1st Post

OK. Here we go. No promises on how often this is updated but it's Thanksgiving and I have more than 10 minutes at a computer to do something other than school work so I thought I might give an update on the crazy teaching adventure here in Barrow. You get a lot from Krystal on our family in general. This is what I have to say about teaching.

I hope that what they say is true. " Your first year is the toughest!" It's been tough. I know that it is a combination of difficult kids (other teachers with more experience say that they are tough kids) and my inexperience but regardless, it's been challenging.

One of the interesting thigs that i didn't expect was for the extreme lack of your average white student. I knew that the area was 60% Native Alaskan (Inupiaq) but I didn't expect that of the other 40% that most of them are Thai, Polynesian, and Asian. I usually have about 0-5 white kids in each of my classes. I have six computer classes with a total of about 80 kids in them. I get all new kids starting in Jaunary and it sounds like I might have more like 100-120 kids for the second half of the year.

I decided that I wanted to try some coaching so I signed up to coach an intermural basketball team. I had 15 kids on my team officially but 7 of them never showed up to any games or practices. I had 6 of them that showed up fairly regularly. We practiced Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30-7:30 and had 1 or 2 games on Saturdays for about 5 weeks. We went 7-0. I had some great kids that really worked hard and played well together. One of the fun kids was a 7th grader that was about 4'8", could only dribble left, never picked up his head when he dribbled, but hustled his tail off and made about 9 of 10 open looks that he got from wherever he was on the floor. (One practice he hit 3 consecutive, no-look, backwards shots ... from half court)

Here are a couple of pictures of my classroom and some of my kids: