Cold Hands, Warm Heart

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Nome, Alaska, United States
After getting burned out teaching high school in a tiny Alaskan town, I have moved on to being a child advocate in a small Alaskan town. The struggles are similar, but now I can buy milk at the store.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Limited sunlight

Now that I've moved farther south, I have the joy of having more sunlight. Even now, in the darkest week of the year, I still have a fair amount of sunlight. Of course, it's a bit hard to see, since I have one 2x2 classroom window that looks into the kindergarden room unless you're hanging out of it.

Up north, in Shishmaref, they're down to about two hours of direct sunlight right now.

My friend, Lisa Ripper, stepped outside of her door every hour for 12 hours, and took a picture of the world around her. Please go look at her fantastic pictures here:

http://ontheroadwiththerippers.blogspot.com/2012/12/12-hours-in-shishmaref.html

It is amazing to see just how little light they have. Since I live up here, I don't notice the change from day to day.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Talking to Students

This morning, during class, I was giving a student some direct instruction on his persuasive essay. He'd been gone for a while, so we were trying to catch him up quickly.

In an attempt to get him done faster, I was being very specific about what he should write down. The following conversation was so funny to me at the time that I decided to share with all of you:


"Write down, 'Credit cards are bad for teens.' ”

“Credit cards are bad 14.”

"Why did you write 14?"

"You said fourteen."

"No. For teens." 

Ahh, and suddenly it all made sense.