusions. For the record, I also understand the limits of my own cognition. I KNOW that just because I think or feel a certain way, that it’s not the only or right way, I know this. And this is why it was so disturbing to me when I found myself honestly thinking that if I could just present my students with information they will starting thinking like me and therefore be better human beings. So I may be a tad narcissistic, working on it.

Can you believe that??

Paper Politics

It's weird to be working within a school district where resources are so limited. I remember at Metro Parks how I would get so irritated when we would waste boxes of paper on stupid promotional stuff. A lot of the paper would never even make it to public before we would recycle it.

I finished my first week of school. The last two days I was working with my mentor teacher to set up our classroom. We were given exactly two packages of paper that needed to last until the end of summer school. We literally divided out the paper among our classes. Every piece of paper was accounted for. In one way it made me SAD to think that there is so much waste in city and state government yet here we are scrambling to find enough paper so that our students can journal everyday, and simultaneously HAPPY to see us stretch our resources and save some trees. It was also inspiring to meet teachers who volunteer to teach summer school and invest so much time and money to the cause. This summer is going to be awesome!

Pic: Flat Top, Anchorage, AK

Some people would call me crazy.....

Just because I moved to Alaska without a job and with the intention to teach in bush. In fact, a lot of people have called me crazy, to my face. Whatever. I'm here now and things are mostly good. My first couple days of classes have been pretty interesting. I really excited about being a teacher. The only real problem is that I don't have a job yet. I had a really promising interview yesterday with the Southeast Island School District (my first choice) only to get a call at 10pm last night to learn that they offered the position to somebody else. I'm not going to lie. I kind of wanted to cry. So back to square one, applying for jobs, practicing yoga, generally keep it real.

In unrelated news, I unpacked my bike, somebody is going to come over tomorrow and help me assemble it. This will generally improve the quality of my life, I'm sure. Then I can add riding bikes, kicking ass and taking names to the list of things I'm doing.

Pic: the Nishiki in the kitchen