Seriously, if you can't use your name, don't bother to leave comments. This is ridiculous that I put my thoughts and feelings and experiences out there and get judged by people who won't even sign their names.
"When people don’t put their names to their words, it devalues what they have to say. In stories about sensitive subjects — alcoholism, sexual assault, people’s criminal pasts — the invisibility perpetuates stigmas. At some point, if a story matters to you and you want to get it out, you need to step up. And sometimes that means saying what only you can say, with your name backing it up.".... courtesy of newsobserver.com
In response to a comment left on "Yupik.... it's all Greek to Me" --- My daughter's teacher asked the class for someone to translate for her and not one student volunteered, so the teacher had to force someone to do it and even then the designated student refused to translate more than the bare minimum. I was informed that I was not allowed to approach an elder because I was a Gussack.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Open Mic
I signed up for “Open Mic” at the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference. The only open mics I’ve ever participated in were Karaoke style and I’d had a few whiskeys first.
“Your love is like bad medicine. Bad medicine is what I need – whoa-oh-oh!” I’ve belted out more than once down at Duggan’s Pub in this cosmic hamlet by the sea.
This was different in so many ways, not just because of its lack of liquid courage. These were going to be my words, not someone else’s, that I was going to be reading. Words that had stirred up controversy a few short months ago a few hundred miles away. Words that I was comfortable wearing but wasn’t sure would be appreciated by a roomful of real writers. This is the big league, published authors from around the globe, New York City agents and editors and hopeful authors. I’m surrounded by greatness, confidence, and promise. Mediocrity doesn’t cut it with these folks.
Three minutes. That was the time limit. I wrote my own introduction to be read by published author Sherry Simpson (www.sherrysimpson.net), fine tuned a blog post from February, “The Power of Words” and timed it over and over to make sure it was the right length. My time slot was set for today at 11:30am, just before lunch. As I squirmed in my seat during the morning session, taking deep breaths, wringing my hands and re-reading the piece I was going to read, I changed my mind. At 11:15, I changed my mind. Not about the reading of a piece, but about which piece to read. I carefully considered my audience and decided that something with a bit more action in it was in order. “One Racer’s Story” came to mind. I quickly plucked it from my blog, did a few edits, cut it to what I hoped would fit the time requirement and walked to the podium.
As I told Solomon’s story, I was right back there in Kwethluk. I could feel the blinding wind in my face and see the dog teams racing on the river outside my front door. I was back in my classroom with those three boys as they told me about the corrupt police officer who had shot all of Solomon’s dogs a couple of months prior. My voice wavered and my body shook and I had to swallow hard a couple of times to keep back the tears. But, I told my story to 150 plus writers from around the globe. I told Solomon’s story. I met the time requirement with two seconds to spare but felt like it was the beginning, not the end.
There were gasps of disgust and delight and there were heads shaking in sympathetic despair and there was applause. Many people stopped me at various times throughout the day, in the hall, at the lunch table, sitting in a conference room waiting for a workshop to begin. They stopped to encourage me with, “I loved your reading.” Or “You’re a great writer.”
Today was the day I started telling my story.
“Your love is like bad medicine. Bad medicine is what I need – whoa-oh-oh!” I’ve belted out more than once down at Duggan’s Pub in this cosmic hamlet by the sea.
This was different in so many ways, not just because of its lack of liquid courage. These were going to be my words, not someone else’s, that I was going to be reading. Words that had stirred up controversy a few short months ago a few hundred miles away. Words that I was comfortable wearing but wasn’t sure would be appreciated by a roomful of real writers. This is the big league, published authors from around the globe, New York City agents and editors and hopeful authors. I’m surrounded by greatness, confidence, and promise. Mediocrity doesn’t cut it with these folks.
Three minutes. That was the time limit. I wrote my own introduction to be read by published author Sherry Simpson (www.sherrysimpson.net), fine tuned a blog post from February, “The Power of Words” and timed it over and over to make sure it was the right length. My time slot was set for today at 11:30am, just before lunch. As I squirmed in my seat during the morning session, taking deep breaths, wringing my hands and re-reading the piece I was going to read, I changed my mind. At 11:15, I changed my mind. Not about the reading of a piece, but about which piece to read. I carefully considered my audience and decided that something with a bit more action in it was in order. “One Racer’s Story” came to mind. I quickly plucked it from my blog, did a few edits, cut it to what I hoped would fit the time requirement and walked to the podium.
As I told Solomon’s story, I was right back there in Kwethluk. I could feel the blinding wind in my face and see the dog teams racing on the river outside my front door. I was back in my classroom with those three boys as they told me about the corrupt police officer who had shot all of Solomon’s dogs a couple of months prior. My voice wavered and my body shook and I had to swallow hard a couple of times to keep back the tears. But, I told my story to 150 plus writers from around the globe. I told Solomon’s story. I met the time requirement with two seconds to spare but felt like it was the beginning, not the end.
There were gasps of disgust and delight and there were heads shaking in sympathetic despair and there was applause. Many people stopped me at various times throughout the day, in the hall, at the lunch table, sitting in a conference room waiting for a workshop to begin. They stopped to encourage me with, “I loved your reading.” Or “You’re a great writer.”
Today was the day I started telling my story.
Random Autobiography
I remember the Muscular Dystrophy carnival fundraiser in my backyard.
Libby, the giant golden lab that we gave to Ducks Unlimited.
The taste of fresh, red and white radishes that my dad grew in the garden.
The night I missed out on seeing Peggy Fleming at the Ice Capades.
I remember getting caught skinny-dipping in a cold Wisconsin lake in late July.
Playing the bassoon in the high school band.
Waving from the back of a pick-up truck in the Homecoming Parade.
I dreamt about my stepfather’s impending death the night he died.
I remember praying nightly for that same stepfather to die,
And I never regretted it.
I gave an engagement ring back to my great love and walked away,
And then watched him marry another a month later and then another and another.
I gave up 13 years of my life to raise my daughters on my own.
I watched my dreams shatter in the bush.
I remember the cold fear while trying to sleep with the doors barricaded and a loaded .357 Magnum on my bedside table.
I remember what normal felt like.
Libby, the giant golden lab that we gave to Ducks Unlimited.
The taste of fresh, red and white radishes that my dad grew in the garden.
The night I missed out on seeing Peggy Fleming at the Ice Capades.
I remember getting caught skinny-dipping in a cold Wisconsin lake in late July.
Playing the bassoon in the high school band.
Waving from the back of a pick-up truck in the Homecoming Parade.
I dreamt about my stepfather’s impending death the night he died.
I remember praying nightly for that same stepfather to die,
And I never regretted it.
I gave an engagement ring back to my great love and walked away,
And then watched him marry another a month later and then another and another.
I gave up 13 years of my life to raise my daughters on my own.
I watched my dreams shatter in the bush.
I remember the cold fear while trying to sleep with the doors barricaded and a loaded .357 Magnum on my bedside table.
I remember what normal felt like.
I Am From
I am from Murrell and Al, Evelyn and Charlie, Betty and Dick.
I am from the rolling Midwest prairie, the heated bayous of Louisiana, and the heavy snow and deep waters of Northern Wisconsin.
Now, I am from Alaska.
I am from corn on the cob, mudbugs, bratwurst and the miracle of microwaves.
From poor, hard working folks surviving the Great Depression, strong, tall, proud Blackfeet fleeing life on the reservation, and a series of stepfathers.
I am from Bible beating, missionary loving stock with cocktails in their hands.
From “The truth shall set you free” and “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a moon in his moccasins.”
From Barbies, canoes, and a full tank of gas.
Jimmy Swaggart, Jimmy Carter, Jim Beam, and Elvis.
Now, I am from snow-capped purple mountains and the jade green sea.
I am now at the end of the road.
I am from the rolling Midwest prairie, the heated bayous of Louisiana, and the heavy snow and deep waters of Northern Wisconsin.
Now, I am from Alaska.
I am from corn on the cob, mudbugs, bratwurst and the miracle of microwaves.
From poor, hard working folks surviving the Great Depression, strong, tall, proud Blackfeet fleeing life on the reservation, and a series of stepfathers.
I am from Bible beating, missionary loving stock with cocktails in their hands.
From “The truth shall set you free” and “Never judge a man until you’ve walked a moon in his moccasins.”
From Barbies, canoes, and a full tank of gas.
Jimmy Swaggart, Jimmy Carter, Jim Beam, and Elvis.
Now, I am from snow-capped purple mountains and the jade green sea.
I am now at the end of the road.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Ode to Boss Hoggz
The red plastic, cross-hatched basket contained the hamburger of my dreams. A web of Tilamook Cheese spread out from the patty like a tutu and I had to pull it apart and eat the chewy, yet crispy, cheese ring before I could take a bite of the burger. Ahhh, the burger. A third of a pound of Alaska grown fresh ground meat, made into patties an hour ago and grilled to perfection under all of that cheese. It was topped with a sweet and spicy barbeque sauce, freshly battered fried onion ring and a tomato slice that I only encounter in my dreams this early in the year. As I went in for my first bite, I realized that my mouth wasn’t big enough to take on this monstrosity, so I swallowed hard, squeezed down on the fresh potato flour bun and forced my way in as juice dribbled down my chin and barbeque sauce spread its way past the corners of my mouth onto my cheeks. My mouth began to water. Another bite was imminent and the napkin would have to wait.
My Pup
Loving eyes catch mine
Tall ears flattened in respect
Lifelong friend of mine
Suddenly she turns
Her ears twitch with silent sound
Nose tipped to the wind
Hidd’n threats all around
She circles to protect me
Then leans in for love
Note: Poetry is not my favorite thing to write but this was the result of today's writing circle.
Tall ears flattened in respect
Lifelong friend of mine
Suddenly she turns
Her ears twitch with silent sound
Nose tipped to the wind
Hidd’n threats all around
She circles to protect me
Then leans in for love
Note: Poetry is not my favorite thing to write but this was the result of today's writing circle.
