The school

Cupcake snack at the end of the day

We are still amazed at this school. Though they only have 10 students, the 2 teachers do a phenomenal job! Our friend Matt has 6 students ranging from 1st - 3rd grade. He has one student who is full of energy and proudly announces, "I'm ADD!" to anyone who enters the room. Go back and check some of the previous pictures. You'll spot him right away! I love him, but he takes a tremendous amount of teacher time to be kept on task.

5th grade math class

 Troy, the teacher we are temporarily replacing, has 4 students - one 5th grader, one 8th grader, and two sophomores. Now there's a spread of ages and interests to bring together every day! Science and Social Studies are taught as a group while the students receive the remaining classes online from a variety of teachers across the district. It is a constant process of checking what is required of each student, assisting with homework, and making sure assignments are all faxed to the appropriate instructors. You need a secretary to keep up with the paperwork! 

Working on some Valentine art

My teacher friends will appreciate this-They have Alaskan common core checklists down to a science and are on top of it every second! These guys are no slackers!

Needless to say, the school is HIGH TECH! The older students all have their own laptops and the younger ones can operate the classroom computers like pros! Both Doug and I have OFTEN said, "Who can come up here and show me how to work this thing?" 

Student council meeting with 1/2 the club

The school also faces the constant fear of closure which is a justifiable concern. Population in this village is not increasing and families are becoming more and more transient. The teachers work very hard to provide experiences and activities for the entire community, often working many, many hours after the school closes (which I know many good teachers in Lincoln also do,) but this effort is a real struggle for survival. I do not know what schooling will be available to the handful of children left if the school should close next year. It breaks your heart!

Proud of their heritage

And while these kids may seem very sophisticated in some ways, they are also very sheltered. Last year a younger student asked, "Are turtles real?" If you have never left your village and not been exposed to the rest of the world, many things probably don't seem very real.

Native Alaskan Drums

One of the parents of an elementary student approached us and asked if we would be interested in her teaching the junior high & high school students (all 4 of them) how to make an authentic Native Alaskan drum. She would provide all of the materials and each student (and the lucky teachers) could create their own drum. She has a keen interest in Native Alaskan culture, though she is not a native herself. (In fact, if you've been following the blog, you will recognize her as Tracy, the Healthcare Practitioner from the clinic.) After the older kids become familiar with the process, she wants to return and with their help, teach the same lesson to the younger students which include her 2nd grade son. We jumped at the chance!

The supplies included bentwood frames, large pieces of dusty, dried rawhide and long rawhide strips for lacing. Doug spent 2 hours punching holes around the edges of the rawhide one evening with a leather punch. The next morning all the rawhide pieces were placed in warm water to soften. The kids drug their feet at working with such messy materials, but once they got started, they had a ball and they took the job every seriously.

Note:  Materials alone cost $50 for each student. The traditional method required a stretched walrus stomach or the lining of a whale's liver. Hard to believe, but those materials were just not readily available. We used rawhide taken from cattle. Whew!

Just a little Alaskan humor

This is for all of you who said we should have our heads examined for coming to Alaska in January!

Sorry, lower 48-ers. Couldn't resist! We mailed all of our snow gear back to Illinois today...Seriously

The volcano is smoking!

The volcano is smoking this morning!

I know, it's not a lot. BUT it is a volcano! Smoking! We can see it out the school window!

Pictures were taken at sunrise - about 9:45 a.m.

Native Youth Olympics

     Coming from Lincoln where there are so many opportunities for kids to get involved in sports, it's been a real eye-opener at the big effort made by the district to give our students the same opportunities as those I see at home. To begin with, there are many villages like Pilot Point that are only accessible by air. It has to be a huge undertaking for a team to visit another village for a game. Players almost always stay overnight and then there is the cost and time involved in flying to another town. Sports that are available here include basketball, volleyball & the Native Youth Olympics (NYO) for both boys and girls. In the case of this little village, there are not enough students to field a team so opportunities are even more limited. To offset this problem, the district, which consists of 12 remote village schools, hosts three jamborees a year; a volleyball jamboree in the fall, a basketball jamboree in the winter, and an Athletics & Academics jamboree in the spring. One of our students Michael will be flying to Egegik tomorrow where he will be assigned to a team that will play in a round robin basketball tournament. In addition to the games, there are also chances to discuss what's happening in your school,  social mixers, and a dance. I'm guessing Michael is going more for the party than his intense desire to play basketball! 

At the spring AA jamboree, the grand finale will be the district prom!

