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)

Wednesday

Science in three languages (bonus points if you get the third one)

Doing a little data crunching for our lab using the built in smart board.

I'm helping two students start their calorimeter lab. Luckily we didn't set off the fire alarm.

Rod's Wood Shop class. Students are working on several different projects. Other students are welding ATV trailers which they sell in the community, and I've spotted several around town.

Working with the staff and students at Noorvik has been a great experience and it will be difficult leaving in a few days. On a lighter note the lunch ladies must be trying to put some meat on my bones as they keep giving me Extra portions; 20 chicken nuggets later and I'm set for the day. The extra servings must have given me the energy I need to marginally hold my own in basketball this afternoon (It helped that I was playing against the middle-schoolers).

Aqargiq-Ptarmigan in Inupiaq

Well stocked but pricey store (no produce today)

John Richel traveling nurse preparing TB tests for the kids (they get stickers after the shot)

Inupiaq class, moose = tuttuvak

Another great day in Noorvik. I divided my time between the Inupiaq teacher and the elementary classes.

I was excited to find nearly a dozen books for different age readers in Inupiaq and the lessons for the younger kids involved many songs (even the Barny song) in Inupiaq.

I started my lessons on nutrion for health class and built some very simple soda can calorimeters. I found more than enough soda cans around the school. More on that later.

Tumi and I also did a little native dancing with the kids. The video might end up as good black mail material.

We also lucked in to the monthly City Council meeting and as the old saying goes we got to see the sausage of being made.

High School Inupiaq drummers and dancers

Drum lesson

A busy and fun first day at school

Apollo Ohno

And Brian Boitano

Gary showing us how its done

Eating breakfast and lunch with the students was very entertaining, you just have watch out for the PG-13 knock-knock jokes. The kids were very open and we talked to many students.
We spent most of the day in the science classroom helping Amy (who has no prep time) with Health, Science and Biology classes. We'll be teaching health classes this week.

After school we attended a faculty meeting where the teachers were beginning to plan the next years schedule. This is much more complicated than it would be in a larger school as they need to determine what class every senior needs to take to graduate and who will teach those classes.

After the meeting Richard invited us to the student lead Inupiaq drumming and dancing practice. The community had put together a student group to drum and dance for the census and decided to continue practicing after the census people left. Students practice 2hrs after school 4 days a week. They even had Tumi and I practice drumming (its much more difficult than it might appear)

Amy kindly invited us to her house for cake and ice cream! for her daughter's birthday followed by ice skating on the river (again much more difficult than it looks especially for a former desert rat). All of the kids asked if I had skated before, I might have to practice when I get back to Fairbanks.

Sunday in Noorvik

Closing time?


Village church

Anyone for ice skating?

A library floor never felt so good. Walking through the village this morning I met a few people but most of the village was traveling back from the state basketball championships in Anchorage. One small difference between rural and town is the lack of signage (hrs open, store name etc). Makes sense that everyone would know when the store was open and why advertise there's no competition.

Tumi and I attended the local church services which was held in English and Inupiaq.
Afterword I took a long walk on the river and found the old air strip, abandoned due to erosion and waved at >20 folks on snow-gos.

School starts tomorrow and I'm looking forward to meeting all the staff and students.

Kotzebue

I spent the short time in Kotzebue walking around the town and being very excited to see sea ice, yup I'm a nerd. Mirjam and Tumi are both using the added 15 ft of height find out if there's anything beyond the horizon.

Fairbanks-Anchorage-Nome-Kotzebue-Noorvik

We flew in 3 different fixed wing aircraft today, no helicopters yet.

Living in the Library

9hrs and 4 airports later Tumi and I are happily setting up shop in the Noorvik Aqqaluk High School. The school is quite modern with built in smart boards and the students have a 1:1 laptop program.
Amy Eakin the science teacher and Gordon Newlin the school building maintenence supervisor and community leader were waiting at the Noorvik landing strip to pick us up. We rode to town in Gordon's truck as we wouldn't fit on the back of Amy's 4-wheeler. Gordon gave us tour of town and dropped us off at the school where Amy
(and three of her kids) gave us a set of keys to the library and let us move in for a week.

We took a walk around the village which is situated on a bluff overlooking the Kobuk River and from the top of the town you can see trucks driving the ice road to Katzebue.

Fairbanks Airport

One of the benefits of flying out of Fairbanks is wonderfully short check in lines and no security Kabuki.
Waiting with the education contingent.

I've jokingly blamed my poor spelling skills on the fact that I "spoke" Yupik from years 0-2. Unfortunately this early language immersion hasn't helped me with learning Inupiat words. Instead I've started using this link which takes you to an interactive language map with dictionaries and cultural connections.

Preparations

Tumi and I are heading out Saturday Morning. Now all that is left is to pack up some gear and buy some food.

We'll be staying at the school and bringing in as much food as Alaska Airlines weight limit allows.

I'm trying to put together some biology and earth science lessons but I'm finding it challenging not knowing what resources area available, how to teach to 5 different grade levels etc..

I'll be traveling to Noorvik, AK in two weeks for the rural practicum which is a component of EDSC 457 an education course I am taking at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

I will traveling with another UAF education student and will be working with the Noorvik High School science teacher.

I'm very excited by opportunity to travel to a rural community. My parents taught for 6 years at Nunivak and then in Akiachak. It should be an intersting and educational experience.

Noorvik was the first village in Alaska to be counted in the US census. NPR had a story on it few months ago.