Friday, June 10, 2011
FYI
For those of you who take offense to my blog, take heart in knowing that I understand that every village is different. I, in no way, mean to infer that every village in Alaska is as I experienced Kwethluk. I have friends who were in other villages - Quinhagak, in particular - who had very different experiences. I have been told that I just got a "bad" village. I also understand that villages, like people, go through phases and I seemed to have hit Kwethluk during a "down" time.
These are my experiences. They happened just this way. I cannot change that and you cannot change that. However, I hope that by enlightening others to the situation I found myself buried in Kwethluk, I can be a catalyst for change, for hope, and for optimism. For now, it is what it is and I will not be silenced.
These are my experiences. They happened just this way. I cannot change that and you cannot change that. However, I hope that by enlightening others to the situation I found myself buried in Kwethluk, I can be a catalyst for change, for hope, and for optimism. For now, it is what it is and I will not be silenced.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Cultivate the Garden Within
Garden. The word itself seems awkward and heavy. Garden. The word actually, originally meant enclosure. I just don’t see gardens that way… as closed off, but I suppose they are, aren’t they? When I am in a garden, my heart feels a little less heavy, my thoughts a little more focused, and my soul is definitely smiling. Perhaps there is some innate feeling of safety to be found in a garden, something that only being bound by some sort of enclosure can provide. Like, how newborn babies are bound up in their blankets to make them feel safe and secure, to quiet them. That’s how I feel in a garden, quiet. Quiet, but free. There is a sense of freedom that only a garden can provide. A sense that anything is possible, an almost godlike omniscience when I know every plant intimately. I plant the seedlings with a delicate touch and watch them daily grow, sometimes hourly. When the first fruit emerges, I guard it like my own child, preparing the plant against unwanted insects, staking the stalk so it won’t break, fencing it off against wildlife, watering and feeding it and delighting in its daily growth. There are many lessons to be learned in a garden. 
We planted a vegetable garden at the Homer News last weekend. It was a cool, overcast day – around 50 degrees, perfect for planting. Adam, our resident webmaster and gardener extraordinaire, brought extra fencing, posts, matting, tubing, gauze covering, tools, and over 100 Alaska-proven seedlings that he just happened to have on hand. Who just has that stuff… around? Adam, that’s who! Michael, newswriter, brought extra raspberry canes from his home. McKibbin (newswriter) and her husband (along for the ride) brought juice and bagels with all the fixin’s. Lori (editor/publisher), Merinda (receptionist/Girl Friday), and I brought garden gloves and willing spirits. Three hours, a half dozen bagels, and hundreds of spadefuls of dirt later… a bonified garden emerged. Cauliflower. Broccoli. Potatoes. Red Cabbage. And more.
I’ve only been at the Homer News for 2 ½ months and I already feel part of the team. We definitely all have to work together to bring that paper to fruition week after week. It was a natural extension to carry that team spirit to the garden.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Yupik... it's all Greek to me!
November 10, 2011
Yesterday, we had an elderly Yupik woman come speak to the class for Sobriety Week (our Dean of Students has spent hours and hours setting all of this up). The woman spoke occasional English, but mostly Yupik. This is what I heard (the dashes are Yupik):
You --- --- --- --- problem --- --- --- --- I have a friend that I talk to. --- --- --- confess --- --- --- --- I seen --- --- --- I seen --- --- --- If we did something wrong --- --- --- --- sexual abuse --- --- --- because of alcohol, things happen --- --- --- just because someone in the house is drinking --- --- --- as if they don’t have a house --- --- --- --- have you had that feeling! --- --- --- --- as parents --- --- --- I had two grandmothers that are living and one grandfather --- --- --- understand --- --- --- grandmother --- --- --- --- spending money on alcohol --- --- --- just because of alcohol --- --- --- reverse --- --- --- just to get high. I tried it one time and didn’t like it. Sniffing --- --- --- like alcohol and drugs --- --- --- marijuana --- --- --- how they act in their eyes --- --- --- just don’t bother to touch those things --- --- --- --- What sufferings we went through. --- --- ---
Remember that 80% of what she said was in Yupik. The kids understood, but I didn’t. That sort of thing makes me feel inferior. Neither the district nor the school offer any sort of Yupik language training, so the teachers are left to be outsiders – very much considered inferior because of their lack of Yupik language knowledge.
Yesterday, we had an elderly Yupik woman come speak to the class for Sobriety Week (our Dean of Students has spent hours and hours setting all of this up). The woman spoke occasional English, but mostly Yupik. This is what I heard (the dashes are Yupik):
You --- --- --- --- problem --- --- --- --- I have a friend that I talk to. --- --- --- confess --- --- --- --- I seen --- --- --- I seen --- --- --- If we did something wrong --- --- --- --- sexual abuse --- --- --- because of alcohol, things happen --- --- --- just because someone in the house is drinking --- --- --- as if they don’t have a house --- --- --- --- have you had that feeling! --- --- --- --- as parents --- --- --- I had two grandmothers that are living and one grandfather --- --- --- understand --- --- --- grandmother --- --- --- --- spending money on alcohol --- --- --- just because of alcohol --- --- --- reverse --- --- --- just to get high. I tried it one time and didn’t like it. Sniffing --- --- --- like alcohol and drugs --- --- --- marijuana --- --- --- how they act in their eyes --- --- --- just don’t bother to touch those things --- --- --- --- What sufferings we went through. --- --- ---
Remember that 80% of what she said was in Yupik. The kids understood, but I didn’t. That sort of thing makes me feel inferior. Neither the district nor the school offer any sort of Yupik language training, so the teachers are left to be outsiders – very much considered inferior because of their lack of Yupik language knowledge.
Inservice Meeting Thoughts
The following was my internal dialogue during a teacher inservice on January 31, 2011. I had my laptop with me and just kept track of my thoughts throughout the day...
If we don’t expect teachers to be on time for an inservice, how can we expect students to be on time for class, or to get working immediately when they are given instructions. It is obvious that that is not an expectation in the culture, whether it’s the school culture or the village culture. Teachers should not be ignored when they wander in late, nor should students. Teachers, mainly the Yupik teachers, regularly walk in 15-30 minutes late for inservice trainings.
If the clock becomes that insignificant, then how can we expect the students to magically understand its importance during timed, standardized tests?
90% of our students are low-level learners. The state anticipates that that number will be 15% in any given school.
This is definitely a clash of cultures. The discussion is that we need to be gathering meaningful data on our students learning, but the question was raised about how do we do that when 40% of the students contribute nothing to the classroom. Parents do not value education. Therefore, students treat it as a joke and just show up in the classroom because the law states that their warm body has to be there. They think we have nothing of value to offer. Our principal says that we can’t be overwhelmed by that. We have to take what little improvement we can get.
The principal also says that we are going to have “Positive Behavior Training” that we are going to implement in late April. How does that help? A month before school is out? What a joke.
The topic of the inservice is now bullying. Bullying has been identified by the students as the number one problem with the school climate. That includes the way Sarah has been treated – pacifistic bullying – not including her, excluding her, not sitting at her art table. The Yupik teachers are saying that bullying starts “out there.” I think they are taking offense that it may start in the home. The white teachers are now addressing that. Things could get interesting. Obviously, drinking and abuse is a major problem in this village – is that not a form of bullying? The kids bring those attitudes to school, for sure.
The assistant principal just did an activity with the staff, prefacing it by telling us how negative the staff is all the time. We were each given three candies – one to keep and two to give to people who we see as positive influences in the school. I felt bad for those folks who didn’t get any candy. It was not a very positive activity – made the negative people feel even worse.
We are spending hours and hours talking about how to improve instruction, reteaching, intervention, and assessments. However, the problem is in behavior and cultural norms and expectations, not teaching methods. It’s like they’re scared to address the real issue. It’s more comfortable to stay in a data fog than to talk about the reality that formal education is not valued in this culture, and will likely never be. The educational gurus don’t want to change the culture, but they want to put public schools in the villages and assess them the same way as schools in Anchorage. It’s like dropping an ice cube in to a boiling pot of water. The pot of water is the village and the ice cube is public education. We’re melting and nothing is going to stop that. But, the powers that be are determined that an ice cube can survive in this pot of water without turning the fire down (aka changing the culture). Impossible. So, the educational system keeps analyzing the melting process, trying to come up with a new chemical composition for the ice cube to keep it from melting.
So, we continue to bury our heads in the data and try to analyze our way to fixing a problem that is cultural at its core and can’t be data driven.
A huge shift needs to occur. This school should have 90% certified Yupik teachers pushing this community of learners to succeed. Having a bunch of Gussak teachers come in and try to place their values on an already divisive community just doesn’t work. The emphasis should be on getting Yupik teachers. Maybe it is time for me to go back for my PhD in Indigenous Studies so I can help change things for the better.
So, now the middle school and high school teachers are having a discussion to decide which 7th and 8th grade students should get promoted. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Aren’t there black and white rules for this? They are doing the same for 9-11th graders, ignoring the whole Carnegie unit concept. This just boggles my mind.
The principal is trying to cheer up the teachers by saying that in 10 years, 85% of our students will be on grade level (15% of them on grade level today). How does he know that? That’s ridiculous. It didn’t happen in the past 10 years. Without a drastic change, there is just no way that kind of a change will happen in the next 10 years.
They’re talking about retaining 7th graders purely based on behavior – that they don’t put forth any effort and are already acquiring a criminal record, so they should be retained in the 7th grade. What?! So, the answer is to put them with kids who are even more immature?
I feel like such an outsider. I think differently than these people. I live differently. I was obviously raised differently. So many of the discussions make me feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Were these white teachers never in mainstream civilization? Did this place really change them so much that now they promote kids from grade to grade based on their personal opinions rather than cold, hard facts? I find myself getting quiet in these meetings. I just retreat within myself to what little sanity still lies there. I must guard it. I just want to go home to the quiet of my house, talk with Sarah about it. She has become my compass. My conversations with her are the only ones that make sense any more.