A major activity in the spring AA jamboree is the Native Youth Olympics prelims. I have found the NYO to be a fascinating event. It is an annual competition of youth in a series of games that honor their cultural heritage by demonstrating skills needed by Alaskan natives to demonstrate hunting & survival skills.

Some of the NYO games include:

The stick pull-a strengthening activity involving a Crisco smeared stick to mimic a skill used by native hunters to prepare themselves to pull a seal out of the water

The kneel jump- an activity involving agility & balance used by early natives to jump from ice flow to ice flow

The seal hop-while maintaining the push up position, students hop across the floor on their toes and knuckles to mimic the position taken by seal hunters as they camouflaged themselves from their prey while moving across the ice

In the past, Pilot Point has had several NYO competitors, but unfortunately does not have any this year. I'm attaching a couple of pictures at the bottom-these are not Pilot Point kids but are good images of what the competition might look like.

I also got to meet the principal yesterday. She flew in after lunch, spent the day dealing with normal school paperwork, conducted a community/parent meeting in the evening (kind of like PTA) and signed the employee time sheets. She flew out this afternoon. There is an apartment for itinerant personnel attached to Rachel & Matt's house. It is used by administrators, special ed teachers and the school counselor as they breeze in and out. They bring their own bedding & food. You'd hardly know anyone was here. Can't imagine a job like that! 

Driving the "Bus"

     Well, today I can add something new to my resume. The school bus driver did not show up so I was recruited to take over his duties. As you might remember, the "bus" is actually the school's red pick-up truck. It has really taken a beating on the 3 miles of muddy gravel road that surrounds the village. One tire is perpetually low, the wind whistles through the passenger window, and the spiderweb of cracks on the windshield make for an interesting view.

You can just see Alayssa's eyes
on the far side of the "bus."

     When Matt called, I was still at home, but I hurried over to the school and found a cute little second grader Alayssa already perched on the passenger seat of the truck. She announced, "I am your GPS." (Matt had installed her as my navigator.) Awesome news since I didn't know where anyone lived and at 8:00 a.m., it is still pitch black outside. Alayssa wasn't so great with keeping her right & left straight, but if I followed her pointing finger, I didn't go wrong. We'd pile in 3 or 4 kids, turn around and take them to the school, and then go back for more. Two trips did the trick since several parents delivered their own children on 4 wheelers. 

     After school, the bus driver was still AWOL, so my GPS and I reversed the process.

*This picture was taken on our after-school delivery. It is January 27th in Alaska. No coat, wearing tennis shoes... I hear there is no school in Lincoln again today due to the extreme cold & wind. What is wrong with this weather picture?????


And in further regards to the "bus," we had just filled 'er up at the village gas station last week. It is run by the city and is the only place to fill up your motor vehicles in town. The station is open from 3:00 - 4:00 Monday through Friday, $5 a gallon. Remember, full service? It's alive & well here in Pilot Point!

PP Teachers in the news

     Almost exactly a year before we arrived, the Anchorage television station did a series of reports on teaching in Alaska. One of the segments included a 6 minute segment featuring the school at Pilot Point and interviews with the 2 teachers. Matt Grossman was Doug's student teacher in Lincoln and then taught at Chester-East Lincoln for 5 years. He is the person who recruited us to come up and substitute when Troy's wife had a baby back in their home state of Idaho earlier this month.

CLICK HERE!

Anchorage Television News Report 2/7/12

     An interesting side note: The villager with the giganto tv that we visited last week told us that the shot of the little boy reading a book while sitting in the school window is still shown at the end of the Anchorage evening news as the credits roll. That would be Loren, the little guy on the far left in the picture below.

Recognize any of these tv celebrities? This picture was taken last week.

Visiting the local clinic

     Today during class, Tracy the local Community Healthcare Practitioner popped into the room with little cups of fluoride for each student. Obviously the water we use is from wells and these kids eat candy and pop like it's going out of style. It made me wonder where they get dental care or any kind of health care for that matter. She told me I was welcome to come by the native Alaskan clinic anytime. A couple hours later I walked down the road with Rachel & the 2 Grossmann boys to check it out. The clinic has recently moved to a new building and it was pretty impressive. There is no doctor on duty, but one flies into town every few weeks. The rest of the time, the clinic is staffed by Tracy with assistance from Tabitha, a local villager who is trained as a Community Healthcare Aid. I believe Tracy has the equivalent of an EMT certificate. Tabitha received specific training for her job. Anyone who has completed 8th grade can take the training for the aid position which requires classes and on-the-job training. There is an on-site pharmacy with just the basics-antibiotics, Tylenol, cough medicine, etc.

