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I'm very thankful for the chance to visit and live briefly in the village of Noorvik. Observing teachers working with students in a smaller school reaffirmed my interest in the education profession. The teachers and staff were focused on the success of the students and work very hard to help the students achieve it. There was a great deal of communication between the staff and students and while the teachers and students were familiar with ech other the staff remained very professional.

The Noorvik school was quite the inviting place for us. Teachers were open with their classrooms and didn't mind two outsiders disrupting their schedule and classes. The students were especially wonderful to work with. Their smiles and laughter were infectious and their diligence in school makes a good case for village teaching.

There are complex issues at play in many villages and the decision as an outsider to live in a rural setting is not one to be taken lightly but there are many benefits as well.

Anchorage

Permafrost Polygons

Fun looking stream systems

Flying back to Fairbanks.
Thanks to the ticket agent at ERA we're on an Alaskan flight and good to go.

Up in the air (our plan that is)

Yeah its not coming back

The security lines are fast but the departure times can be misleading.

Tumi and I are having a bit of a delay in leaving Noorvik, for details you should read his humorous post.

Final Friday

Hamming it up for the camera

Teacher prep and break room. Double pot coffee maker not pictured gets a lot of use.

The lone copy machine

Last day in Noorvik and Tumi and I team taught the last of the our lessons to the health classes.
The school goes into overdrive studying for the AYP exams but with class of 10 students 1 absence can undue all the hard work of teachers and students.

We had a long talk with the pricipal (who is also the librarian and assistant principle). It was good to see the administrator's perspective. He was a former crime scene investigator and helped reduce crimes in school. CSI Noorvik on CBS soon?

Amy's science class were looking at fairy shrimp under the microscope, unfourtunely they had a bad batch of eggs and no shrimp so she pulled out plan B. Head lice (dead of course) pulled from an unknown donor.

During the Friday assembly all the students gather in the gym and students of the week get called up front for a cool color change pencil and a certificate. There were two rather old kindergartners in the line as well. See Tumi's post for pictures.

After school I took long hike around the village and ran into a small gang of 1'st graders and spent the next 30min giving piggy back rides.

Outside of town

Establishing shot of the village.

Several middle school boys showed me the half dozen snow caves they made. I'm standing up with a few inches to spare.

Obligatory B&W shot

Why you drive like a girl!?

Thursday

Clinic trauma room, note the camera and video-monitor to the right. This was the first clinic in the region.

Will there be a snow-machine purchase in the near future?

Just off the ice road on the Kobuk River.

Dragging main street with the cool kids.

Thursday
I spent the afternoon visiting grades K-3 and High School social studies classes. The little kids were really fun and funny. After the initial excitement of a new person in the class wore off I helped teach the 1'st graders how to count money. I don't think elementary ED is in the cards for me. I only know 2 ways to count, in your head or on your fingers and when those two options fail I'm out of ideas. Fortunately their teacher was very good and all the kids were making change despite my best efforts. The kids also needed to make sure my beard was real so when I wasn't looking a little hand would give it yank.

2nd Grade was interrupted by a fire drill and while everyone had their jackets the little kids hugged their teachers to stay warm. It was over quickly and everyone raced back into the school.

After school we met with Amy and discussed inquiry based education and the complexity of living and teaching in a village when you will always be considered an outsider.

John gave us a tour of the clinic which is staffed with a full time registered nurse and is being expanded to twice its current size. The two trauma rooms were equipped with telemedicine technology so the nurse or medical staff would have a doctor in Kotzebue or Anchorage for consultation.

Tumi made a fantastic pizza for dinner (sorry no pictures we ate it too quickly) and we were off to Amy and Rod's house.

Amy had volunteered Rod to take us out on their snow-machines in the evening. Rod thought we would be fine by ourselves and their son Zeke offered a tootsie pop if we made it back in one piece.

Tumi got the new Ski-Do Tundra and because I grew up in Northern Minnesota in the 90's I got the Ski-Do Summit. We drove on the river and through trails and looped back to town as the sun was setting. We both got a tootsie-pop and played dominos with Amy and John (another teacher).

The next day in school two boys ran up and asked why I drive like a girl (I guess I wasn't going as fast as I thought)