If we don’t expect teachers to be on time for an inservice, how can we expect students to be on time for class, or to get working immediately when they are given instructions. It is obvious that that is not an expectation in the culture, whether it’s the school culture or the village culture. Teachers should not be ignored when they wander in late, nor should students. Teachers, mainly the Yupik teachers, regularly walk in 15-30 minutes late for inservice trainings.
If the clock becomes that insignificant, then how can we expect the students to magically understand its importance during timed, standardized tests?
90% of our students are low-level learners. The state anticipates that that number will be 15% in any given school.
This is definitely a clash of cultures. The discussion is that we need to be gathering meaningful data on our students learning, but the question was raised about how do we do that when 40% of the students contribute nothing to the classroom. Parents do not value education. Therefore, students treat it as a joke and just show up in the classroom because the law states that their warm body has to be there. They think we have nothing of value to offer. Our principal says that we can’t be overwhelmed by that. We have to take what little improvement we can get.
The principal also says that we are going to have “Positive Behavior Training” that we are going to implement in late April. How does that help? A month before school is out? What a joke.
The topic of the inservice is now bullying. Bullying has been identified by the students as the number one problem with the school climate. That includes the way Sarah has been treated – pacifistic bullying – not including her, excluding her, not sitting at her art table. The Yupik teachers are saying that bullying starts “out there.” I think they are taking offense that it may start in the home. The white teachers are now addressing that. Things could get interesting. Obviously, drinking and abuse is a major problem in this village – is that not a form of bullying? The kids bring those attitudes to school, for sure.
The assistant principal just did an activity with the staff, prefacing it by telling us how negative the staff is all the time. We were each given three candies – one to keep and two to give to people who we see as positive influences in the school. I felt bad for those folks who didn’t get any candy. It was not a very positive activity – made the negative people feel even worse.
We are spending hours and hours talking about how to improve instruction, reteaching, intervention, and assessments. However, the problem is in behavior and cultural norms and expectations, not teaching methods. It’s like they’re scared to address the real issue. It’s more comfortable to stay in a data fog than to talk about the reality that formal education is not valued in this culture, and will likely never be. The educational gurus don’t want to change the culture, but they want to put public schools in the villages and assess them the same way as schools in Anchorage. It’s like dropping an ice cube in to a boiling pot of water. The pot of water is the village and the ice cube is public education. We’re melting and nothing is going to stop that. But, the powers that be are determined that an ice cube can survive in this pot of water without turning the fire down (aka changing the culture). Impossible. So, the educational system keeps analyzing the melting process, trying to come up with a new chemical composition for the ice cube to keep it from melting.
So, we continue to bury our heads in the data and try to analyze our way to fixing a problem that is cultural at its core and can’t be data driven.
A huge shift needs to occur. This school should have 90% certified Yupik teachers pushing this community of learners to succeed. Having a bunch of Gussak teachers come in and try to place their values on an already divisive community just doesn’t work. The emphasis should be on getting Yupik teachers. Maybe it is time for me to go back for my PhD in Indigenous Studies so I can help change things for the better.
So, now the middle school and high school teachers are having a discussion to decide which 7th and 8th grade students should get promoted. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Aren’t there black and white rules for this? They are doing the same for 9-11th graders, ignoring the whole Carnegie unit concept. This just boggles my mind.
The principal is trying to cheer up the teachers by saying that in 10 years, 85% of our students will be on grade level (15% of them on grade level today). How does he know that? That’s ridiculous. It didn’t happen in the past 10 years. Without a drastic change, there is just no way that kind of a change will happen in the next 10 years.
They’re talking about retaining 7th graders purely based on behavior – that they don’t put forth any effort and are already acquiring a criminal record, so they should be retained in the 7th grade. What?! So, the answer is to put them with kids who are even more immature?
I feel like such an outsider. I think differently than these people. I live differently. I was obviously raised differently. So many of the discussions make me feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Were these white teachers never in mainstream civilization? Did this place really change them so much that now they promote kids from grade to grade based on their personal opinions rather than cold, hard facts? I find myself getting quiet in these meetings. I just retreat within myself to what little sanity still lies there. I must guard it. I just want to go home to the quiet of my house, talk with Sarah about it. She has become my compass. My conversations with her are the only ones that make sense any more.
Health Care in the Bush
I published a very editted version of this on December 10, 2010. Now, you get to read the WHOLE story, unedited! ...
Pneumonia. This is the second time I’ve been down with it in the past 45 days. It’s worse this time, much worse. I took all the precautions – got the 7-year pneumonia shot last year (that covers 25% of the strains out there – apparently the other 75% are in Kwethluk), take a daily vitamin (when I remember), drink plenty of orange juice, take Echinacea and vitamin C supplements, get plenty of rest, and I even started exercising (remember Jillian?). However, there is one little bugger that I can’t seem to tame… stress. Beyond that, I’m not sure what else I can do. Anyway, here’s the story that led me to today…
Last Friday, I came home from school feeling like I was getting a cold – stuffy nose, drainage in the throat, the usual. I started dosing up on herbal tea and vitamin C. It just got worse. By Saturday night, I had a pretty bad cough and by Sunday, I knew it was at least Bronchitis – fever coming in around 99. I made an appointment at the clinic for 9am, found someone to cover my class, bundled up, and made the half-mile walk there in 20 below windchill temps. Once there, I sat in an empty seat closest to the door, at the edge of the waiting room, not wanting to spread my germs because of my horrible cough. There was a young mother there with two young children, both under the age of two and both sick with snotty noses and thick coughs. There was another woman there, about my age. At one point, the older woman coughed and then came over to the trash can that was six inches from my elbow and spit into it. As she walked back to her seat, I looked down at the trash can and noticed dried sunflower seed hulls stuck to the top of the trash bag. Obviously, the trash bag had not been replaced the last time the trash was emptied. My gag reflex let me know that it was at full attention.
At 9:30am, I was called back to an examining room and the 30-year-old female health aide assigned to me had just arrived, late. She was still in her snow pants as she quickly started examining me with her dirty hands and black-edged fingernails. She gave me a smile through her thickly yellowed, crooked teeth and asked, “Do you feel safe at home?” – standard question at the village clinic. Greasy hair sprinkled with dandruff gave away that she did not have running water at home. My fever was 100. After 30 minutes of her asking me questions, looking up information in a medical textbook, and writing down details on a sheet that she would soon fax to a doctor in Bethel, the exam was over. She told me that she heard crackling in my lungs and was sure it was pneumonia. I was sent back to school and told that she would call me later that afternoon with doctor recommendations.
At 3pm, I still had not heard from the clinic, so I called. My aide told me that the Bethel doctor said that my fever needed to be 102 before they’d prescribe antibiotics. That’s a new one! So, I called the Bethel doctor and she told me that without a chest x-ray (which can only be done if I spend an entire day flying back and forth to Bethel to have it done in the hospital there), my temperature has to be 102 for them to diagnose pneumonia. Where do they make up these rules?
By Tuesday morning, I was beginning to see stars from being lightheaded. In the classroom, I was useless as I only had a whisper of a voice. The soonest the clinic could see me was 2pm. I hauled myself there (remember that it’s a mile roundtrip) in the subzero temps, colder than Monday. They examined me (temp at 102), sent off the paperwork to Bethel, and I was given antibiotics. I barely remember my walk home. I know I was weaving as I walked down the road just concentrating on breathing, which was difficult, and keeping my eyes focused enough to put one foot in front of the other. Oh yeah, on my way out of the clinic, they demanded that I make a follow-up appointment for Wednesday (walk back there again? NOT!) which I did and promptly called to cancel Wednesday morning.
I spent the next several days in and out of bed, never leaving the house, doped up on as much medication as I could find. Thursday morning, I woke up with 9 cold sores lining my top lip and by Thursday night, I also had sores inside my nose. Miserable. Frustrated. Now, angry.
I’m angry at the poor medical care available. I’m angry at the unsanitary conditions at the school, at the clinic, at the Native Store.
I’m sure I’ll go back to school next week and someone will pose the question, “Why do you think you’ve been so sick here?” The only truthful answer is the unsanitary nature of this village. I have never seen a nastier teacher’s bathroom. I’m sure it has not been cleaned yet this school year and it was dirty when the year began.
Kids hack into trash cans and lie on dirty floors. Cleanliness is not revered – students are visibly dirty and often smelly. The school is not cleaned regularly – the floors, bathrooms, etc. A favorite snack of students is a pack of sunflower seeds. They spit the shells into their bare hands or stack them up on their desktops until they are ready to sweep them into the trash can, which has a bag in it that is regularly reused.
Pneumonia. This is the second time I’ve been down with it in the past 45 days. It’s worse this time, much worse. I took all the precautions – got the 7-year pneumonia shot last year (that covers 25% of the strains out there – apparently the other 75% are in Kwethluk), take a daily vitamin (when I remember), drink plenty of orange juice, take Echinacea and vitamin C supplements, get plenty of rest, and I even started exercising (remember Jillian?). However, there is one little bugger that I can’t seem to tame… stress. Beyond that, I’m not sure what else I can do. Anyway, here’s the story that led me to today…
Last Friday, I came home from school feeling like I was getting a cold – stuffy nose, drainage in the throat, the usual. I started dosing up on herbal tea and vitamin C. It just got worse. By Saturday night, I had a pretty bad cough and by Sunday, I knew it was at least Bronchitis – fever coming in around 99. I made an appointment at the clinic for 9am, found someone to cover my class, bundled up, and made the half-mile walk there in 20 below windchill temps. Once there, I sat in an empty seat closest to the door, at the edge of the waiting room, not wanting to spread my germs because of my horrible cough. There was a young mother there with two young children, both under the age of two and both sick with snotty noses and thick coughs. There was another woman there, about my age. At one point, the older woman coughed and then came over to the trash can that was six inches from my elbow and spit into it. As she walked back to her seat, I looked down at the trash can and noticed dried sunflower seed hulls stuck to the top of the trash bag. Obviously, the trash bag had not been replaced the last time the trash was emptied. My gag reflex let me know that it was at full attention.