     The place was pretty high tech. Their fancy equipment can send EKGs and

One of the Grossmann boys is pretending Tracy is the dentist

blood pressure reports to consulting doctors. One room even had a computer equipped with a camera so that patients can be seen by a doctor in Anchorage if the problem is significant enough. It was kind of like high tech skyping! Tracy said they use this "telemedicine" for physical therapy and mental health counseling as well. They even have a dental room that is used by teams of dentists and their assistants who fly in several times a year. She says they bring boxes and boxes of supplies and try to see everybody in town when they set up shop.

Telemedicine

Sign posted at the clinic
We won't see this one in Lincoln!

We slipped into the garage where the ambulance is parked right alongside the portable sled that they use to transport patients through rough terrain or over the snow. It is usually hooked to a 4 wheeler or snow machine. The sled had wheels on today, but the interchangeable set of runners was at the ready. In cases of serious illness or injury, patients may be taken out by medivac helicopters. Keep in mind we are 3 1/2 hours by air from Anchorage.

There is no cost for this health service for the native people. Native is defined as anyone with a minimum of 1/8 Indian heritage. For the rest of us, the news is not so good. No insurance is accepted. Pay up front. Matt's strep throat last winter was $300, DPT, tetanus shots for the 2 boys $900. Yikes!

I had asked another villager earlier about funerals. She said the local elders usually choose not to be embalmed and as a rule, someone just builds a wooden box and digs a hole. There are no village regulations regarding burials which usually is in the church graveyard. She did add, "But that's not the case if the troopers get involved." She said the troopers get involved in the case of suspicions of foul play or anytime there is a need for an autopsy.

She also said that in most cases, the family of the deceased clean and prepare the body, there is a graveside service and then a big family meal.

     There is also an Eskimo graveyard. I'm trying to understand how Eskimos are different than the Yupiks and Aleuts in this village. Apparently the term is used to describe natives from SOME other tribes who came down to this area from the north when jobs in the (now abandoned) cannery were plentiful. For some reason, these individuals were not well accepted. The word Eskimo means "eaters of raw fish" which appears to be distasteful. The housing for this group of natives was set away from the other homes and they were segregated to their own graveyard as well. We were told a story about an "Eskimo" that died in another area and had expressed his wish to be buried back here in Pilot Point. A plane brought the box with body to town. No one was there to claim it so the pilot just unloaded it on the edge of the runway where is sat for 2 days. Finally a local villager took pity on the poor guy and got him buried.

Exploring on the 4 wheeler

     This was the view when I opened the door to our little house this morning. New snow was still coming down and you can see in the background the warm lights of the nearby school house. It was 8:30 a.m. and still pitch black!                                                                                                          I don't usually go over until after 10:00 when the online classes have finished, but we are currently experiencing an oatmeal crisis, sort of... The school receives regular food shipments and over the past year has acquired an over-abundance of oatmeal - an abundance of probably twenty to thirty containers of oatmeal. They have not touched this year's oatmeal allotment and probably won't polish off the supply from last year that is currently close to expiration. This morning when Matt & Doug asked who'd had breakfast today, not a single child raised their hand. My duties now include being the morning oatmeal maker.

Note added Feb 1:   Over the course of our 3 week gig, I fixed an oatmeal breakfast 5 times (with lots of help from Doug.) We'd scavenge whatever fruit was left from the previous day's lunch and use it to "decorate" our breakfast. Never thought I'd put fruit cocktail in my oatmeal, but it really wasn't too bad. A dollop of peanut butter was also a favorite for many of the crew!

After school, the snow had stopped and the sun was shining so Doug & I jumped on the 4 wheeler to take an up close and personal look at some of the neighborhood attractions for the newly arrived "lower forty-eighters." 

Mount Chiginagak

The clouds parted and for the first time we were able to get a good look at the volcano behind the school. Somehow I felt a bit safer when I COULDN'T see the volcano behind the school. It looked pretty non-threatening today, though you can still see where part of the top blew off a few years ago. Matt says it "burps" out some black smoke every once in a while, but other than shutting down the runway due to poor visibility caused by the smoke, it is really nothing to worry about. Uh, ok... Please do not be burping on Jan 31 when we are planning to head south.

Whale skull

We than rode past the abandoned salmon cannery where someone had propped a whale's skull against the side of one of the buildings. Now that's something we don't see down home too often. Uh, guess that would be never.

