Exercises in futility...

Ladies and Gentlemen, some of you had the pleasure of partaking with me various meetings "prepping" us for teaching out here over this last week. Alright although I felt the structure planned was pretty useless, I decided to start talking people. I have always envisioned myself as somewhat reclusive and relatively passive about problems, but I decided to try and hop on the ball and become a little more active about trying to solve my problems. First on the list was working on how to get more textbooks for my classroom. After talking with the head of SS department I was able to make some headway in ensuring that I will have enough books for my students. I decided to sit with some of the newguys and give them a crash course in the education system out here because the presentations were sadly lacking and half of the room was composed of people like myself who had a year to internalize this system for ourselves and the other half was being overwhelmed by the slough of information and jargon being dumped upon them. I was able to help the people around me get alittle firmer hold on a jumping off point and they got a little more comfortable with their situation. I feel I made some headway in being productive which helped me find some value in these meetings, and with a little help from my friends out here we made it passable. I am anxious to get everything up and running out in my room and it is looking like I may have a small mountain to tackle. Til next time...

Lazy Days...

Well ladies and gentlemen it is a little disappointing I have spent a little too much time on my duff watching game shows and not really too much time on actually having productive experiences in the village or making large headways with my lessonplanniong. I kind of reread my blog posts and I have to admit I think I might have lost my direction for this blog, I liked how my posts started out in the beginning, yet somehow I have lost my rhythm for posting, please bear with me folks and I will try to bring it all back on track. I just need to find a little umpf somewhere...

Well folks here is the craziest thing, five minutes after writing this post I decided to call my unproductive day quits and I decided to head homeward. I saw four my students on a four wheel one male and three females and he was driving backwards down the boardwalk doing a little showing off. He ended up going half off the boardwalk almost dumping two of his passengers into a rather deep puddle,(close to two feet) I helped him out and one of my other students joined in and we were able to haul the fourwheeler free. I was about to call the day a wash, however it turned out to have some interesting stuff stored up for the very end.

New Faces!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am getting pretty pumped these last couple of days. Things are coming together and I feel a ton more prepared this year than last. One of the advantage of teaching highschool is that I know my students already give or take a couple new names and faces. As for new faces we have gotten four new teachers up here and I have met three so far and if their enthusiasm is any harbringer for what the year might bring we are in for a great year. Last year we just missed AYP by a handful of scores, but it was the closest we've come in eight years, (ever since No CHild Left Behind was enstated). The teachers up here have been doing some good, and I think this next wave will be able to continue it. I helped them settle in and I was trying to give them some helpful advice when I tried to think of my initial impressions of the village. Coming into the village I remember being kind of shocked how everything was laid out. My initial preconceptions of what life would be like in Alaska was shattered and it took me a couple of weeks to actually try and wrap my head around the idea that I was going to be out here for a year. The new residents of my apartment are facing similar challenges oddly enough that I faced, the hot water doesn't work, even after I showed them the trick of turning a knob or two on the pipes. This is Alaska for you a couple of kinks in all plans yet somehow there's a way to make do. This year the water challenge seems to be kind of intriguing, right now I have dumped my honeybucket a couple of times, but I generally visit Paula and Kris throughout the day and we swap chores with each other. I currently have a pretty sweet deal going, I go into thirds on the groceries and pick up a couple of nights of dishwwashing a week and I can come over for dinner every evening. Then I can also bring my laundry over and they will do it for me if I get their mail every week. Sounds pretty good, although The last time I went I carried back 80lbs of mail so maybe they got the wool over my eyes for that one :).

So there has been a revamping of the Social Studies curriculum in our district and we are getting new next textbooks. Now I thought this was pretty good our old books some of you might recall stopped after 1920. But true to Alaska form there has to be a kink somewhere in the works. This monkey turns out to come in the form of quantity, I only recieved five new text books for each subject that I teach. Currently I am at a loss asto how I am supposed to begin teaching class in a week without the books but who knows something will hopefully shake out.

Admidst all of the hurdles I am still oddly optimistic, I am not sure where this is coming from, I was struck with a bug to get everything unpacked yesterday and I even tried my hand at a little decorating/ trying to put away my juggling stuff even though there is a lack of shelving. Ladies and gentlemen let me stress the number of things you can do with some strings and couple of nails and a hammer. I was able to hang 9 clubs all with a nail and a piece of string, and the rings, devil sticks, diabolos, and balls were all interwoven into an interesting piece of work that looks almost like the head of a giant mosquito. In a rush with all of this hammering I nailed up a calendar to my wall however my nail had a flat head and I am not sure what I going to do when the month changes. i think I have about three weeks to come up with a solution. As for problems I am facing, does anyone have a solution for dealing with black houseflies, they are every where. I shut the doors trying to trap them in the rooms but somehow even without food they seem to be thriving. Any fixes would be welcome!

Homecoming...

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It has been an intense week. My first sleep in my new house sans water was interrupted at about 3 in the morning when I awoke to find myself incredibly cold and seeing my breath in front of my face. My boiler went out and there wasn't too much to do about it other than grab a few more blankets and try to go bakck to sleep while I waited for the rest of the village to wake up. The following day I visited with the maintence man and tried to figure out how one goes about repairing a glycol boiler that looks older than I am. I got my fingers crossed that it will only happen once this year. While I was in the boiler room I got to see some of the leavings left by the previous owners and there is an interesting collection of albums, cassettes, and ammunition. I think I have to find a way to acquire a record player and maybe sample some of these obscure hits. I will be sure to keep you all posted with some reviews of the tunes throughout the year. Some other teachers have started to turn up by the end of the week and I have been spending quite a bit of time with them helping them move in and get settled in themselves. We have been catching up on what we did over our summers and what the upcoming year holds for us. We had a sunday school class and meal sessions, and I was able to work on perfecting my chocolate chip pancakes, luckily for me the kids were pretty nondiscriminating about shape because it took me a while to get the hang of flipping them. Which brings me to today and the conversations I have had with numerous Dell employees about how I can get a new computer to replace my old one that did not survive the transition over the summer. I have been able to already enjoy the pleasure of a Maqii, and also the not so pleasant experience of dumping a honey bucket. I am getting pretty pumped about this upcoming year and have many days of planning ahead of me to round out my summer vacation. Until next time ladies gentlemen...

