Translation

Some notes about language issues we've been having:

Being Polite
Students can appear to be very demanding and bossy. They say, for example, "Bob, come." That means, come over here because I need help. I assumed that, like a lot of kids, they were still working on manners. However, there seems to be no Yup'ik word for 'please'. So, "Bob, come," is not impolite at all. It's just a direct translation.

Reticence
This is partially cultural and partially language: it can be difficult to pin down exactly what the speaker means because they are often unwilling to be definite out of politeness. For instance, when we were going to walk to Tooksook Bay, which is seven miles across the tundra, we asked whether we needed to have rubber boots or if our hiking boots would be OK. The answer we got from G (see the 'who's who' on the sidebar) was, "You can make it in hiking boots". Well, that's true. You could also make it barefoot. But no rubber boots equaled sopping wet feet because you're slogging through calf-high water at times. Another example from this same trip: One of us waved at a plane that was passing overhead while we were midway between the two villages. G said, "We don't usually wave at planes." After a few minutes of asking clarifying questions we were told that if you're on the tundra and you wave to a plane it means you're in trouble and need help. It's like tundra 911. I think most non-Yup'ik folks would have said, "Definitely don't wave at planes unless you're really in need of help."

Time
We were told early on that Yup'ik folks don't like to talk about what will happen in the future. Asking about whether you're going to catch a moose or not is uncomfortable and impolite. I think this translates into the language because a lot of the students have difficulty conjugating verbs to indicate past, present or future. For example, a student told us that there was going to be native dancing at the school one night. We asked when. "It already happened." "Oh, I thought you said it was happening tonight." "Yes." "What time?" "Already." "....So is it going to happen or has it happened already?" "Happen." Turns out the dance had not yet happened but was about to start. We only found that out by going to the school to see what was up.

Colloquialisms
- When a student is kidding with you she'll say, "I jokes." As in, "I didn't do my homework. I jokes." And then she gives you the homework.
- Taking a photograph is "picturing". For example, "Can I picture the ocean? Then can you picture me and her with the fish?"
- You can travel by walk here. "How did you get to Toksook Bay?" "I went by walk."
- 4 wheelers are Hondas. All of them.
- Things are often, "So easy," or "So hard." But 'easy' becomes "eeeezy" and 'hard' is "haaaard."
- For the "she's going too?" or "can we have dessert too?" construction, one says, "Even she is going?" and "Even dessert?"
- When you are finished you say "already". As in, "Did you finish revising your essay?" "Already."

Traffic Cops and Technology

A couple of days ago I was teaching a lesson on punctuation. Our text book, which is a pretty good book, told us, "Punctuation is the traffic cop of a sentence." No traffic and no cops in The Village. They obviously know what traffic and cops are but they probably have never experienced a traffic jam and have probably never met a cop. That metaphor is supposed to be instructive. You're supposed to suddenly have a real idea of what punctuation does in a sentence. Oh well.
_____
Clearly, we are quite isolated up here. But due to the wonders of the 21st century there are ways in which these students have opportunities and experiences that many students in far less isolated places do not. For instance, many students in my writing class finished their first essay of the year today. They had all typed it on their laptops. Every middle and high school student has his or her own laptop for use at school and home. Pretty amazing, right? When the students finished the essay they emailed it to me. All students have email accounts through the same service that all of the staff have. So I downloaded their essays, made comments electronically and sent it back to them. No problems. That is something that never happened to me in NYC or Oregon. However, I think this is pretty commonplace throughout all of the villages in this district.

Furthermore, the students all double spaced, used 12 point, black font and included a heading. I had to remind my students elsewhere again and again of these basic formatting customs. I didn't have to say it once to these students. Also, there was no abuse of the laptops. The students typed their essays using Microsoft Word, saved and emailed them without help. I didn't hear a single note of music or catch anyone on the Internet. Yow.

Also of note, cell phones, high-speed Internet and satellite TV are all here and used widely. But the nearest roads connecting us to a highway system are 500 miles away, the airstrip was closed for over two weeks in a row last year requiring all travel to go through the nearest village (7 miles away by snow machine) and few students have running water.

New pictures

Here are some more pictures of the village and the tundra. As before, I also sent out an email with a more extensive photo album, so if you'd like to see that and didn't get the email, please let me know.

I think that some of our emails are getting bounced back because of people's spam blockers. If you think you should be getting emails from us and you're not, please let me know.