Village incinerator

 And for the grand finale, Doug drove me out to the dump. What a romantic fool he is! Actually I truly did want to see the incinerator. When I had asked where the recycling bins were at school, the kids looked at me like I had 2 heads. It was almost as if they'd never heard of such a thing. I guess if you have to pay to ship everything in or out, no one's going to spend money to haul out plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Everything (and I mean everything-paper, cans, plastic, food waste, old furniture, bicycles-everything) goes out to the dump where most of it is fed once a week into a big incinerator and burned.
 Lucky us-today there was smoke pouring out-we were here for the burning!

 There were big signs at the gate warning us that only authorized personnel could enter.  Both sets of gates were wide open and there was not a soul in sight. I'm not sure who the authorized personnel might be, but was pretty sure it wasn't us. Anyway, rule-followers that we are, we kept our distance. Actually, I insisted that we keep our distance. Doug was all for getting off the 4 wheeler and climbing the hill to see if he could get a better volcano shot, or if he was lucky, maybe get to see any of the wolves that people have been hearing howl at night. It's common knowledge that wolves & bears ("Oh, Judy, don't be silly! Bears are hibernating right now.")
like to visit the dump in search of food scraps. Not wanting to experience first hand what a food scrap might feel like, I was VERY insistent that he turn around NOW and head back toward town. Could a wolf outrun a 4 wheeler? Might these unseasonably warm temps have confused a bear's sleeping schedule? What exactly was just over that slight hill by the gate? These are all questions to which I did not want the answers. We headed home.

On a related somber note: I had earlier asked Matt about special education services in the school district. He informed me that they had itinerant LD teachers who fly into a village, spend a day or two at the school and then fly on to the next remote village in the district.
"But," he said, "We lost one a couple years ago."
"Oh," I said, "She got another job?"
"Nope, she liked to go jogging. One evening she went out for her regular evening run and she didn't come back.  Wolves" 

Seriously. Yikes!

Lunch at school

Doesn't this look like lunch
 in any school in Lincoln?

School lunches are a high point of the day for us all! Al, the school cook always has a surprise up his sleeve. (He tells us not to look at the district prepared monthly menu, because he rarely follows it.) When his supplies come in, he decides what he wants to cook day by day. We haven't had a bad lunch yet.) His favorite football team the Seattle Seahawks won yesterday so today he celebrated by making stupendous homemade pizza. I think most of the kids had 2nds if not 3rds. When I asked what would have happened if the Seahawks had lost, Al said, "Two words-Campbell's Soup."



The school is really the hub of the community. In addition to feeding the school children, the elders of the community are also fed daily. Many of the kids hang around the building after school until someone says, "We're locking up. You have to go." There is an Open Gym several nights a week when adults and kids fill the gym and play and Al leaves the leftover lunch out for any hungry after-school visitors (err...make that teachers.) We are going to be missing the community carnival that will happen at the end of February. It's not school related but is held in the school building and apparently EVERYONE comes. 

The school was in danger of closing last fall if they did not have 10 students on Oct 31. We weren't even sure until November if our January job would be a "go." Last fall one family had sent their 17 yr old son to live with relatives in a bigger village nearby that had a larger school so he'd have more opportunities and be able to play on a true sports team. The family brought him back home for the month of October to save this school for his younger siblings. He apparently felt a bit like a martyr, but did it for his family. He's gone back to the other village this semester. Unfortunately, we are already counting heads for next year. There are currently 10 students but we are on unsteady ground for next year and it doesn't look promising that we will have a sudden increase in school population next fall. 

Church service

Sunday, January 19

As I mentioned yesterday, the only church in town is the Russian Orthodox Church. Many of the local native people are members there, even though there is very seldom an actual service due to the lack of a priest.  In addition to serving as a teacher in a public school, the other teacher with us, Matt and his wife Rachel, also work with the SEND missionary organization, an interdenominational, multinational Christian mission.  According to the group’s website, “SEND focuses its ministries on the unreached—people who don’t have access to the gospel or a strong local church.”  To that end, our friends have organized a Christian church service every Sunday morning. Since the teacher on leave has the biggest living room in town (and the Raders are the current residents), we found ourselves serving as hosts to the weekly service that 14 people attended.

