Almost There

Hey all, we're almost done, yay!!! It's really funny, but I'm almost glad my computer broke. It's forced me to really use my time wisely and get my work done. I've had to use Chuckchi's computers and the computers at work to get things done, and this has forced me to work fast because I don't really want to be there. I guess I learned a good lesson. When I had my computer at home, I got the same amount of work done but in twice the amount of time. There were too many distractions and since there are not any at work and school, it's easier to get it all done.

Next semester I am taking the Math 206 intensive, ED 201, ED 204, and ED 410. Anybody else taking any of these?

the home stretch

So it's the last few weeks of a crazy semester, Yay!!! I will be so glad to be done. I just have to keep on getting things done and making those to do lists and get through finals. The one thing I am truly excited about is that my brother and my sister and niece are all coming up for a week at Christmas. It will be the first time in a couple of years we will all be together at Christmas, it's gonna be so much fun!!

On an interesting school note, the kindergarten changes go into effect tomorrow. The four year olds will now be going to school for half the day in thier own classroom seperate from the five year olds. thier will be two classrooms of four year olds who will come in the morning and afternoon, four classes in all. This was the compromise that they came up with to placate the parents. The problem is is that it is only a temporary fix and an illegal one, or so I've heard. The four year olds are not funded. The school board has taken a certified teacher from the kindergarten and redistributed her 5 year olds to the other teachers. She is now going to be the head four year old teacher, and divide her time between the two classes of four year olds with aids filling in the rest of the time. It will be interesting to see what happens.

video take 4

OK, I've had so many issues with uploading the video, so I thought I would try to use YouTube. so here goes.

holiday stuff

I had a great holiday, hope all of yours went well. My family has a pie fest openhouse every year and this year was pretty good. All together we made about 30 pies. We have just about every kind that you can imagine, bannana cream, chocolate cream, butterscotch cream, coconut cream, chocolate chip, peanut butter, cheesecakes with various toppings, pecan, maple pecan, huckleberry, huckleberry strawberry, apple, cranberry apple, and of course pumpkin. There may have been more, but I don't remember... We make a big thanksgiving feast and have a private family dinner and then open the house for hungry pie eaters. This years dinner was a little unusual because we couldn't afford to bring home my cousins from college for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we had to do with out them, sad...but we invited some people who didn't have any family in Kotzebue to dinner and ended up with about 15 people. We had turkey, smoked turkey, peking duck, stuffing, mashed potatoes,gravy, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, Aunt Atha's salad(family recipe for a layered salad that nobody really likes but makes anyway because its tradition), spinach salad, and rolls. We were all stuffed and had to watch football and take naps before pie. Then we opened the house to the crowds. I think at one point we counted 30 people in our living room!! Most of them were highschool kids that my uncle teaches and the highschool volley ball team that my aunt coaches. It was loud and crazy and just the way I like it. And we got to eat leftovers for days. Nothing like turkey sandwiches at midnight!!

On a not so fun note, my computer crashed this weekend. Literally there was smoke coming out of it!! I'm no expert, but a computer should not smoke. They could get hard drive cancer, and emphazema of the disc drive. Seriously, smoking computer? not good... So I called the manufacturer hoping that my warranty was still good and of course it wasn't. So I am going to have to send it in for repairs and pay 300 for them to look at it. If they have to make repairs and get parts its extra. I guess I should have bought that extended warranty...

Well, I hope all your holidays went well and you had lots of fun. I am working on my ED 330 presentation and trying to be caught up in my other classes. So far this has been my craziest semester with work and taking 15 credits. I don't think I will try to do this again. It seems as if I can have no life outside work and school and still get good grades. oh the sacrifices we make. We were talking about the costs of higher education in another class and how its not just money, but time, energy and friends and family. But I know in the end it will be worth it for all of us. I think this class has been so great for me because I got to meet all of you who want to be teachers just like me. I always get excited when I find out that someone likes the same things as me (I'm a dork, I know) and it was great to see all these wonderful people who are going to be great teachers just like me. Sometimes I feel a little isolated over the phone and the internet, and it was nice to be in a classroom for a change.

Video take 3

Did anyone else have as much trouble as I have uploading their videos? If not what was your secret? I hope this works this time!!

My Video

Hey All, here is my video. Enjoy!

The Beach in Kotzebue

The beach is my favorite place, and not usually what people think of when you say you live in Alaska. Kotzebue is on a penninsula, so it has lots of beaches. We had an unusually long and warm autumn, so I took a bunch of pictures to remind me of the beach during the long cold winter. Enjoy!!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

SCA and Kindergarten

I actually have something to write about this time. Yesterday I went to an SCA feast. The SCA is the Society for Creative Anachronism and they try to recreate the middle ages as they should have been. We dressed in period costumes and ate and and played games. It was the first time I've been to one of these events, and it was really fun.