At 9:30am, I was called back to an examining room and the 30-year-old female health aide assigned to me had just arrived, late. She was still in her snow pants as she quickly started examining me with her dirty hands and black-edged fingernails. She gave me a smile through her thickly yellowed, crooked teeth and asked, “Do you feel safe at home?” – standard question at the village clinic. Greasy hair sprinkled with dandruff gave away that she did not have running water at home. My fever was 100. After 30 minutes of her asking me questions, looking up information in a medical textbook, and writing down details on a sheet that she would soon fax to a doctor in Bethel, the exam was over. She told me that she heard crackling in my lungs and was sure it was pneumonia. I was sent back to school and told that she would call me later that afternoon with doctor recommendations.
At 3pm, I still had not heard from the clinic, so I called. My aide told me that the Bethel doctor said that my fever needed to be 102 before they’d prescribe antibiotics. That’s a new one! So, I called the Bethel doctor and she told me that without a chest x-ray (which can only be done if I spend an entire day flying back and forth to Bethel to have it done in the hospital there), my temperature has to be 102 for them to diagnose pneumonia. Where do they make up these rules?
By Tuesday morning, I was beginning to see stars from being lightheaded. In the classroom, I was useless as I only had a whisper of a voice. The soonest the clinic could see me was 2pm. I hauled myself there (remember that it’s a mile roundtrip) in the subzero temps, colder than Monday. They examined me (temp at 102), sent off the paperwork to Bethel, and I was given antibiotics. I barely remember my walk home. I know I was weaving as I walked down the road just concentrating on breathing, which was difficult, and keeping my eyes focused enough to put one foot in front of the other. Oh yeah, on my way out of the clinic, they demanded that I make a follow-up appointment for Wednesday (walk back there again? NOT!) which I did and promptly called to cancel Wednesday morning.
I spent the next several days in and out of bed, never leaving the house, doped up on as much medication as I could find. Thursday morning, I woke up with 9 cold sores lining my top lip and by Thursday night, I also had sores inside my nose. Miserable. Frustrated. Now, angry.
I’m angry at the poor medical care available. I’m angry at the unsanitary conditions at the school, at the clinic, at the Native Store.
I’m sure I’ll go back to school next week and someone will pose the question, “Why do you think you’ve been so sick here?” The only truthful answer is the unsanitary nature of this village. I have never seen a nastier teacher’s bathroom. I’m sure it has not been cleaned yet this school year and it was dirty when the year began.
Kids hack into trash cans and lie on dirty floors. Cleanliness is not revered – students are visibly dirty and often smelly. The school is not cleaned regularly – the floors, bathrooms, etc. A favorite snack of students is a pack of sunflower seeds. They spit the shells into their bare hands or stack them up on their desktops until they are ready to sweep them into the trash can, which has a bag in it that is regularly reused.
A Look Around...
I had originally posted this just before Thanksgiving, but was told that it was inappropriate. I believe that it is now entirely appropriate to post...
It’s the last class of the day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I’m trying to avoid grading papers, so here I am blogging while Patch Adams entertains the students on the TV. Pauline (fellow English teacher) and I combine our classes during 6th Period on Fridays (today is a Friday schedule) to give the kids a sort of break.
Most of the students in my room right now are 9th graders who can’t pass the state standardized test and so the school’s cure (or it might be mandated by the district – I really don’t know for sure) for that is to force them into English classes for four of their 7 class periods. By Friday afternoon, that’s A LOT of time spent in English class, even for a kid for whom English is their second language.
I want to give you a glimpse into what I see as I look around the classroom…
Every student has black or dark brown hair.
Every girl has her hair pulled back in a bun or ponytail of some kind – no short hair here. All of the girls have brown eyes. None are wearing make-up.
Every boy has very short hair, most have crew cuts. All of the boys have brown eyes.
I can see the eyebrows of every student in the classroom. That is unusual if you’ve been to your local high school lately. This is because they use their eyebrows to communicate. A quick raise of the eyebrows can mean “yes,” “you’re right,” or “okay” – something affirmative. A long raise of the eyebrows usually means “yes, so leave me alone.” Therefore, it is very important that eyebrows be exposed. I’m not joking here. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – This place is beyond exaggeration.
Of the 14 students I can see, 12 of them are wearing hoodies and all are wearing sneakers. Five are wearing sweatpants or work-out pants and the rest are wearing blue jeans.
One is pregnant. Four are Special Ed. Four appear to be significantly overweight (all girls). Only one (a boy) is over 6 foot tall.
There are two Special Ed aides, Lulu and Old Man, sitting near their assigned students, one of whom just asked me, “What time it is?” to which I responded, “What time is it? 2:14.” Correcting their spoken English has become second nature to me.
About half the class chooses to lay on the floor during the movie (they also do this during silent reading time) which I really don’t understand because I’m pretty sure this carpet, which is duck-taped together in spots, has never been cleaned, just vacuumed. It is stained with ground in gum and assorted other sundries ground in. It is walked on daily by students who walk to the honey-bucket dumpster and through dog yards in those same shoes, stepping in a variety of bacteria.
I can look out the double windows next to my desk and see the snow blowing sideways, and the bare scrub trees gently waving in the winter wind. The snow is piling up on the bottom ledge of the window where it is being blown against the school building. The once-white, broken blinds are completely open to let in as much natural daylight as possible, even during a movie.
I just saw Carmen messing with her cell phone and only had to call her name for her to quickly slip it into her pocket and lean her head back to me with a childish caught-with-her-hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile from her resting place on the floor. All of the students are sweet-natured, for the most part.
Well, that’s it for the quick look into a few moments of my life on this Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving. Time for me to grade those papers!
It’s the last class of the day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I’m trying to avoid grading papers, so here I am blogging while Patch Adams entertains the students on the TV. Pauline (fellow English teacher) and I combine our classes during 6th Period on Fridays (today is a Friday schedule) to give the kids a sort of break.
Most of the students in my room right now are 9th graders who can’t pass the state standardized test and so the school’s cure (or it might be mandated by the district – I really don’t know for sure) for that is to force them into English classes for four of their 7 class periods. By Friday afternoon, that’s A LOT of time spent in English class, even for a kid for whom English is their second language.
I want to give you a glimpse into what I see as I look around the classroom…
Every student has black or dark brown hair.
Every girl has her hair pulled back in a bun or ponytail of some kind – no short hair here. All of the girls have brown eyes. None are wearing make-up.
Every boy has very short hair, most have crew cuts. All of the boys have brown eyes.
I can see the eyebrows of every student in the classroom. That is unusual if you’ve been to your local high school lately. This is because they use their eyebrows to communicate. A quick raise of the eyebrows can mean “yes,” “you’re right,” or “okay” – something affirmative. A long raise of the eyebrows usually means “yes, so leave me alone.” Therefore, it is very important that eyebrows be exposed. I’m not joking here. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – This place is beyond exaggeration.
Of the 14 students I can see, 12 of them are wearing hoodies and all are wearing sneakers. Five are wearing sweatpants or work-out pants and the rest are wearing blue jeans.
One is pregnant. Four are Special Ed. Four appear to be significantly overweight (all girls). Only one (a boy) is over 6 foot tall.
There are two Special Ed aides, Lulu and Old Man, sitting near their assigned students, one of whom just asked me, “What time it is?” to which I responded, “What time is it? 2:14.” Correcting their spoken English has become second nature to me.
About half the class chooses to lay on the floor during the movie (they also do this during silent reading time) which I really don’t understand because I’m pretty sure this carpet, which is duck-taped together in spots, has never been cleaned, just vacuumed. It is stained with ground in gum and assorted other sundries ground in. It is walked on daily by students who walk to the honey-bucket dumpster and through dog yards in those same shoes, stepping in a variety of bacteria.
I can look out the double windows next to my desk and see the snow blowing sideways, and the bare scrub trees gently waving in the winter wind. The snow is piling up on the bottom ledge of the window where it is being blown against the school building. The once-white, broken blinds are completely open to let in as much natural daylight as possible, even during a movie.
I just saw Carmen messing with her cell phone and only had to call her name for her to quickly slip it into her pocket and lean her head back to me with a childish caught-with-her-hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile from her resting place on the floor. All of the students are sweet-natured, for the most part.
Well, that’s it for the quick look into a few moments of my life on this Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving. Time for me to grade those papers!
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Previously "Unpublished" Posts
Here are some ramblings that I wrote while in Kwethluk but didn't dare publish on my blog while I was living out there...
September 29, 2010 (unpublished)
Parent Teacher Conferences
When I got to school this morning, I realized that tonight was parent teacher conferences, 4-5:30. Keep in mind that we have to stay an hour past our contract period tonight and tomorrow night but don’t get that time made up to us anywhere – it’s considered part of the “other duties as assigned.” I have not been given any information about how these pt conferences are supposed to work. Apparently the secretary is working on some sort of schedule, which I never received. I was given the grade reports for my study hall students and told that those were the parents with whom I’d be meeting. What? I don’t even teach half of my study hall students. Why would I even want to conference with parents of children I don’t teach? Whatever. Everything else in this school is messed up, so I should expect the same from pt conferences, I suppose.
5 minutes after conferences were scheduled to start, I was given a box with miscellaneous test info, grade reports, student handbooks, etc. They were left in my classroom since I was in an IEP meeting. When I got back and saw the box, there was no note, no instructions, nothing. Okay, so I must just hand this stuff out.