Shortly after the service ended & everyone had left, the phone rang and I  found myself tagging along with the Grossmanns who were invited to a birthday party for a native 2 year old. Doug had already jumped on the 4 wheeler as soon as the church service ended and headed over to Al’s big screen tv to watch today’s football game. The rest of us piled into the front seat of the school’s red pick-up and headed to the party. It was no different than a kid’s party in Lincoln - all the family in attendance (with most of the men glued to the tv football game), piles of presents, and a birthday cake with candles. The only difference was the big scoop of cherry jello that we all got on our plate in lieu of ice cream.  What!  No ice cream here? I guess since most food has to be shipped into the village, cartons of ice cream would be pretty darn tricky to mail or carry in on your lap from your next visit to anchorage.

And while we are talking about the red truck…I find it interesting that there are no children’s car seats up here and no one uses seat belts .I’m betting it would never fly for 5 of us (one of us with a baby on her lap) to ride in the front seat of a truck down Woodlawn in Lincoln! And the pickup actually serves as the school bus. The bus driver roars up on his 4 wheeler every weekday morning, takes the truck and picks up 3 or 4 kids, brings them to school, leaves with the truck again and returns with another load, continuing until all 10 are at school. Then he roars away again.  A different world, I’m telling you!

"Taking a Steam"

Friday, January 17, 2014

Man, it is so windy today, it was a struggle to walk from the house to the school. Apparently, there have been days when school is called off because of wind.  We hear that the wind whistles through the windows so loudly that you cannot be heard. I jokingly asked if they ever have a snow day, and the answer is “yes,” but you make it up on Saturday.  

Another interesting skill we’ve picked up is how to run a distiller. We have one in our home and there are several at school, as well. The water is full of iron up here and while it is safe to drink, it is full of little brown flecks. The inner surfaces of the washing machine & toilets are all bright orange, too.  So we run a gallon of water through the distiller where it boils, is dribbled through charcoal filters and then drips into a container. The whole process takes a couple hours per gallon

The distiller

Every time I turn around up here, I am learning new & interesting things about this part of the world. Tonight we were invited over by a local native couple to "take a steam." The traditional method of washing yourself here has nothing to do with showers or bathtubs. Most, if not all, of the native people in the village prefer to "take a steam"  and many do not have tubs or showers in their homes. They do have special rooms in their houses (or many are outside in separate small buildings) which include what we might consider a steam bath or a sauna. In these steam rooms are also kept big bowls of water and scoops. While you are "in your steam," you use the scoops to pour water over yourself, then wash with soap or shampoo your hair. You then rinse off with more scoops of water. Apparently, it is also common to have group steams of either all men or all women-kind of the native "guys or gals night out" idea. Though it is fascinating to meet and talk to the villagers, we did not participate in a group activity! The "steam"  pictured on this page was in the couple's basement and consisted of a small room with built in wooden benches & an oil based heater encased in a barrel which was covered in stones. It was hot in there! You needed to continually spray the rocks from a water hose to keep the steam coming. Just outside the door of the steam was a "cool down" room where you could do just that.  I was a little leery going in, but found it really quite relaxing.

And the couple was lovely. They'd prepared snacks that consisted of moose jerky, dried salmon and a wonderful salmon spread. Did I mention that he is a salmon fisherman by trade and none of this came from a store?

And folks, I have been deceived! Coming up here, we were warned that there is no TV. Bring books...Be prepared to watch DVDs or listen to music... IF the internet signal is strong enough, you MIGHT be able to stream a Netflix movie... Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! We walked into our new friends' home to see the biggest flat screen tv in the universe! "Why, of course, we have tv, Judy. It's just the teachers that don't." Seriously? Had I been a tad more observant, I might have noticed the satellite disk on almost every home.

... Doug has been invited over for Sunday's football game.

We had a fabulous night tonight.  

Saturday, January 18, 2014

It was a beautiful crisp day today. Doug & I took the 4 wheeler and explored some of the town. Out on the edge of town on a bluff are about 20 large indentations in the hillside. At first appearance, they seem to be just an irregular landscape,

Doug walking through a group of barabaras

Judy in the remains of a barabara

but about a year ago, a village elder took Matt out on the hillside and identified them as the remains of 2000 year old barabaras (ber-AB-ber-uhs), native shelters built into the side of a bluff.  Originally, they were dug into the hillside, mud walls were constructed and then roofs were added made of branches and furs. 

Last fall Matt had his class construct their own barabara behind the school.  

Matt with the students' barabara

They can even build a fire inside

We also strolled through the Russian Orthodox churchyard, the only religious facility in town. Apparently, services are held there, though, not often, only

when a Russian Orthodox priest comes to town which, I guess, is about once every 2 years.