Cultural Literacy

I haven't been posting much lately because Blogger/Google has been janky - at least my connection to it. The new post page was loading up in a way that didn't allow for new posts. Right now it seems to be OK.
____
Today I was working with a student on remedial reading comprehension. The book we were using, Corrective Reading Book C by SRA, has these sentences that he was supposed to read and use to answer some questions: Susan is a lawyer. The shoes are in the garage. The dogs are in the pen. There are no lawyers, garages or dog pens here. So when he reads the sentences he doesn't comprehend what's going on and can't answer the questions. It's not like he was unable to understand the concept of a dog pen or a garage or a lawyer. I had to explain them and then it was fine. But the culture here is so radically different from typical suburban/urban American culture that we practically need our own text books. After working out of the textbook for a while we went on to reading from Loser by Jerry Spinelli - a book the student chose for us to read together. The first three chapters have been vague sketches of little kids running around a suburban neighborhood. There are no playgrounds or sidewalks or even streets here. So...it's difficult. This is something to remember when looking at "standardized" test scores. Standardized tests don't get normed in places like this so the scores they produce and the conclusions you are supposed to draw from them are questionable.

In other news:
S mentioned that we were able to see some traditional Yup'ik dance the other night. This was because a five year old village boy drowned the day before school started. He was going to be in our kindergarten and he has a twin. I guess he was playing on a boat or piece of wood in the river and fell in. So on Thursday there was a funeral and then a gathering in the school gym. S and I didn't go to the funeral - we stayed at the school to help prepare for the gathering so I can't really report on that. I believe it was a fairly traditional Catholic service. But the gathering was amazing. We made it up when the dance had just begun. There were four to six men seated in a row playing drums. The drums are just a circle of wood with a handle and a skin stretched over them that they hit with a mallet. The men also do the singing. In front of them is a line of women with feather-fans in their hands. The dance is choregraphed for each song with hand and leg movements. In front of these women are more men- in this case it was teenagers and boys- kneeling on a mat doing the dance as well. The music is a relatively simple tune that usually one man starts sings and tapping out the beat to. When he has sung it all the way through the rest of the men and women join in. The whole verse is repeated five or six times with the last two usually being much louder. There's a beautiful repetition to the song as it rises and falls through the verses with the beat always going behind it.
What may have been most amazing was the participation. Yup'ik dance was forbidden in many other villages by Christian missionaries. Our village was lucky to be allowed to continue many of their traditions such as this dance. So it was amazing to see people from four to eighty five participating in the dance. And it seemed completely without pretension, without any commercial forces applying pressure or hidden agendas. I'm sure it's not completely pure. Which is to say that there is pride involved and no doubt some measure of showing off. But given the spectrum of people who were involved, it seemed like they were dancing for each other and for themselves in a tradition that didn't survice every where so we were so lucky to see it.

And then the band started playing county music and all the younger folks line danced. How did that get here?

First week

I’m hoping B posts again soon because I’m pretty sure we had very different weeks. Mine was many things – exciting, difficult, overwhelming, busy, even fun. Monday was a final workday – although we worked straight through the weekend – so Tuesday was our first day with the kids. I have three separate parts to my day: first two hours I have reading and writing. In that class there are 9 kids (there were only 7 but 2 new ones turned up on Friday – one of the joys of public school, no matter where you go, it never changes). If that seems like a small group, consider for a moment that the kids are anywhere from 8-11 years old, and their reading and writing abilities are all over the place. I mentioned before that our school works on a phase system. I have one student who has finished phase 4 and is working simultaneously on 5 and 6, several who are on phase 6, a few on phase 7, and one who is just beginning phase 8. It’s quite a span, and makes planning a challenge. I’m still sort of figuring out how to design instruction that’s going to get each of them where they need to go.

My third hour is math, and the kids are a bit older. I love teaching math, and so I volunteered to take the higher level elementary group, who are working at about a fifth grade level, expecting that this would put me back in my comfort zone, since almost all of my experience is with fourth and fifth graders. To my surprise, most of the kids in the class are 11-14 years old. Middle schoolers (shudder)! I was really nervous when I found that out because I just don’t know how to work with kids at that age. I was immediately reminded, however, of the summer I spent as a camp counselor several years ago. I had some flexibility in my position, and I spent one of the 2-week sessions with the older boys’ group. I was surprised to find out back then that boys at that age – about 12, 13 – are actually mellow. It’s like they’re beyond the spastic energy of little boys, but not yet at the stage of constantly having to prove their machismo (I assume that’ll come in a few years). So there’s this nice little plateau where the boys are just…calm. This definitely seems to hold true in my math class. The girls are a little jumpier, a little more likely to chomp their gum and roll their eyes, but they’re okay, too. I think I’m lucky to have them for math – the language barrier subsides a bit when you’re working with numbers, and the kids feel more confident.