???'s dad came first. An Asian man with very broken English and 4 small children (one of whom was Down’s) tagging along. He was worried about ???'s grade in my class, British Lit and Comp 3. I apologized to him telling him that I didn’t have ???'s grade report and that he’d have to go to ???'s study hall teacher to get that information. This is exactly what I thought would happen! The father and I had a good discussion (I guess you can call it that) about ??? needing to get caught up and stay caught up on his work. The father wants ??? to go to University of Oregon next year but ??? doesn’t want to go to college.
October 16, 2010 (unpublished)
We arrived at our new home in Kwethluk to find it filthy. There were dead mosquitoes dried to the walls and ceilings where they had met their demise at human hands – blood smears to boot. The linoleum floors were grimy. The carpet was dirty (I even had to clean out the vacuum before it could be used). The kitchen cabinets were covered in a greasy, sticky film. The stove/oven looked like it had never been cleaned – by the time I finished cleaning the brown grates from the top of the gas stove (which is only 5 years old), I discovered that they were actually a slate blue color but had probably never been cleaned. The tub/shower was brown, but after some Ajax and elbow grease, it is now almost white. The washing machine was in the same condition but has now been revived. The bathroom sink had whiskers all over it and a ¼-inch ridge of soap scum where a bar of soap had been on the edge of the sink. In addition, trash and old junk was left everywhere – empty boxes the bedroom, an old dirty dish rack and miscellaneous junk in the front entry, a floor to ceiling shelving unit filled with broken electronics and junk boxes in the back entry – even a bag of trash. First of all I don’t understand how people can live like that, especially people who are supposed to be educated teachers. Second of all, they knew that the new teacher would be moving in and have to deal with their mess – not a very good first impression.
The kitchen sink had a leak around the edge and it dripped unless you pushed it slightly off left of center. The tub drained slow and eventually stopped altogether. I have since had Adam, the maintenance man, come fix both of those things. Then, one day, a couple of weeks ago, our cold water seemed to have disappeared in the entire house. It was most noticeable in the shower because it had become scalding and there was no way to adjust the temperature because there seemed to be no cold water. I stopped Ira, head maintenance man, in the hall at school one day to talk with him about it. We happened to be just outside ???'s room (remember that there are no doors or walls) and ??? overheard us and came out into the hall, laughing and saying, “Oh yeah, forgot to tell ya about that. heehee.” ??? and *** were the previous tenants who had left the place in such a mess. What a jerk. As Ira explained it to me, there are heating coils that run alongside the water pipes and he turned them on a couple of weeks ago when the weather started to get cold. They keep the pipes from freezing. The side effect is that there is no cold water until Spring. Great! I also let him know that there was no heat in Sarah’s bedroom – another thing that ??? knew about. Ira saw me later that day and let me know that there was some faulty valve in the heating that was hooked to Sarah’s room, so he fixed it by rerouting the kitchen heating valve to Sarah’s room. So, now the kitchen heater doesn’t work, which isn’t a big deal since the kitchen and living room are one big room and the living room heater does work.
Tonight, after having had the stomach flu for two days, I go to take a shower only to realize that there is no hot water! It’s warm but not quite lukewarm – definitely no hot water – quite a cold shower after being sick – I’m not a happy camper. I’m guessing that the cold snap we’ve had for the past couple of days and the 30mph north wind from today have zapped the hot right out of our pipes. Ira must have turned off the heating coils the other day. Geesh!
Add to that the fact that we don’t have heat today. I don’t know why and I’ve left a message on the Site Administrator’s phone, but he considers himself off the clock on weekends – must be nice!
October 17, 2010 (unpublished)
“So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect.” Eleanor Roosevelt
So much time and money is spent to fight alcohol and suicide and abuse out here. Yet, it’s okay for students to lay their heads down on their desks or take naps during the State Student Council convention. Students consistently don’t turn their work in. I have a student in Journalism class who has a 0% at the end of the first quarter and she’s only missed school 2 or 3 days. That’s right. She does nothing. I try encouragement. I try threats. I try detention. I talk to her mom. I talk to the Dean and her other teachers. I talk to her Special Ed case worker. Nothing works. Apathy.
It’s a worse crime to drink alcohol out here than it is to throw the empty bottle on the ground. How does that make sense?
“Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.” Arthur Gordon
The villagers don’t care. The students don’t care. Eventually, the teachers don’t care. The day that I become a teacher who doesn’t care is the day I retire from teaching. My students do not lay their heads down on their desk without getting detention. Other teachers laugh behind my back. That part, I don’t care about. I feel sorry for them. I am told, “It’s their culture.” That’s bullshit. When those students are in my classroom, they are there to learn about the culture of education which means that they keep their heads up and do their work, or there are consequences. “It’s their culture.” How dare the Natives let the white teachers talk about them that way, like they’re too uncivilized to act appropriately?
November 6, 2010 – unpublished
Tobacco. I’m not sure what all the hype is about. I don’t understand what the draw is to tobacco products. Personally, I have enough vices and don’t intend to add tobacco to the list. However, it is a big deal among teenagers. Students and parents of students who participate in sports and other extracurricular activities even have to sign a TAD (Tobacco, Alcohol, Drug) contract in the state of Alaska promising not to partake in any of the three. Give teenagers a hard and fast rule and what’s going to happen? That’s right!
Kwethluk is no exception. As a matter of fact, the students here are much more bold in their violation of the rules. It could have something to do with their age – many are 18 (few kids graduate at 18 here). I’m certainly not going to try to make excuses for them.
Sarah is Student Council Secretary in Kwethluk this year and when she went to the district Student Council conference in Bethel a couple of weeks ago, along with three other students representing our school, at least one of the students (a girl) chewed tobacco openly when their supervisor (who is white) wasn’t around.
Last night, Sarah was in Adak at a Volleyball Tournament and she texted me saying that Kwethluk students were “chewing” in their classroom (where they were spending the night) and that the coach (Yupik) knew but didn’t say anything. Apparently, it was okay with her. She may have been chewing, too, for all I know.
I don’t understand. Why does the coach allow such a serious rule infraction? Why does the community tolerate the coach’s tolerance? I know I can’t be the first and only teacher to ever be privy to the fact that this is going on. How can the other teachers exist in such a state of apathy?
So, I’m making waves again – have contacted the Dean of the school (who is in charge of discipline) and made her aware of the situation. We’ll see what happens.
... More to come...
September 29, 2010 (unpublished)
Parent Teacher Conferences
When I got to school this morning, I realized that tonight was parent teacher conferences, 4-5:30. Keep in mind that we have to stay an hour past our contract period tonight and tomorrow night but don’t get that time made up to us anywhere – it’s considered part of the “other duties as assigned.” I have not been given any information about how these pt conferences are supposed to work. Apparently the secretary is working on some sort of schedule, which I never received. I was given the grade reports for my study hall students and told that those were the parents with whom I’d be meeting. What? I don’t even teach half of my study hall students. Why would I even want to conference with parents of children I don’t teach? Whatever. Everything else in this school is messed up, so I should expect the same from pt conferences, I suppose.
5 minutes after conferences were scheduled to start, I was given a box with miscellaneous test info, grade reports, student handbooks, etc. They were left in my classroom since I was in an IEP meeting. When I got back and saw the box, there was no note, no instructions, nothing. Okay, so I must just hand this stuff out.
???'s dad came first. An Asian man with very broken English and 4 small children (one of whom was Down’s) tagging along. He was worried about ???'s grade in my class, British Lit and Comp 3. I apologized to him telling him that I didn’t have ???'s grade report and that he’d have to go to ???'s study hall teacher to get that information. This is exactly what I thought would happen! The father and I had a good discussion (I guess you can call it that) about ??? needing to get caught up and stay caught up on his work. The father wants ??? to go to University of Oregon next year but ??? doesn’t want to go to college.
October 16, 2010 (unpublished)
We arrived at our new home in Kwethluk to find it filthy. There were dead mosquitoes dried to the walls and ceilings where they had met their demise at human hands – blood smears to boot. The linoleum floors were grimy. The carpet was dirty (I even had to clean out the vacuum before it could be used). The kitchen cabinets were covered in a greasy, sticky film. The stove/oven looked like it had never been cleaned – by the time I finished cleaning the brown grates from the top of the gas stove (which is only 5 years old), I discovered that they were actually a slate blue color but had probably never been cleaned. The tub/shower was brown, but after some Ajax and elbow grease, it is now almost white. The washing machine was in the same condition but has now been revived. The bathroom sink had whiskers all over it and a ¼-inch ridge of soap scum where a bar of soap had been on the edge of the sink. In addition, trash and old junk was left everywhere – empty boxes the bedroom, an old dirty dish rack and miscellaneous junk in the front entry, a floor to ceiling shelving unit filled with broken electronics and junk boxes in the back entry – even a bag of trash. First of all I don’t understand how people can live like that, especially people who are supposed to be educated teachers. Second of all, they knew that the new teacher would be moving in and have to deal with their mess – not a very good first impression.
The kitchen sink had a leak around the edge and it dripped unless you pushed it slightly off left of center. The tub drained slow and eventually stopped altogether. I have since had Adam, the maintenance man, come fix both of those things. Then, one day, a couple of weeks ago, our cold water seemed to have disappeared in the entire house. It was most noticeable in the shower because it had become scalding and there was no way to adjust the temperature because there seemed to be no cold water. I stopped Ira, head maintenance man, in the hall at school one day to talk with him about it. We happened to be just outside ???'s room (remember that there are no doors or walls) and ??? overheard us and came out into the hall, laughing and saying, “Oh yeah, forgot to tell ya about that. heehee.” ??? and *** were the previous tenants who had left the place in such a mess. What a jerk. As Ira explained it to me, there are heating coils that run alongside the water pipes and he turned them on a couple of weeks ago when the weather started to get cold. They keep the pipes from freezing. The side effect is that there is no cold water until Spring. Great! I also let him know that there was no heat in Sarah’s bedroom – another thing that ??? knew about. Ira saw me later that day and let me know that there was some faulty valve in the heating that was hooked to Sarah’s room, so he fixed it by rerouting the kitchen heating valve to Sarah’s room. So, now the kitchen heater doesn’t work, which isn’t a big deal since the kitchen and living room are one big room and the living room heater does work.
