March 3, 2007

I've been very busy since I last wrote in my blog. I spent 7 days in Holy Cross, one of our school district villages on the Yukon River. I expecting to get to 3 villages but one of them was getting a new principal teacher and I was advised to wait until she settled in. When I got to Holy Cross, I discovered that it would take the full week to really get things done.

Holy Cross is a beautiful, clean school (painted a bright green on the outside)


The interior is bright and lively (as you can see in the picture of the commons room) and the staff is wonderful. I stayed in one of the teacher apartments which are attached to the house where the principal lives.

I worked about 10 hours a day for all 7 days, but the principal had me to her house for dinner every night. I managed to sort the fiction from the non-fiction and pull out Alaska and Indian books. Then I alphabetized all the fiction: adult, juvenile, and Alaskan. Non-fiction will sort more easily if and when they get the online catalog system working. What amazed and delighted me was how excited the students were about getting their library sorted so that they could find a book. On Thursday the middle- school class came to the library and went through the alphabetic stacks I had at the time. Friday their teacher came to the library, very excited, to say that it was the very first time everyone in her class was reading something they were enjoying during Silent Sustained Reading. I also give classes on how to use the library and how to authenticate web sites.

I returned Sunday night about 9:30 with the students coming to McGrath for Technical/Vocational week. I was scheduled to teach cake decorating that week, but the decorating kits didn't arrive until the week after. But, I kept busy until I flew out early Thursday morning to Anchorage and then to Juneau.

I attended the Alaska Library Association Conference in Juneau and learned so much that my head is still crammed with the new information. What a gorgeous town Juneau is.


The town is only a couple blocks deep and then is mountain almost straight up. I roomed with the librarian from the Nome School District. While there, I ran into an old friend from the Kenai Peninsula who works at the Anchorage Municipal Library. She was so surprised to see me because she didn't know I was a librarian. The people I met from all over Alaska were so very wonderful and welcoming. Interestingly enough, the keynote speaker at the Author's Luncheon was from North Carolina.

Today was the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Dogsled Race. They will be arriving in McGrath about the middle of the week. There's a problem this year because there isn't much snow. Even the ceremonial start was shorter than usual. A couple weeks ago, my landlords had a dinner party and one couple who had lived in McGrath many year, spent a lot of time talking about back when the mushers stayed at people houses. They personally know most of the longtime racers including my doctor from Soldotna. I volunteered for the week, but haven't heard from the coordinator yet. Thursday morning, the upper-elementary teacher has arranged for Gary Paulsen to come to her class with, I think, the Teacher on the Trail. About the year I moved to North Carolina, the Iditarod Committee chose the first Teacher on the Trail. Each year, they sponsor a teacher from somewhere in the lower 48 to come to Alaska and assist with the race, with the proviso that the teacher write a web page for children all over the country.

In my next entry, I'll tell you my first hand experiences.

Oh, my best friend from Portland has gotten a position in McGrath. She will be coming the second week of April to do alcohol counseling in several of the neighboring villages. I hope I can secure a house for us to share.