ELL Training in Mountain Village

Yesterday we flew back to Mountain Village.  It's kind of fun this time because I've been here before and slept in the "Hilton" but the others haven't (who are relatively new here).  The EMO teachers and IL's got our own chartered flight to Mountain because we were enough that it was cheaper (8 of us) (most of the sights got their own flights).  The flight in was....horrific....I almost threw up a few times.  The pilot did his best with the wind and weather he was given.  50MPH winds.  Yeah, not so fun on a Bush Plane.  We got here, and ate some "New York Strip Steak" (notice the quotes).

We found out we were staying in rooms based on schools and gender...Sara and Nate are married...come on... So we decided Nate could crash our room:).  So we're also with the Hooper Bay girls...so it's Sara, Nate, me, Mary (Hooper Bay), and Jenna (Hooper Bay).  We're the fun room!  We walked down to the store here and got supplies to eat snacks last night and watch a movie (Mary's a movie buff so she brought a bunch).  However, we just talked and ate and didn't end up watching a movie.

By the way, half of us are here at Mountain and half of the district are in Hooper Bay.  They used to do it "Up River/Down River."  If you were "Up River" on the map (the district basically is all on the Yukon River), then you went to Mountain Village.  If you were "Down River" you went to Hooper Bay.  However, this year they decided to break us up between Elementary teachers and Secondary teachers.  So, Phoebe, Laura, and the other elementary teachers are at Hooper, and us secondary teachers are here at Mountain.

I don't know what they're doing in Hooper, but the secondary teachers are learning about ELL teaching (English Language Learners).  All the students here are raised with Yup'ik and English in home and school, so they aren't fluent in either.  So technically, we have 82% of our population of students as ELL.

I got a migraine after lunch today, which didn't feel great.  I took some medicine which made me tired.  So, I took a nap once we wrapped up at 3:00pm, and while all the "cool room people" watched a movie in our room.  I was so tired I slept through it mostly.  I didn't sleep a lot last night. 

Oh, again, by the way, we stay at the school.  Luckily for the IL's, Mountain has the "Hilton" for them to stay in, but there are too many teachers to stay there.  So whenever we travel in the district or with the kids, we usually stay in classrooms.  So we're sleeping on cots and air mattresses with our sleeping bags :).  It's fun.  Yes, mildly annoying, but fun.  We get to act like kids again.  And we get to see each other and the other villages.  All right, I think I'm going to take another nap:).