Fall In-service

Here we go again!  This last week was the annual "Whine about it aloud but secretly enjoy the BSSD Education Conference."  For those not familiar with the way we do things here in the Bering Strait School District, the fall in-service is our one chance each school year to get together as a district.  Because the district is composed of 15 native villages spread out across 80,000 square miles (yes, you did read that correctly) of Alaskan nothing-ness, most of our communication is done through e-mail, Skype, and video-conferencing (or some combination thereof).  During the last week of the first quarter, the district flies everyone to Unalakleet - the village that houses the district office - for 4 days of in-service workshops.  We sleep on the floor of classrooms, eat cafeteria food, use communal bathrooms, and just generally get to know our colleagues a lot better.  It's hard to stay superficial with people you see first thing in the morning.

We were given travel lists the week before, so we knew we were flying out early afternoon on Monday.  That meant we had all of Monday morning to putter around and be generally unproductive in our classrooms.  I got report card comments done, but not much else.  Because we were flying on the district plane (yes, our district has its own plane and pilot), we flew out 30 minutes earlier than planned.  The rest of Monday was pretty standard - claiming an air mattress that would hopefully not leak, attend the mercifully short keynote and welcome (it lasted 20 minutes total - sweet!), and hang out with people we hadn't seen since last year.

The real fun started Tuesday.  We had a few minutes for Team Time in the morning - time for each staff to get together to do whatever we wanted to do.  Tuesday's Team Time was great - the principal wasn't there so we sat around and chatted for half an hour.  After that, we all split up to attend a full-day workshop that we had chosen in advance.  The workshop I went to was supposed to be about integrating the new science materials into the curriculum.  That was not what it was actually about.  It turned out to be about using science journals as a tool for learning.  We got into the new science materials in the last hour, but that hour was spent making sure everyone had access to the online resources.  After considerable confusion, I finally got logged on and found out that the online resources consist of the print resources, online.  Absolutely worthless.  I sound pessimistic about this, but it wasn't all bad.  The workshop description said "integrating the new science materials" and that is what I need help with.  I picked up a couple of ideas about teaching the scientific process and got a couple of book suggestions; it just wasn't what I was expecting or had hoped for. 

There were optional evening activities planned, but I didn't really participate.  The Land Bridge Tollbooth band, all-staff volleyball tournament, and open mic night just didn't sound super-interesting.  I instead did homework - real interesting, I know.  This is week 7 out of 8, which turned out to be one of the more work-heavy weeks of the course. 

Things just continued to get better on Wednesday.  I took some Midol, put a smile on my face, and was determined to make the day a good one.  Team Time was not much more productive than day 1, but we at least had some semblance of a conversation.  The workshop I was signed up for was Smart Board and Technology.  I was actually excited about it.  I have a Smart Board, but I don't really know how to use it to my advantage.  (I can't use it right now because the projector bulb is burned out, but that's a whole different story.)  We spent the first 90 minutes making sure everyone had the software installed correctly.  I had the software installed, but I'm apparently missing some of the "gallery items."  None of the guys leading the workshop could figure out why, but I'm supposed to run an update when I get connected to an internet connection that isn't so overloaded.  We were then given the rest of the day to play around with the software.  Fantastic.  6 hours.  I explored it all in the first hour.  So did most of the rest of the class.  Like I mentioned before, I can't use my Smart Board currently because of projector issues, so I couldn't work on lessons or anything.  After lunch, I think about half the class was on Facebook.  The other half of us were attempting to maintain a facade of actually working, but I know I am not the only one who was updating my School Improvement Plan goals.  The guys leading the conference knew that most of us weren't working, but didn't have anything planned, so it was an informal session of wasted time. 

Thursday was travel day, just like Monday.  We attended 2 shorter workshop sessions in the morning.  The first one I attended was about using theater in the classroom.  It was a lot of fun, not particularly relevant, but fun.  The second was about writing strategies.  I got a couple of ideas about teaching beginning/middle/end, but that's about it.  The keynote and conclusion was mercilessly long.  The keynote speaker started at 11, and went on and on and on about poverty and our students who live in poverty, and I'm still thinking about the implications of what she was saying.  105 minutes later, the district office staff was rushing through door prizes because some flights were scheduled to leave at 1.  They were charter flights, so it's not like they were going to leave without us, but it's not nice to keep the pilots and airline people waiting.  Besides, everyone is anxious to get home by Thursday afternoon, and the district people want to move everyone out as quickly as possible.

Note to planners - having 6 sites load up their stuff, make sandwiches for lunch, load up the trucks and get to the airport all through 1 door in 15 minutes is not going to happen.  Lunch fell by the wayside.  I was on one of those 1:00 flights and ended up grabbing a bag of chips for lunch that I ate after I got home.  Our flight was smooth until the end.  We flew into a cloud bank about the time we started descending.  I was pretty sure we were going to get diverted due to clouds blocking the runway from sight.  So, here we are, descending through thick clouds, and the pilot is looking not at his instruments or out the windshield, but at his flight log and recording whatever it is they are supposed to record.  It was all I could do to trust him to not fly us into the ocean or splash us across the face of a mountain.  He got us down, safe and sound, in a snowstorm.  Within 15 minutes of getting home, the sun was shining brightly, melting the snow that had just fallen.

We whine and gripe and complain about having to travel to Unalakleet, sleep on the floor, eat cafeteria food, and share living conditions, but that's to be expected.  I think "enjoy" is too strong of a word, but I always come home with at least one new idea of a lesson or strategy or something to implement.  I may have attended mostly worthless workshops, but it wasn't a completely wasted week.  Friday's workday was very productive - I hate clutter and mess and disorganization, and I spent a better part of the afternoon cleaning out cupboards and either throwing away or boxing up stuff that I didn't even know I had.  It's all from previous teachers and most of it was outdated and unusable anyway.  The problem isn't completely solved, but I feel much better about the state of my cupboards.  If nothing else, the kids had an entire week off and will (hopefully) come back to school on Monday rested and ready to work. 

Patterns (for lack of a better term)

I am obsessed with patterns and relationships between things and random occurrences in things like numbers, dates, letters, and life.  For example, tomorrow's date is 10-10-10.  It's a Sunday, but oh, how I love it when those days fall on weekdays so that I can point them out to my kids.  December 11th of this year is 12-11-10.  That's a Saturday, so no fun there, either.  As I was getting ready for the school year, I noticed some curious things about my students' names and their initials.

• 3 of the 4 names begin with E.
• Two of my students have the exact same initials.
• Another student has the initials CD.
• One student has the initials E.T.  (I commented on it once and he looked at me as though I had grown another head.  He had never heard of that movie.  Neither had anyone else in the class.) 

Most people don't notice things like this, nor do they particularly care.  I, however, take joy in picking them out and bringing attention to the patterns that I see.