After math I have a lunch period, and then the rest of my afternoon, in theory at least, is special ed time. Eventually I’ll be working with groups and individual kids, but it’s been a slow process trying to make that schedule. The main problem is that even though the caseload is rather large – about 23 kids in a school of about 115 – our principal feels that many of the kids who have been labeled LD (learning disabled) actually were just delayed due to learning English as their second language, and have made significant gains. He’s hoping to take several of them off the special ed rolls. Then again, he also feels that there are several kids who don’t have IEPs who could use some additional help. So, eventually my afternoons will be full, but for now they’re rather empty. Which has actually been kind of nice as ease into things – it’s given me ample prep time, which I need because I actually have to write and turn in lesson plans, something I have never had to do before.

The kids are adorable, I mean, really. So far my favorite thing is this – when you ask a question, if the answer is yes, more often than not they just raise their eyebrows. This is true of kids and adults, I have no idea why. It’s not like a skeptical eyebrow raise, there’s no attitude, it’s just a quick up and down. For some reason I find this incredibly endearing.

Also this week we climbed the “mountain” in the village (it’s more like a big hill, still pretty amazing), hunted for fossils (and found a few), saw some Yup’ik dancing (incredibly beautiful), which was immediately followed by a fiddle dance (no fiddle, but line dancing!), baked a chocolate cake, and hoped in vain for our next food order to arrive.

I’ll say more about the dancing later, it deserves its own post, but I also want to say, now that we’ve taken two hikes up the hill, that the tundra is beautiful in ways I didn’t expect. From far away it just looks uniformly green, but when you get close up you suddenly see how many different plants and shades are there, as well as flowers who somehow manage to survive the winds, and, if you get down and push aside the leaves, thousands of tiny berries. The tundra is soft and springy under my feet, I almost feel like I’m bouncing up the hill. And as we get higher, rocks, sharp and marbley gray laced with weird orange moss, jut out of the grass like stony streams.

I’ll add one more thing before I close. Our current patterns are a strange combination of lazy couch potato-ness and unusual industriousness. On the one hand we’ve spent a good chunk of this weekend truly just sitting around – sleeping late, playing Wii, reading, watching movies (ok, Battlestar Galactica), going on the internet, whatever. Not just this weekend, we’ve spent a lot of our free time that way. I know it’s one of my goals to spend my time developing some new habits, but I haven’t done too well with that so far.

On the other hand, we’ve been doing things – mostly around cooking – that we haven’t done before. Little things, but they're new. Soaking beans (instead of using canned), baking our own bread, making our own soymilk, sprouting alfalfa seeds. I feel like a hardy pioneer wife. With a Macbook.

Backwards things, beginning of the year, and books

We were in Athol a couple of days ago and then when we were at the airport (I mean, “airport”), I thought for a moment that I’d left my toothbrush in the hotel. At first I thought, ‘Oh well, no big deal, I’ll just buy one when we get there.’ But then I realized, unlike most places I’ve flown to, in The Village “just buying one” is not very likely. Okay so, it turned out I had my toothbrush but I was thinking about this and I realized, if I’d forgotten my wallet or keys at the hotel, something that would have made me completely panic in any other situation, it really wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t think I’ve touched my wallet more than 3 or 4 times since we got here, and keys – well, B is either here or at school, so if I lost my set it wouldn’t matter that much. But a toothbrush – now that would be tricky.

School starts on Tuesday. We’ve spent the past 3 days in our classrooms, getting ready. In a lot of ways it’s just the same as anywhere else: figuring out where to put the desks, making the charts and signs and labels, planning the first couple of days. But there’s a lot that’s new for me this year, too.

