Happy Thanksgiving everyone! This year is going by SO fast! Before I know it, I will be heading back to Kansas for Christmas break! I’ve stayed really busy this month with teaching and chaperoning wrestling. We have gone to Anchorage and Bethel twice for tournaments and have a junior high tournament in Bethel next week and high school regionals the week after.
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Hey everyone! October has flown by here in the bush! It has been a crazy couple of weeks, that’s for sure. Last week my mentor, Todd, from the Alaska State Mentor Program for first and second year teachers came to Akiachak and worked with me. He's not the one I had last year, and at first I was upset about it, but I really enjoyed working with him. (And he brought me chocolate sooo...) It's nice to be told that I'm doing a good job, because sometimes it doesn't feel like it. He gave me some new ideas and teaching strategies to add to my arsenal and talked about what he observed in my room. He only stayed a day, but will be back next month and will hopefully get to stay a little longer! My students behaved pretty well for him. Overall I'm pretty happy with their behavior. I don't have any major behavior issues and feel like I'm doing pretty well with classroom management. I'm loving getting to know these kids. Last year I couldn't get hugs out of hardly any of my students, but this year I get all kinds of love. :) Which reminds me, one of my students from last year saw me as I was walking down the hall this week and gave me a hug so big I almost fell over. He didn't even say anything, just kept on walking, but it totally made my whole day. :) Hello and cami (j-my)! Cami means welcome in Yup'ik, the language of the area I teach in. My name is Jessie Jones and I am a second year first grade teacher in Akiachak, a village located in southwest Alaska! I saw this hashtag on Instagram and wanted to join in on the fun! I’ve been meaning to post about being back in the village since the beginning of August, but the bustle and busyness of back to school got the best of me! Collin, Hemi, Diesel, Windsor, and I had an awesome summer in Kansas. We went to the lake, visited family, ate out more than we should have, and drank a few margaritas. :) I went to a Chase Rice and Jake Owen concert in Nebraska with my sister, her boyfriend, and his sister. Collin helped his uncle with wheat harvest. We bought our first vehicle together (a 2004 Ford Excursion), and took it on a road trip to Colorado Springs to visit my brother-in-law. In CS we visited the Garden of the Gods, Seven Falls, Red Rock Canyon Open Space, and Pikes Peak. Check out the photos at the bottom of this post! My very first year of teaching has flown by. I haven’t posted anything new in awhile, because I haven’t really been doing anything interesting. Teaching my students and getting to know them better has been really awesome. We’ve learned a lot this year, and I’m so proud of what they have accomplished. On Friday, we made muffins in the morning with the special ed teacher, and we spent the afternoon outside with the sixth graders, picking willow branches to make wreaths for Mothers’ Day gifts. It was a fun and relaxing day. My first year of teaching is halfway over! December was a great month; the school had a door decorating contest and a Christmas program. The janitors go out in the tundra every year and choose a huuuge tree to put in the Elder Hall. Each student makes a decoration to put on the tree. My class made reindeer faces out of popsicle sticks. My door decoration was a reindeer with Christmas lights on his antlers. My kids also had fun cutting out hands for our handprint Christmas tree and making snowflakes for our hallway bulletin board. Each elementary class and some of the high school students preformed in the Christmas program. (Check out some of the high school kids singing and dancing a traditional song with Yup'ik drums in the second video.) My class joined kindergarten and sang Going on a Bear Hunt and We Wish you a Merry Christmas. They wore cute little bear hats while they were singing. I was expecting low attendance for the program, but I had 8 out of 10 students come and sing. I was absolutely beside myself when I saw them all dressed up. Just check out the pictures and video below and get a look at how adorable they are. The twins looked like princesses with their poufy dresses and curled hair, and seeing the little boy with the vest, tie, and shiny shoes was killing me. The last day before break, we had fun coloring, watching movies, and opening treat bags. I set the videos to private on Youtube, so that only people reading my blog will have access to them. Let me know if they don't work for you, and I'll see if I can fix it. Thanksgiving break was a much-needed time to relax and get out of the village. Collin and I took a bush plane to Bethel right after school on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning flew to Anchorage. We rented a car and stayed at a Homewood Suites. The principal watched our dogs for us, so we didn’t have to pay for their flights and boarding. We spent 4 days in Anchorage stocking up on groceries, getting Christmas gifts for our families, walking around the mall, and going to restaurants. We also went to the Ulu Factory, a candy factory that had the world’s tallest chocolate waterfall, relaxed in the hotel hot tub, and saw a movie. My favorite part of our vacation was Thanksgiving afternoon. We traveled down Old Seward highway. Getting out of town the views were pretty plain, but then we turned around a curve and BAM! breathtaking mountains surrounded by a lake. It was absolutely awesome. We also saw a waterfall, some mountain goats, and walked on a path in the mountains for a couple miles. It was so pretty, and the weather was just about perfect for exploring. Saturday afternoon, we flew back to Bethel and experienced the thrill of living in a remote part of Alaska. We were supposed to head back to Akiachak Saturday afternoon, but due to ice fog, the bush planes couldn’t fly and we were stuck in Bethel until Monday morning. I only missed 30 minutes of school though, and everyone around here has been in similar predicaments, so they are pretty understanding. Now, my students and I are getting back into our school groove, and are anxiously counting down the days until Christmas break (only 13 more school days if anyone was wondering)! The past couple weeks have been so eventful; I hope I can remember everything! I can’t believe I haven’t posted since October! It’s getting quite chilly here lately. Our warm days are over until May, that’s for sure. When I wake up in the morning it has been -2°F the past couple days. It is also dark when I get up, and the sun doesn’t rise until almost 10 in the morning. The sun starts to set around 6 pm. There is ice covering most of the river, and it’s up to 5” thick in some places. Soon, the river will be thick enough to ride on with snowmobiles, four-wheelers, and even vehicles. We’ve got about 5” of snow on the ground right now and the tundra is in the process of freezing. We’ve gone out on the trails on our four-wheeler a few times. It’s pretty fun and the scenery is beautiful. Happy Halloween everyone! This week went by in a blur of candy and colorful costumes! On Wednesday, the school hosted is annual SPOOKTACULAR carnival. It’s a great fundraiser for the classes. I did a cake walk with one of the other teachers, and I make about $100 for my class and had lots of fun! I’m planning on using the money on prize box prizes, and supplies for an end of the year pizza and piñata party. :) During school Wednesday, the elementary kids wore their costumes to school and paraded around the gym for the high school kids at the end of the day. Thursday was an early release day. We had an elementary awards assembly and classroom Halloween party that afternoon, and the rest of the afternoon I spent doing parent-teacher conferences. The kids didn’t have school on Friday, and the teachers spent the morning doing professional development, and the afternoon finishing up parent-teacher conferences. I had 7 out of 11 parents show up, which was a much better turn out than I expected, but the parents that didn’t show up have kids that are struggling, but it is what it is. |
Hello!My name is Jessie Jones and I am a second year first grade teacher in Akiachak, Alaska. Archives
September 2016
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