There and Back again...

Well ladies and gentlemen the summer is passed. I had an incredible time in germany, and I believe over the next couple of weeks I will include a picture and a story to accompany it. As it is right now I am not 100% sur ehow I will get into my house tomorrow. It is boarded up and I have lost the key. It will definitly make for an interesting turn of events, especially because I could be traipsing around with extremely overloaded luggage, but with a wink and a smile I was able to get it through Ohare without any additional cost. I am getting lost in the works of Paulo Coelho you can expect to see maybe a few quotes here and there thrown in. However I think I may try to bring some of his books into the classroom. I am not the reading teacher any more, but maybe I could wing it somehow. The posts should be following regularly once I have internet set up. Until then ladies and gentlemen, I am out...

Wizard's apprentice....

Ladies and Gentlemen, the past couple of weeks have been turbulent ones, dealing with the personal loss of a grandparent, mixed with the joy of seeing relatives long overdue. Throughout it all though, I have been going to my old highschool and sitting in a summer school class observing one of the most influential teachers I have had at work. It is refreshing the energy he brings into the classroom, and to see his students reciprocate. Discussions in the classroom are at an incredible level and the students seem willing to take it to any height. While participating in this class I am able to see a master at work with his craft, 18 years in the making, noticing subtle changes that surprised even myself given the last time I heard him teach was five years ago. There is something here, something colleges play down, especially education colleges, all the stress put on classroom management and distancing oneself from the students. By focusing intensely on rules and expected behaviors it almost conveys to students that you, the teacher, don't trust them enough to behave on their own volition. If you have to fall back on the structure of the school's rules you take a situation between you and the student, and you pass the buck on for someone else to deal with. It almost boils down to the Machiavellian concepts of whether or not it is better to be feared or loved as a teacher. Due to all the law suits and limited funding there is a severe push from schools to veer away from the loved aspect because that could get "messy." Instead they err on the side of being feared at the cost of really connecting and motivating their students. I have to admit that over these last weeks I have seen the beginnings of a class falling into Machiavellian love with the teacher and it is a remarkable environment. Where a teacher can simply request a change in behavior if needed and the students respond not because they are forced to with punishment, but because they care enough about the teacher to abide by his wishes. It was incredibly powerful to observe and I have this image of what type of teacher I would like to strive towards to become. These influential teachers I have had, have become models for me to try and meld into the professional I would like to be. I have ways to go, but I think I am a little more aware of how to get there, at least some of the initial steps. One of the pleasant outcomes of these two weeks is that I finally have encountered not just a professional goal I will strive to obtain, but it can also work as a fitting title for my blog. I would like to be a "Sage on the Stage" a thoroughly knowledgeable teacher who is able to perform classes and keep them entertained while simultaneously educating them. I have seen it done, and been on the receiving end of such an education and it was incredible, I can only hope to recreate the same experiences in my classroom. The craziest part about this whole period was that it all came about from an email about going out to lunch sometime and it grew into this opportunity for immense professional improvement. Keep your old contacts alive ladies and gentlemen, you would be surprised with all that can happen if they are rekindled.

Clean Coal????

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I got in contact with an old friend who currently works on building powerplants. I have been seeing these commercials for clean coal and I have heard from various sources that clean coal is a scam and there is nothing clean about it. I took a little time out to try and understand what actually goes into the process that would separate coal from clean coal. Now I have only a highschool chemistry course under my belt but it was put to me in a boiled down format that I am able to understand. A coal powerplant gains its energy by having coal combust in the air to create the energy resulting in the thick black smoke dominating most images of cities during the Industrial revolution. That smoke consists of Carbon Dioxide, Sulfur, and other potentially harmful gases. Now this clean coal is clean because of the process of combustion used with the coal. Instead of using air a chemical compound that is a mixture of many gases like Nitrogen and Oxygen, clean coal combusts with pressurized oxygen. Now think back to your chemistry days of balancing equations what you put into the equation you get out of it. Now the benefit of using pure oxygen instead of air is that there is less mess in the equation. The byproducts of this clean coal combustion is CO2, Water, Sulfur (from the coal). Now first the plant will seperate and store the CO2 seperately for later disposal and the water and Sulfur Dioxide gets mixed together with some Ammonia and it precipitates out of the water as Gypsum which is used to make wallboards (and has some acoustical construction benefits). This is a great way for the Powerplants to become huge money makers because not only are they selling the energy but also the waste products. Now the kicker is the CO2 this is the dangerous or "dirty" part of the clean coal. CO2 in this concentration is incredibly harmful and it has to be stored two miles underground. Now in a lake in Africa called Tonga there was some 20,000 people killed by a CO2 leak at one of these dumpsites, so there is potnetial for great harm to occur. However if properly done and stored clean coal is one of the most effecient ways of getting energy. And ladies and Gentlemen there is plenty and plenty of coal in this world still. Leftovers from those smokey stacks of the Industrial Revolution. You never know when you are going to use something you learned in school, I think I would have done my chem teacher proud.