First of all, this year my job is partly a Special Ed position. B and I spent a long while today sitting with our computers, figuring out our schedules. B is the full-time Special Ed teacher at the school so his job is a combination of pulling kids out of their regular classes for one-to-one or small group instruction, pushing in to support a kid in his regular ed class, working with the General Ed teachers to plan appropriate curriculum for SpEd kids, and doing all the paperwork (there’s a lot). My job is a 50/50 split – in the mornings I’ll teach reading, writing and math. Then after lunch I’m also going to be doing Special Ed. I won’t have all the same duties as B since I’m not a certified SpEd teacher, but I will be doing push-in or pull-out service for a number of kids. And even in the morning, there are a number of things that make my General Ed assignment a bit different. For one thing, I’ll have a different group of kids for Language Arts and Math. My LA group will only have seven students, more like a targeted small group than what I usually think of as a class. My math group will be a little bigger: eleven students. It’s funny, during three years in private school I always assumed that my eventual return to public would mean greatly increased class sizes – apparently not.

The other thing that makes it different is that our school district works with a phase system rather than a grade model. Now the kids all do officially belong to one or another grade because that’s how the state requires it. But for all purposes, at school it’s their phase, not their grade that counts. Generally the expectation in elementary school is to get through two phases a year. So this all makes sense on paper, in fact in theory I like it better than a grade system, which assumes that all ten-year old children are at the same place academically and puts them all in fifth grade. With a phase system, the kids are where they are until they move up. Now, here are the tricky parts. One, some kids take forever to move up, so then you have 15 and 16 year olds who are basically in the equivalent to 8^th or 9^th grade – you can imagine that someone in that situation isn’t very likely to stick around till he’s 21 or so to finish high school. Second, you end up having multiple phases in one class – for example, in my morning language arts class I have kids in phases 5-8. So that’s complicated in two ways (follow me here, make an outline if this is getting difficult). First, the phases can be very different, so you have to teach a bunch of different things at the same time. Or, on the other hand, some phases have a lot in common but you have to be careful that you’re really differentiating – so if you’re teaching, say, the skill of pre-reading, that’s going to look different to a kid in phase 6 than it would to a kid in phase 8. And, the third reason that the phase system in general is not quite as neat as it looks on paper is that, at least in our district, it relies on lots and LOTS of testing. Each phase in each subject requires at least half a dozen assessments to complete.

So these are the kinds of things I’m thinking about as I get ready for the first day.

In other matters, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributed to my book list. I promised I would post it here and I’ve been lazy about doing it because I’ve wanted to look up authors – lots of people just sent in titles. But I finally got that done, so here’s the list. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

Lowboy: A Novel by John Wray

So.B.It by Sarah Weeks

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado

The invention of Everything Else by Samatha Hunt

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Not me by Michael Lavigne

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Earth Abides by George R Stewart

The Evolution Book by Sara Stein

Caveman’s Valentine and Jury Duty by George Dawes Green

If Not Now, When? By Primo Levi

Rosa Lee by Leon Dash

A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bassinger

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Up Country by Nelson DeMille

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammett

The Help by Katherine Stockett

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Before You Know Kindness and The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

Also my friend Holly recommended a web show called "Anyone But Me" and tells me you can see it at

http://www.afterellen.com/taxonomy/term/4782

Back in Athol

When we arrived in The Village on Thursday, aside from being a little sick from the flight, I think we were both struck by how beautiful this area is. The flight revealed the surrounding area as a series of twisting rivers and lakes of all sizes - nearly more water than land. The tundra is characterized by the full spectrum of greens and blues and almost completely flat. A few villages were visible during the flight but the area is largely absent of humans - at least as seen from the sky. Looking down from the plane or the surrounding hills, it's absolutely stunning.

However, we're back in Athol for district-wide training. Athol is not beautiful. It's a frontier town that seems completely dedicated to utilitarianism. Despite the relative urbanity of Athol (and its conveniences), I'm glad we're not living here.

As for the trainings, what's been most disappointing for me is is the almost complete lack of training around special education. Special ed wasn't mentioned at all in last week's 3-day training and appears only once on the agenda for the next two days for 1.5 hours (which conflicts with school staff meetings). This is all too typical in my opinion.

Some other notes:
- Our shower emits a high pitched whine right before it goes completely cold for a couple of seconds
- We were informed by a student who followed us home from the post office that we'd hear the words "gay" and "retarded" a lot at school
- Our apartment is well heated - so much so that I slept without blankets the other night. It was 45 degrees out.
- Our airstrip is apparently one of the worst in the area- it was closed for 14 days in a row last year. The school nearly ran out of food. Good times!

We return to The Village on Wednesday night. Looking forward to it.