Front Porch Coffee

Kids sent to the office: more than I remember (4? 5? something like that)

Kids who threw me completely off by standing up and announcing a decision to voluntarily go to the office: 2

Best thing I had to say: “LUCAS! Put your tooth BACK in your pocket!”

Quote of the week:

“A girl’s gotta have standards, even with chicken wire, a girl’s gotta have standards.”

Little Diomede Island. The village is named Diomede and I have the privilege, the million dollar job: I am Diomede’s next 7-12 math and science teacher.

‘Excited?’ No. That word doesn’t really work; here, this works  better: I’m kinda excited like the horsehead nebula is kinda big.

Reference: here’s the horsehead nebula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula

Yeah. Like that.

:D

Little Diomede from the side

snowy Little Diomede

Little Diomede, Alaska - The native village of Little Diomede sits on the border of Russia and the United States. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer Richard Brahm)

A little glimpse of how teaching works.

Thanks to the AKT2 Staff for the great (insert: hard. time consuming. effective learning. grumblegrumble.) assignment and to Randall Munroe for inspiration (insert: plagiary worth comics. flattery!)

PS:
Ready for the meta? Here it is: a second deepest apology to Darby Conley’s apology to Robert Frost. You caught that? You are my hero, I will buy you a cup of coffee :)

where's hat guy?

*well, at a least a test won’t keep me back. How could a test keep me back? It’s a sorta-long and very-boring story.

Here’s what went down. I pulled a dummie and didn’t get my mits onto a study guide until two and a half weeks before the test. Open the cardboard box, crack open the book, 50 bucks for one single 18 page chapter on the particular test I’ll be taking. And oh my word those 18 pages are all little bullet points, things to study each bullet point a huge thing to get into my head and working well. Might as well be 180 pages. Or 500 pages. Yeah..definitely 500 pages.. Biology. Geology. Astronomy. Chemistry. Physics. Lab procedures. Me, I love science, right? Even better teaching science. But this is a LOT of science in not much time.

Two and a half weeks plus three hours later I walked out of a room feeling like I just finished having my science head and knowledge and ability stomped and sqrcckkked (that’s the sound when you twist your foot on gravel) into gravel..because that’s exactly what taking that test felt like. And of course, all the teachers I talk to say “ohhhh that test, yeah that felt horrible after I took it, totally thought I bombed, but then I passed!” and I say to myself Oh gees thanks for the nice little ‘make me not feel so horrible’ gesture.

And four weeks later: 190/200. Certificate of Excellence mailed to me. Kinda felt a bit of the coolness of DiCaprio’s Abegnale at the end of the movie, albeit briefly, as any of the coolness that remained after my nobody-is-around-so-I-can-fully-show-my-joy-by-couch-vaulting was definitely lost in the midst of still-nobody-around-celebratory-somersaults.

So what now?

Diomede. Nunam Iqua. Hooper Bay. Koyuk. Tuluksak. Final polish on my resume today, submit apps tomorrow, job fair friday, my gut says if she goes steady as she goes than Nunam Iqua or Diomede…but I’ve heard that a job fair can be a pretty wild thing, so we’ll see.

Will I have a permanant job teaching in a little village in the Alaskan bush next year, and the year after, and for who knows how many years more?

Depends, will I pass a test tomorrow?

Stress?

Place. What is it? Where’s mine and where’s yours, right? Cities, towns, pueblos and glens and farms, where’s who’s place? There are books and theories and studies about this idea, this thing: place. And I don’t need any of them. And did I really commit homonymage there? Yes, because it looked better that way.

Because today work put me in my place. Hands of stone and no gloves and no 3 minute rounds with the 30 second breaks inbetween. Me, living breathing sweating bleeding heavy bag, while work did well the role of Ali, of Fraser, of Ward.

But you know, for the unpleasantness of it, maybe one twentieth the magnitude of that unpleasantness, there is a refreshing feeling about a good ass whuppin’. Very small, probably even smaller than a twentieth of the unpleasantness. But it’s there. Bleeding heart’s a beating heart. Breathe in. out. in. out. Breathe out deep. And breathe in deep. Breathe deep. Shake it off.

Time to go home and eat and sleep. We step into the ring again tomorrow.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.