School in Alaska

Well, I've finished paper number 3 for this class. I am now halfway done with these things. With only three more papers, and 9 weeks left, I'm feeling better about the whole thing.

This is a very special time of the year in Alaska. The horned rumor is alive and well. The best place to catch one of these is in the staff room, but classrooms, e-mails, and long distance phone calls are also a wonderful hiding place for the rumor. If you'd like to meet the rumor's fact-based cousin, there is a website to check:

http://www.alaskateacher.org/jobs/

Yup, this is the time of year when everyone in the district starts caring about who is staying, and who is running away. We're having a big turnover in the district this year, with most jobs being filled in-district, so along with the rumors, there is the gossip.

A couple years ago, when our school warranted another English teacher, the job was posted, and everyone in the district that checked it (and cared) thought I was leaving. Well, I'm still here. That job has gone through three people in the last three years. It's sort of our own Defense Against the Dark Arts job.

Another wonderful thing I found on the ATP  (that's Alaska Teacher Placement) website was this fan-freaking-tastic map:

There is a little confusion in my area, simply because the Nome School District is it's own tiny district (by land mass) inside our own district.  While it's not the biggest, I'm thinking that would be North Slope, (home of Barrow, not vampires) I'm going to say that we're probably a close second.

Here are some interesting facts from the website:

"Alaska’s approximately 500 public schools are organized within 55 school districts. These include 34 city and borough school districts and 19 Regional Educational Attendance Areas. REAAs serve students living in towns and villages in politically unorganized areas of rural Alaska. Alaska definitions of “city” and “borough” are not necessarily indicative of an urban setting, but refer to form of political organization."


"There was a time when school districts in Alaska paid teachers significantly more that other parts of the country, and offered many recruitment incentives. Those days are gone. Salaries are somewhere in the middle of the pack when adjusted for cost of living, and only in the top third in raw dollars.

District hiring incentives, such as moving allowances, roundtrip airfare for teachers and their dependents from Anchorage, free or almost free housing, and signing bonuses - all of which were frequently part of the packages teachers signed 12 - 20 years ago - simply don’t exist in today’s changed economic climate."

Okay, that's about all I've got for today. Happy Blogging.