Another thing that has happened is at school. We have a grant for a three year old program, and then we have a four and five year old kindergarten. The four year old program is unfunded and the school is trying to cut the program. One of the reasons to cut the program is that when the kids get to first grade, some of them are behind in reading and math. It's been said this is because the four and fives are together making bigger class sizes. Also, four and five year olds are different developmentally, and their needs are different. So because of this, they decided to cut the four year olds down to 1 1/2 hours of school time. This caused a huge uproar with the parents, because not only would their kids have alot less school time, but they would have to make other arrangements for their childcare. So the parents got together and had meetings and petitioned the board to get on their agenda. They succeeded in this and it was decided that the four year olds would be split into groups and their would be a morning group and an afternoon group and they would have their own classrooms away from the five year olds. I think this has made most everyone happy. It sounds to me like a good compromise.

Inservice

Not much to report again this week. We had teacher inservice for two days this week and the aids had to attend also. It was so boring!! Nothing but meetings all day. My butt fell asleep. It was relevant stuff for the teachers, but for the aids, not so much. We did discuss one thing that may end up being relevant. It is a program for staff development. It's an online bank of classes for teachers and aids. I think it could be pretty convenient for training because you could do the training any time you wanted.

Baby Steps

I spent the weekend working on my ed 330 class. Yea for me. I really am not good at time management. It's like triage in a hospital. You have to prioritize assignments and put off doing the ones that aren't critical. The problem with that is pretty soon the not so critical ones pile up and the emergency room gets crowded and things fall through the cracks. One thing that fell through the cracks for me was this last math exploration. I hate those things. I forgot to check the schedule and realized I had missed one. That was frustrating, I hate when I forget things. But it was good to start up on my ed 330 class again. I made some headway, so I feel good about that.

Blah Blah Blah

I'm not really sure what I want to write this week. I am house sitting at the moment and am taking care of two dogs who are pretty cute. One is a 5 pound squeaky toy, I mean pomeranian, and the other is a sad eyed basset hound. I miss having pets and I can't have them in the apartment I am in now, so its fun to pretend I have them for the weekend. I am trying to work on ed 330 again, but I am really kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I have got to get it done!!!

yea for Fairbanks

So I got into Fairbanks yesterday and I am staying in the dorms on campus. I'm really excited to be here. I rented a car, so I've got transportation this time and I can go shopping and to the movies any time I want, Yea for me. My two cousins go to school here, so I am excited to see them and take them out. I lived with them when they were little for 5 years and then every summer, so they are like my little brother and sister. I went shopping today, a little retail therapy never hurt anybody. Except maybe the pocket book...

'nother week, 'nother dollar

Hey folks, I hope all is going well for you. Work was a little crazy this week and I'm stressing over school. Heather, I know what you mean about the ED 330 class, it's looming over my head and giving my nightmares. I was hoping to have it done by October, but thats not happening. And I am a little frustrated with one of my classes. It's a weird mix of on campus students and off campus distant ones and us distant kids always seem to be shortchanged. It's a huge class, and I don't know how the teacher is going to deal with all of us. There are more than 20 kids in the class and I just don't see how its going to work. And the reading load is huge. Argghh, I could go on forever, but I'm sure you have other things to do than read my complaining.

On another note, I found out what our district policy is on subsistence leave. A student is excused as long as a parent calls in or writes a note letting the school know they are hunting/fishing ect. However, a student cannot pass a class if they have more than 16 absences. I don't know if they discriminate between excused or unexcused. Staff can take personal leave to go hunting, but there is no leave specifically for subsistence activities.

another week, another assignment

Well, I think our beautiful fall has ended and we're headed towards winter. Fall is my favorite season, and I'm sorry to see it go. We had a big storm in the area. I'm sure you all heard about the evacuation of Kivalina ( Betty, I hope all is well with you, I looked for you in the cafeteria but didn't see ya, Maybe you got sent to Red Dog, or knowing you, you tough broad, you probably stayed...) The airlines were working like crazy to get all the people out and a pilot friend of mine said he flew like 100 times to the village. An exageration I know, but I'm sure it must have seemed that way. The only things that happened here were rain and wind, and the tide was pretty high. The lagoon that my apartment building is on rose pretty high, but the building is on stilts and it wasn't quite high enough to get under it. When I finish my Panraven story, you all can see my apartment building.

I got the class videos in the mail this week, and it was really fun to revisit them all. Thanks Skip, for putting that together.

I do a trip every summer with some friends, and then as Christmas presents, I usually try to put together a picture album from the trip. This year, I think that I'm going to use Panraven to make a book. I think that would be really fun. Hope fully it would work.