Tonight, after having had the stomach flu for two days, I go to take a shower only to realize that there is no hot water! It’s warm but not quite lukewarm – definitely no hot water – quite a cold shower after being sick – I’m not a happy camper. I’m guessing that the cold snap we’ve had for the past couple of days and the 30mph north wind from today have zapped the hot right out of our pipes. Ira must have turned off the heating coils the other day. Geesh!
Add to that the fact that we don’t have heat today. I don’t know why and I’ve left a message on the Site Administrator’s phone, but he considers himself off the clock on weekends – must be nice!
October 17, 2010 (unpublished)
“So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect.” Eleanor Roosevelt
So much time and money is spent to fight alcohol and suicide and abuse out here. Yet, it’s okay for students to lay their heads down on their desks or take naps during the State Student Council convention. Students consistently don’t turn their work in. I have a student in Journalism class who has a 0% at the end of the first quarter and she’s only missed school 2 or 3 days. That’s right. She does nothing. I try encouragement. I try threats. I try detention. I talk to her mom. I talk to the Dean and her other teachers. I talk to her Special Ed case worker. Nothing works. Apathy.
It’s a worse crime to drink alcohol out here than it is to throw the empty bottle on the ground. How does that make sense?
“Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.” Arthur Gordon
The villagers don’t care. The students don’t care. Eventually, the teachers don’t care. The day that I become a teacher who doesn’t care is the day I retire from teaching. My students do not lay their heads down on their desk without getting detention. Other teachers laugh behind my back. That part, I don’t care about. I feel sorry for them. I am told, “It’s their culture.” That’s bullshit. When those students are in my classroom, they are there to learn about the culture of education which means that they keep their heads up and do their work, or there are consequences. “It’s their culture.” How dare the Natives let the white teachers talk about them that way, like they’re too uncivilized to act appropriately?
November 6, 2010 – unpublished
Tobacco. I’m not sure what all the hype is about. I don’t understand what the draw is to tobacco products. Personally, I have enough vices and don’t intend to add tobacco to the list. However, it is a big deal among teenagers. Students and parents of students who participate in sports and other extracurricular activities even have to sign a TAD (Tobacco, Alcohol, Drug) contract in the state of Alaska promising not to partake in any of the three. Give teenagers a hard and fast rule and what’s going to happen? That’s right!
Kwethluk is no exception. As a matter of fact, the students here are much more bold in their violation of the rules. It could have something to do with their age – many are 18 (few kids graduate at 18 here). I’m certainly not going to try to make excuses for them.
Sarah is Student Council Secretary in Kwethluk this year and when she went to the district Student Council conference in Bethel a couple of weeks ago, along with three other students representing our school, at least one of the students (a girl) chewed tobacco openly when their supervisor (who is white) wasn’t around.
Last night, Sarah was in Adak at a Volleyball Tournament and she texted me saying that Kwethluk students were “chewing” in their classroom (where they were spending the night) and that the coach (Yupik) knew but didn’t say anything. Apparently, it was okay with her. She may have been chewing, too, for all I know.
I don’t understand. Why does the coach allow such a serious rule infraction? Why does the community tolerate the coach’s tolerance? I know I can’t be the first and only teacher to ever be privy to the fact that this is going on. How can the other teachers exist in such a state of apathy?
So, I’m making waves again – have contacted the Dean of the school (who is in charge of discipline) and made her aware of the situation. We’ll see what happens.
... More to come...
No Words Needed
I had come to Kwethluk with an open mind and an open heart. But, Kwethluk had not received me with the same. I packed up and moved everything I owned to the Alaskan bush. I didn’t keep a storage unit back in civilization like most people do. I jumped in with both feet. I just knew this was the right thing. It’s what I’d always wanted and it felt right.
As soon as I arrived, I unpacked… everything. I hung pictures on the walls, filled shelves with books and personal items, hung all of my clothes in the closet, unpacked everything I owned. I settled in and made it home.
Of course, before I unpacked, I had to clean the house from top to bottom. It was the filthiest place I’d ever moved in to. The shower was brown with buildup and I scrubbed it white. The bathroom sink had soap scum and whiskers (obviously, the previous occupants had been male) caked everywhere. The kitchen cabinets had a sticky goo on the outside from steam and cooking fumes. The gas stovetop was brown until I scrubbed the plates back to their original country blue color. The floors took several moppings to come clean and the walls all had to be wiped down because of the mosquitoes smashed and dried right where they had met their demise on the walls and ceiling. The broken window screens had to be duck-taped so that we could get fresh air. The freezer had dried blood and other liquids cemented to the walls and bottom. All was cleaned and scrubbed by us and our new 4th and 5th grade friends who had become our welcoming committee and were as happy to help us clean as to try on our hockey equipment. The living room furniture was stained and had an odor, but a good spray of Febreeze and brand new furniture covers made them feel like new. By the time we were done, one little boy asked if he could sleep in our house. He explained that he’d be happy to just sleep on the coffee table and not be any trouble at all. It made us all wonder in what conditions he must live at home.
We made that house our home and settled in for the long haul.
Fellow teachers (first-years, like me) loved to come over because they said it felt more like home than their house. But, those visits only happened a couple of times before we all became too busy with school. In addition, I was the only teacher to live next to the school. Everyone else lived a mile away in the multiple teacher housing units clumped together “downtown”, which really meant down river. That created a mental distance between us that seemed greater than the physical distance. The teachers who lived downtown shared meals and movies and outings on the river. They watched out for each other, confided in one another, and frequented each other’s homes. They took trips together to Bethel and Anchorage. Other than Thanksgiving and the SuperBowl and one isolated game night, I was not invited to join them. It was not purposeful, I know that, but it still was what it was.
I was an outsider.
It is true that I did not invite teachers over to my house for get-togethers because I thought that would make Sarah uncomfortable – having all of her teachers over for dinner or movies. It would have been easier for me to go to their houses. I was the only teacher (white teacher, which is what I’m talking about when I talk about the teachers… because the Yupik teachers were completely separate from the white teachers) in the village with a child in my home.
After four months of isolation from the Yupik community and the teacher community, I knew that I wouldn’t sign on for a second year. It was November when I realized that my dreams were just smoke dissipating before my very eyes. My dreams didn’t exist. I couldn’t make it here. I couldn’t survive in a remote, off the road system, Yupik village. If I couldn’t do that, then I surely couldn’t survive living off the grid, like my big dream had been. I couldn’t do it emotionally, and I couldn’t do it physically. After the unbelievably poor health care during two bouts with pneumonia, I knew I’d never put myself in that kind of jeopardy again. I had too much to live for to sacrifice it all for people who wouldn’t even speak to me, who didn’t even want me there. I had been wrong about it all. My dreams were unfounded. My goals were unrealistic. My hopes were dangling by a thread.
Shortly after sending Sarah back to Homer in February, I began to check the want-ads in the Homer News. I knew that if I waited until summer to look for a job, there would be none. Homer hunkers down and faithfully serves tourists from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The employment turnover and hiring happens in the spring. When I accepted the job as an Advertising Sales Representative for the Homer News, I knew my life was about to take an unexpected turn.
After I gave my notice to the principal and word slowly spread that I was leaving before the end of the school year, the silence was palpable.
Let me digress for a moment. When the students of Kwethluk are asked what the number one problem is in the school, an overwhelming majority will tell you that the worst problem is bullying. Bullying? I saw it more overtly among the children, mostly in how they bully animals. Unleashed dogs cower in the street when you approach them, afraid of being beaten. I saw the kids pick up sticks and throw them at dogs or hit dogs with them. I saw them taunt Nali when she was on her chain, teasing her with candy or lunging at her trying to make her scared. Nali has a strange scar on her coat that looks like it’s the result of a burn, perhaps a lighter burn. I always kept Nali close to me in the village, except when she was on the chain during the day, because I was afraid of what the children would do to her if she were left unattended.
As teenagers, these are unbelievably quiet kids from a silent culture that speaks with facial expressions. As a high school teacher in the village, I never saw pushing, shoving, name calling, none of that. Where was the bullying? The affected students would say, “It’s the way they look at me.” How do you punish that? How do you even identify that? Bullying is so serious that it leads teenagers to move from village to village in an effort to escape the offenders. In the most grave cases, it leads to suicide. These young adults feel isolated, shunned, even hated… all because of a look. It doesn’t just happen in the teen culture. They learn it from the adults.
After I gave my notice that I was leaving, the attitude of the entire village, school included, changed towards me. When I would walk into the school office, employees (all Yupik) would look at me like I was a traitor and then turn their back to me. No words were spoken. When I would meet a Yupik teacher walking down the hall, they would give me the traitor look and then look away without saying a word. It’s hard to explain, but it was all in the look. You’d know it if you saw it. It happened at the post office, the local Native store, everywhere. Where else in the world do they ostracize you as a traitor for leaving town to go back to where you came from? There was no pizza party to celebrate my new endeavor (like we do at the Homer News when someone leaves). There were no good wishes from anyone. There were only silence, looks, and turned shoulders. As if the previous seven months of isolation hadn’t been enough? The looks became so severe that I feared for my safety.
This was all compounded by the incident a few weeks earlier when I published a blog post that turned out to be incredibly controversial (it’s the one in February with a ton of comments). After that incident, I was warned by a student (via text), “Im concerned about ur blog bc the word went out to parents… I think u deserve to feel safe and comfortable here in kwt. Im concerned about what parents might do bc some don’t get your message as you intended bc I didn’t in the beginning & its something to b concerned about.”
