Barrow

Flew into Barrow Sunday night. Sea ice is pretty broken up and was blown off shore. Took some photos out the window as were were landing. When I got off the plane in the tiny Barrow airport, a tall bearded man, looked at me and said "Kerri?" as if I was wearing a name tag. "How did you know?" Brain, my new Principal said, you look like a science teacher. While we were waiting for our bags we were driven to the store to get something to eat. We are staying at Ilisagvik College.

Sea Ice Near the Shore... A seal skeleton at the college.

There are about 70 new hires in the district. We are all here in Barrow for the new teacher training. The North slope Borough School district has many struggling schools, not making Annual Yearly Progress... including the school where I will be teaching. I think I have discovered the purpose of the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools that are struggling are forced to take some sort of corrective actions... many school are buying assessment tools and programs. We are going to be using many packed programs that the district is paying big bucks for... The No Child Left Behind Act is to make big business in small struggling schools. These Corporations that make these assessment tools are like the contractors in Iraq, they are just there to make money... Now I get the purpose of the NCLB... When I was in a school that made AYP every year I did not understand...

The North Slope School District is very generous. Today we found out about the Pay for Performance plan. Basically, if I do my job, keep in contact with parents, write Individual Learning Plans for a few students and work together with my colleagues, communicate with parents, take college classes and continue to develop myself as a teacher, I can earn an additional $3,000 a year. If my school makes AYP I get $500. It won't. My new school has never made AYP.

There is a $3,000 stipend for living in a village. This will help pay for shipping in my groceries and flying out to Fairbanks for a weekend. It costs about $0.90/ lbs to have fresh or frozen food flown in to me. There is plenty of good food available in Fairbanks and Fred Myers will have it shipped to me.

After about 6 hours of mind numbing seminars on how to use the packed programs to assess and track our students we were invited over to Inupiat Heritage Center for a Village pot luck.

This was my chance to sample many of the traditional dishes...

I tried muktuk, or whale, Bowhead whale and beluga whale, seal, caribou stew and eider soup. Great, this may be some species of Eider I that is not on my life list, but now if in my stomach. An Eider is a sea duck that eats muscles.

The Potluck was held as part of the Village Elder's Council. The Seal Skin in the photo below is painted to symbolize the past, present and future.

I have Whale breath and can not wait to get home to brush my teeth.