Emmonak School

Another teacher game me this link today so I could send it out, and I realized I haven't shown much of the school.  So I thought I'd give the link (possibly the video) and tell you a bit about the school.  Here's the link... It took about 25 minutes to download it.  It's about 22 minutes long and really well done by the kids!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5246892/Emmonak_0002.wmv

Judging by the looks of the kids compared to now, I would say it's from about 6 years ago.  A "few" things have changed a bit.  You won't see my classrooms in the video for confidentiality purposes.  It's FERPA.  AKA HIPPA for schools.  We can't show who's in SPED and who's not.  It's all confidentiality; it's a big part of my job.

The only teachers/staff that are the same are the head cook that you see at the beginning of the video in the office, the Yup'ik teacher (he's amazing and really dedicated to the kids), the 1st grade teacher (you see her for a short snip), the 4th grade teacher, and the Middle School math teacher.  She's married to the Middle School Language Arts teacher, but it's someone different in the video.  I wonder if he taught at the high school at the time the video was shot.

When in the 3rd grade classroom, it focuses on the "Husky Pups" sign.  We're the Huskies, so it fits:).  You see a student using a teacher-sized clock to do some work at one point.  This brings up a good point: I thought I would have to send everything here because it would be hard to get supplies in.  It's quite the opposite actually.  They have a lot of money to use on their school system in Alaska, and they order quite frequently at school.  Our programs order complete new sets every year, so we have a lot of extra stuff.  So, the teacher clock that the kid is using, we have about 5 in my classroom right now.  I bought a mini-student sized version before I came.  There are 3 classroom sets in the SPED room.  And we were offered more.  That means we have about 60 for our 30 student caseload.  We don't service more than maybe 10 at the same time...

In the Yup'ik classroom (it goes to it twice, it's the second time you enter it), you see a Quspak on the wall.  The women still wear them all the time around town.  A few of the Lower 48 people have had them made for them, also.  They're kind of a dressier sweatshirt, if I had to describe them.  They have a hood, a big pocket in the front for your hands, and ruffles on the bottom.  They're changing the way they're made now and coming out with new ones that don't have the ruffles for less "girly girls."

It talks of a Guitar Class that meets on VTC once per week.  We still have the guitars in the store room, but I don't know if it's taught anymore.  The teacher who put it together might have left.  The VTC is like Skyping but on a bigger computer and it's linked between all our schools.  We can do it with anyone anywhere, but we have it easily accessible for when we do it all the time between schools.  It's not like we can drive down the road to the other school for a meeting; we have to meet on VTC.

It also talks of Emmonak being a hub city because it's the only one to have an airport for hundreds of miles... Every town has an airport.  We do get in a bigger plane with a lot of supplies at least 3 times per week.  I don't know if that's what they meant...but every town has an airport.  Otherwise we couldn't get out of it! :)