When I told the student not to worry about it, they responded, “No…No! Its something to worry about.” And then, “I’m just doing what I feel best & trying to help you out. & if possible protect u. I don’t know how parents found out about your blog & idk if they’ll try to remove you. One thing I know, it was shown to me… and after that it was the ‘talk’ of the town. Im concerned, like im scared for you. Idk what actions are coming from community. Misunderstandings can go a loong way!”
I reported the threats to the principal and the district school psychologist. I was dismissed both times. Thankfully, I didn’t stay long enough to see if the threats would actually come to fruition.
I began barricading my doors at night and sleeping with a loaded .357 Magnum on my bedside table. Bullying. That’s really all it was. This place that I wanted so badly to call my home had become my nightmare. However, I had come to understand what my students meant when they talked about bullying being all about certain looks. No words needed.
As soon as I arrived, I unpacked… everything. I hung pictures on the walls, filled shelves with books and personal items, hung all of my clothes in the closet, unpacked everything I owned. I settled in and made it home.
Of course, before I unpacked, I had to clean the house from top to bottom. It was the filthiest place I’d ever moved in to. The shower was brown with buildup and I scrubbed it white. The bathroom sink had soap scum and whiskers (obviously, the previous occupants had been male) caked everywhere. The kitchen cabinets had a sticky goo on the outside from steam and cooking fumes. The gas stovetop was brown until I scrubbed the plates back to their original country blue color. The floors took several moppings to come clean and the walls all had to be wiped down because of the mosquitoes smashed and dried right where they had met their demise on the walls and ceiling. The broken window screens had to be duck-taped so that we could get fresh air. The freezer had dried blood and other liquids cemented to the walls and bottom. All was cleaned and scrubbed by us and our new 4th and 5th grade friends who had become our welcoming committee and were as happy to help us clean as to try on our hockey equipment. The living room furniture was stained and had an odor, but a good spray of Febreeze and brand new furniture covers made them feel like new. By the time we were done, one little boy asked if he could sleep in our house. He explained that he’d be happy to just sleep on the coffee table and not be any trouble at all. It made us all wonder in what conditions he must live at home.
We made that house our home and settled in for the long haul.
Fellow teachers (first-years, like me) loved to come over because they said it felt more like home than their house. But, those visits only happened a couple of times before we all became too busy with school. In addition, I was the only teacher to live next to the school. Everyone else lived a mile away in the multiple teacher housing units clumped together “downtown”, which really meant down river. That created a mental distance between us that seemed greater than the physical distance. The teachers who lived downtown shared meals and movies and outings on the river. They watched out for each other, confided in one another, and frequented each other’s homes. They took trips together to Bethel and Anchorage. Other than Thanksgiving and the SuperBowl and one isolated game night, I was not invited to join them. It was not purposeful, I know that, but it still was what it was.
I was an outsider.
It is true that I did not invite teachers over to my house for get-togethers because I thought that would make Sarah uncomfortable – having all of her teachers over for dinner or movies. It would have been easier for me to go to their houses. I was the only teacher (white teacher, which is what I’m talking about when I talk about the teachers… because the Yupik teachers were completely separate from the white teachers) in the village with a child in my home.
After four months of isolation from the Yupik community and the teacher community, I knew that I wouldn’t sign on for a second year. It was November when I realized that my dreams were just smoke dissipating before my very eyes. My dreams didn’t exist. I couldn’t make it here. I couldn’t survive in a remote, off the road system, Yupik village. If I couldn’t do that, then I surely couldn’t survive living off the grid, like my big dream had been. I couldn’t do it emotionally, and I couldn’t do it physically. After the unbelievably poor health care during two bouts with pneumonia, I knew I’d never put myself in that kind of jeopardy again. I had too much to live for to sacrifice it all for people who wouldn’t even speak to me, who didn’t even want me there. I had been wrong about it all. My dreams were unfounded. My goals were unrealistic. My hopes were dangling by a thread.
Shortly after sending Sarah back to Homer in February, I began to check the want-ads in the Homer News. I knew that if I waited until summer to look for a job, there would be none. Homer hunkers down and faithfully serves tourists from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The employment turnover and hiring happens in the spring. When I accepted the job as an Advertising Sales Representative for the Homer News, I knew my life was about to take an unexpected turn.
After I gave my notice to the principal and word slowly spread that I was leaving before the end of the school year, the silence was palpable.
Let me digress for a moment. When the students of Kwethluk are asked what the number one problem is in the school, an overwhelming majority will tell you that the worst problem is bullying. Bullying? I saw it more overtly among the children, mostly in how they bully animals. Unleashed dogs cower in the street when you approach them, afraid of being beaten. I saw the kids pick up sticks and throw them at dogs or hit dogs with them. I saw them taunt Nali when she was on her chain, teasing her with candy or lunging at her trying to make her scared. Nali has a strange scar on her coat that looks like it’s the result of a burn, perhaps a lighter burn. I always kept Nali close to me in the village, except when she was on the chain during the day, because I was afraid of what the children would do to her if she were left unattended.
As teenagers, these are unbelievably quiet kids from a silent culture that speaks with facial expressions. As a high school teacher in the village, I never saw pushing, shoving, name calling, none of that. Where was the bullying? The affected students would say, “It’s the way they look at me.” How do you punish that? How do you even identify that? Bullying is so serious that it leads teenagers to move from village to village in an effort to escape the offenders. In the most grave cases, it leads to suicide. These young adults feel isolated, shunned, even hated… all because of a look. It doesn’t just happen in the teen culture. They learn it from the adults.
After I gave my notice that I was leaving, the attitude of the entire village, school included, changed towards me. When I would walk into the school office, employees (all Yupik) would look at me like I was a traitor and then turn their back to me. No words were spoken. When I would meet a Yupik teacher walking down the hall, they would give me the traitor look and then look away without saying a word. It’s hard to explain, but it was all in the look. You’d know it if you saw it. It happened at the post office, the local Native store, everywhere. Where else in the world do they ostracize you as a traitor for leaving town to go back to where you came from? There was no pizza party to celebrate my new endeavor (like we do at the Homer News when someone leaves). There were no good wishes from anyone. There were only silence, looks, and turned shoulders. As if the previous seven months of isolation hadn’t been enough? The looks became so severe that I feared for my safety.
This was all compounded by the incident a few weeks earlier when I published a blog post that turned out to be incredibly controversial (it’s the one in February with a ton of comments). After that incident, I was warned by a student (via text), “Im concerned about ur blog bc the word went out to parents… I think u deserve to feel safe and comfortable here in kwt. Im concerned about what parents might do bc some don’t get your message as you intended bc I didn’t in the beginning & its something to b concerned about.”
When I told the student not to worry about it, they responded, “No…No! Its something to worry about.” And then, “I’m just doing what I feel best & trying to help you out. & if possible protect u. I don’t know how parents found out about your blog & idk if they’ll try to remove you. One thing I know, it was shown to me… and after that it was the ‘talk’ of the town. Im concerned, like im scared for you. Idk what actions are coming from community. Misunderstandings can go a loong way!”
I reported the threats to the principal and the district school psychologist. I was dismissed both times. Thankfully, I didn’t stay long enough to see if the threats would actually come to fruition.
I began barricading my doors at night and sleeping with a loaded .357 Magnum on my bedside table. Bullying. That’s really all it was. This place that I wanted so badly to call my home had become my nightmare. However, I had come to understand what my students meant when they talked about bullying being all about certain looks. No words needed.
Sending Sarah
Three strikes and you’re out, right? That’s a pretty good rule to live by.
Shortly after Christmas break, I realized that it was time to send Sarah back to civilization. We received her fall ACT scores and her math and science were lower than we would have liked, although her Reading was a solid 29. (We were to find out later that that was the highest Reading score of any village in our area – which, remember, is the size of Ohio!) The low math and science scores were strike one. That is not to say that her teachers weren’t super and doing the best they could, but in a class with students all achieving at a level way below average, she just wasn’t being taught the necessary skills.
Strike two came when we realized that her spring semester science course would be Earth Science, which she took in the 8th grade (she’s a junior in high school). The teacher understood her plight and offered for Sarah to make the class an independent study and do a series of in-depth projects of her choosing. It was the best option given the situation, but that certainly wasn’t going to raise her science ACT score. Strike two.
The third strike was more insidious, having been there all along, hiding in the bushes. It reared its ugly head and showed itself fully in January. Sarah had taken Art as her elective. She loves art. She loves to draw and paint and create. There were only a handful of students in the class at any given time, maybe seven or so. On Thursdays, the teacher began to invite the middle schoolers to join them in art class. All of the high schoolers would sit at different tables and the middle school students would file in and fill up the various tables, so that each table had at least one high school student at it. The first Thursday, no middle schoolers sat at Sarah’s table. As a matter of fact, they filled the other tables, and when the tables ran out of room, they took the chairs from Sarah’s table and moved them to other tables. It was awkward and Sarah was left to work alone. The teacher said nothing.
The next Thursday, the same thing happened again. Of course, Sarah’s reaction was, “I don’t care; they’re all stupid anyway.” However, I know what it’s like to be 16 and this had to be affecting her on some level. I thought about confronting the teacher, but ours was a small school, only five high school teachers, so to say something to a veteran bush teacher (she had been in Kwethluk six years) would have been detrimental, to say the least. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t the right thing to do. The third Thursday, Katie, Sarah’s friend from Homer, was visiting us and had gone to school with Sarah. She watched the same thing happen for the third week in a row. Katie was awestruck that such a thing could actually happen in 2011 and that the teacher would stand idly by. Good, so it wasn’t just me.
Those three things – low ACT scores, lack of adequate Science curriculum, and the outward shunning – led me to send Sarah back to Homer with Katie on the afternoon flight out of Kwethluk on Tuesday, February 8th.
She had learned many lessons in the bush.
She learned how to be alone.
She learned what it felt like to make straight A’s and she learned how attainable that is.
She learned the importance of a few good friends over many mediocre friends.
She learned that her mother wasn’t Hitler.
She learned that she wanted to go to college.