Oh my God, I'm gonna die

It's only the first week of school and I already know I'm gonna start pulling out my hair soon. Although I am interested in the classes I am taking, they all require so much work that I can already feel the stress and the pressure. So my goal this weekend was to get organized and plan out the semester to relieve some of the that pressure, and I think I was able to do that a little. At least I got some of my homework done.

I made my arrangements for the Math 205 intensive in October and I was able to get a room on campus for dirt cheap, and buy a airline tickets with my miles.(Thank you Teresa for being willing to house me, I sure appreciated the offer!!!) I would have loved to have used my stored up miles for a more glamorous trip like Hawaii or Mexico, but this works too.

I'm still working on my panraven story. It's just frustrating because of the speed and because I'm still learning about all the features. And of course I have Ed 330 hanging over my head. Argh... I really need to finish that before I really have huge assignments for my other classes due.

Weekly Blog

I almost forgot to write my blog this week. I had a good second week at school, things are running smoothly. I went to a school board meeting this week for Ed 330 and was pleaseantly surprised at how short it was. It was the first meeting of the year and the board members were joking and nice to one another. One issue that came up that I was surprised to hear about was the proposal to build a magnet high school. It would be a boarding school like Edgecumbe. I thought that was interesting. I have also been working on my panraven book. I'm a little frustrated with it because the website can be soooo slooooow...It's probably just because of the internet connection, but it still takes so much time. I helped at the cross country race today, making sure that the racers stayed on the course and didn't get lost. It was fun to cheer on the racers. Cross country is nice because you get to cheer on all the racers and not just the one's from your home town. So yeah, I had a pretty good week.

Slide Show

OK, I just posted my slideshow from Flickr and boy was it annoying. I don't think I like that program. Nothing seems obvious or user friendly. I was trying to get the slide show to show all my titles and descriptions because I want people to see them, they are there for a reason, duh...I ended up searching for what seemed like the entire forum and help topics to figure it out. very annoying. But anyway, I guess on the slide show that was in the last post, you have to click on the picture to show the titles and descriptions. It also stops the show, so you have to click the resume show button. again very annoying. Sorry Skip, I don't think I like Flickr.

Trip to Vancouver, BC

This is a slideshow of a trip to Vancouver, BC with my three best friends.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Please let me know if there are any problems with it!!

Assignments

O.K. I can't remember what assignments we were supposed to do when we got home. I was looking at blackboard, but I was confused about which ones we were supposed to do and which ones we didn't have to do. Can anyone help? if so please post a comment on my blog, thanks!!!

So school started this week, well inservice anyway. Tomorrow, the school year will officially begin and life will get back into a routine. At least I hope it will. For now I am just trying to finish these two intensive classes so I can start regular classes and not be too stressed.

Let me know how you all are doing, I miss the support system we had going.

Thanks

I just wanted to thank my classmates for making my 2 weeks in Fairbanks really, really fun. I learned a lot, played hard, and met some great people. So thanks

To Heather who took me to get coffee everyday even though I spilled it all over her front seat. And thanks for being our chauffeur and being willing to take us anywhere we wanted to go.

To Joanna for hanging out with me for one extra day, good companionship.

To Teresa for offering me a place to stay in October ( I just might take you up on it!) and giving me rides when I needed them.

To Betty for being our comic relief. Everyday you made me laugh, thanks.

To Noel for carrying my box this morning, I know it was pretty heavy! And thank you for helping me with the technology this week, you were a good support.

To Kendra for doing my worrying for me, Just kidding =). Really, thanks for going to the movies with me and hanging out with me.

To Magdelena for bringing your real live teaching experience into the discussions. You always had something interesting and insightful to say.

To Nastasia for letting me drag her to the movies all the time. And thanks for helping me to understand all that stuff last week in ed 330 and for leading the study sessions.

To Susie, Margaret, and Darlene thanks for teaching me more about places around Alaska. I really liked learning about all your villages. And thank you for speaking your language. I love hearing something other than English because it inspires me to go out and learn a different language too.

power point and inspiration

So the assignment is to reflect on the power point and inspiration work we did yesterday. I liked the idea of a lesson on the computer about how to use a computer. I liked inspiration because it allows you to go from a brainstorm to an outline smoothly and quickly. I can see the value of brainstorming with it in class. I would like doing that more than writing on the board. Especially because I'm the worlds worst speller.

Hi

Hi, My name is Erica West, and I live in Kotzebue, Alaska. I'm starting this blog because it's an assignment for my tech class and I'm actually a little excited about it. I think its a good way to keep in touch with everyone I've met these 2 weeks in Fairbanks.