She learned the importance of accepting outsiders.
She discovered who she was and how to be comfortable with that.
My only hope was that she would hold these lessons dear as she took them with her back to Homer.
I cried every day as I thought of her leaving. Then, I cried every day after she left. She went back to Homer and lived with Katie’s family – a really great nuclear family with strict parents and two high school daughters in the home. They had an Indian foreign exchange student living with them first semester, so they were already prepared for a third daughter second semester as the Indian girl had moved on to another family.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, sending her 450 miles away. Not only did I miss my daughter terribly, but she had become my only friend and now I was utterly, totally, completely alone. The days were long and the evenings were quiet. Very little was said to me about her at school. It was like she had evaporated and no one even missed her. My funny, outgoing, redheaded daughter had left no friends behind after having lived in that village for over six months. She had never even been invited over to someone’s house.
I’m sure some were glad to see her go. She raised the bar too high academically, uncomfortably high for some students, and even a teacher or two. She didn’t party, use tobacco, or eskimo dance – that cut out many social opportunities.
During the fall Volleyball season, she had observed a teammate (and teen-parent of a small child) using tobacco (“chew”) in the classroom where they were staying at a neighboring village… with their coach in the room. If you don’t know, all players and their parents have to sign TAD (Tobacco, Alcohol, Drug) contracts at the beginning of the season, stating that they will abstain from these substances and if they don’t, it states what the consequences are – suspension from the team, etc. The coach knew the student (a very valuable player often voted MVP at tournaments) had tobacco and did not say anything about it until midnight or so, when she told the player to spit it out and go to bed (the coach let the girls stay up late using the school laptops for personal use, chewing tobacco, and drinking pop and eating junk food). All of this was so far out of whack for us that it felt like we were in the twilight zone. Homer sports coaches endeavor to keep their players healthy – village coaches… well, I’m not sure.
Sarah told me about the incident when she got home and we went to the Dean and the Principal, both of whom agreed that to bring this situation into the “light” would mean labeling Sarah as a snitch, because even if they said it was an anonymous tip, everyone would know who it was. This could be dangerous for Sarah. So, nothing was ever said or done. That’s how most things are dealt with in the village. Fear is the rule of the day.
This is only one of hundreds of things that happened in the village that I never blogged about while living there. You understand why, I’m sure.
I knew that being apart from Sarah was only a temporary thing. I’d be back in Homer by the end of May and we would find normal again. As if I didn’t feel bad enough sending her back without me, her father had to have his say. He said to her (and texted to me) that she’d probably never live with me again, that he hoped the people she was staying with liked her because she’d probably have to live there until she graduated from high school. He told her that I’d probably never come back for her. Yep, that’s right! Can you imagine someone, especially her own father, being that insensitive? Thankfully, she has a strong heart and we are thick as thieves.
My heart ached as she went to the Valentine’s Dance and I saw the pictures on Facebook.
One day, about three weeks after she had gone back to Homer, one of the office workers asked me if Sarah was playing basketball (meaning, for Kwethluk). I said, “No, she’s not much of a basketball player. She played volleyball, but soccer’s really her favorite sport.” The woman looked at me funny (since there is no soccer team in Kwethluk) and I explained, “I sent her back to Homer a few weeks ago to finish out the school year.” She hadn’t even realized that the only white kid in the village hadn’t been around for the past three weeks! When I told her that Sarah was gone, she simply raised her eyebrows and chin with disdain as she humphed, “Oh,” and turned away. It was like she thought I was a traitor, that Sarah was a traitor for leaving. There was no “I hope she’s doing well.” or “That’s good; I’m sure she’s happier there.” or “Tell her I said ‘Hello’.” Just silence and a turned shoulder.
It was the best thing for Sarah. It was the hardest thing for me.
Shortly after Christmas break, I realized that it was time to send Sarah back to civilization. We received her fall ACT scores and her math and science were lower than we would have liked, although her Reading was a solid 29. (We were to find out later that that was the highest Reading score of any village in our area – which, remember, is the size of Ohio!) The low math and science scores were strike one. That is not to say that her teachers weren’t super and doing the best they could, but in a class with students all achieving at a level way below average, she just wasn’t being taught the necessary skills.
Strike two came when we realized that her spring semester science course would be Earth Science, which she took in the 8th grade (she’s a junior in high school). The teacher understood her plight and offered for Sarah to make the class an independent study and do a series of in-depth projects of her choosing. It was the best option given the situation, but that certainly wasn’t going to raise her science ACT score. Strike two.
The third strike was more insidious, having been there all along, hiding in the bushes. It reared its ugly head and showed itself fully in January. Sarah had taken Art as her elective. She loves art. She loves to draw and paint and create. There were only a handful of students in the class at any given time, maybe seven or so. On Thursdays, the teacher began to invite the middle schoolers to join them in art class. All of the high schoolers would sit at different tables and the middle school students would file in and fill up the various tables, so that each table had at least one high school student at it. The first Thursday, no middle schoolers sat at Sarah’s table. As a matter of fact, they filled the other tables, and when the tables ran out of room, they took the chairs from Sarah’s table and moved them to other tables. It was awkward and Sarah was left to work alone. The teacher said nothing.
The next Thursday, the same thing happened again. Of course, Sarah’s reaction was, “I don’t care; they’re all stupid anyway.” However, I know what it’s like to be 16 and this had to be affecting her on some level. I thought about confronting the teacher, but ours was a small school, only five high school teachers, so to say something to a veteran bush teacher (she had been in Kwethluk six years) would have been detrimental, to say the least. I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t the right thing to do. The third Thursday, Katie, Sarah’s friend from Homer, was visiting us and had gone to school with Sarah. She watched the same thing happen for the third week in a row. Katie was awestruck that such a thing could actually happen in 2011 and that the teacher would stand idly by. Good, so it wasn’t just me.
Those three things – low ACT scores, lack of adequate Science curriculum, and the outward shunning – led me to send Sarah back to Homer with Katie on the afternoon flight out of Kwethluk on Tuesday, February 8th.
She had learned many lessons in the bush.
She learned how to be alone.
She learned what it felt like to make straight A’s and she learned how attainable that is.
She learned the importance of a few good friends over many mediocre friends.
She learned that her mother wasn’t Hitler.
She learned that she wanted to go to college.
She learned the importance of accepting outsiders.
She discovered who she was and how to be comfortable with that.
My only hope was that she would hold these lessons dear as she took them with her back to Homer.
I cried every day as I thought of her leaving. Then, I cried every day after she left. She went back to Homer and lived with Katie’s family – a really great nuclear family with strict parents and two high school daughters in the home. They had an Indian foreign exchange student living with them first semester, so they were already prepared for a third daughter second semester as the Indian girl had moved on to another family.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, sending her 450 miles away. Not only did I miss my daughter terribly, but she had become my only friend and now I was utterly, totally, completely alone. The days were long and the evenings were quiet. Very little was said to me about her at school. It was like she had evaporated and no one even missed her. My funny, outgoing, redheaded daughter had left no friends behind after having lived in that village for over six months. She had never even been invited over to someone’s house.
I’m sure some were glad to see her go. She raised the bar too high academically, uncomfortably high for some students, and even a teacher or two. She didn’t party, use tobacco, or eskimo dance – that cut out many social opportunities.
During the fall Volleyball season, she had observed a teammate (and teen-parent of a small child) using tobacco (“chew”) in the classroom where they were staying at a neighboring village… with their coach in the room. If you don’t know, all players and their parents have to sign TAD (Tobacco, Alcohol, Drug) contracts at the beginning of the season, stating that they will abstain from these substances and if they don’t, it states what the consequences are – suspension from the team, etc. The coach knew the student (a very valuable player often voted MVP at tournaments) had tobacco and did not say anything about it until midnight or so, when she told the player to spit it out and go to bed (the coach let the girls stay up late using the school laptops for personal use, chewing tobacco, and drinking pop and eating junk food). All of this was so far out of whack for us that it felt like we were in the twilight zone. Homer sports coaches endeavor to keep their players healthy – village coaches… well, I’m not sure.
Sarah told me about the incident when she got home and we went to the Dean and the Principal, both of whom agreed that to bring this situation into the “light” would mean labeling Sarah as a snitch, because even if they said it was an anonymous tip, everyone would know who it was. This could be dangerous for Sarah. So, nothing was ever said or done. That’s how most things are dealt with in the village. Fear is the rule of the day.
This is only one of hundreds of things that happened in the village that I never blogged about while living there. You understand why, I’m sure.
I knew that being apart from Sarah was only a temporary thing. I’d be back in Homer by the end of May and we would find normal again. As if I didn’t feel bad enough sending her back without me, her father had to have his say. He said to her (and texted to me) that she’d probably never live with me again, that he hoped the people she was staying with liked her because she’d probably have to live there until she graduated from high school. He told her that I’d probably never come back for her. Yep, that’s right! Can you imagine someone, especially her own father, being that insensitive? Thankfully, she has a strong heart and we are thick as thieves.
My heart ached as she went to the Valentine’s Dance and I saw the pictures on Facebook.
One day, about three weeks after she had gone back to Homer, one of the office workers asked me if Sarah was playing basketball (meaning, for Kwethluk). I said, “No, she’s not much of a basketball player. She played volleyball, but soccer’s really her favorite sport.” The woman looked at me funny (since there is no soccer team in Kwethluk) and I explained, “I sent her back to Homer a few weeks ago to finish out the school year.” She hadn’t even realized that the only white kid in the village hadn’t been around for the past three weeks! When I told her that Sarah was gone, she simply raised her eyebrows and chin with disdain as she humphed, “Oh,” and turned away. It was like she thought I was a traitor, that Sarah was a traitor for leaving. There was no “I hope she’s doing well.” or “That’s good; I’m sure she’s happier there.” or “Tell her I said ‘Hello’.” Just silence and a turned shoulder.
It was the best thing for Sarah. It was the hardest thing for me.
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