11-11-2012

Sunset on Swan Lake.
We are standing in the middle of the lake.

Well, the elections are over for this cycle and the voice of the people was heard through the vote: the theme on our bulletin board will change.  The chant in our class wasn’t, “Four more years!” but “Change that board!”. At least our election wasn’t filled with fear mongering and distortions of the truth like a couple of adults I’ve heard about.

I’m not sure if I’m more proud of the fact that my students behaved better than the adults or disappointed in the behavior of the adults during this election. Good God, those commercials were driving me crazy. Each one tried to paint their opponent as some evil monster, hell-bent on destroying our country for no other reason than their pure evilness. And those were the pizza commercials. The campaign commercials were worse. One of my students found out that “Obama don’t allow gum!” I didn’t watch all of the debates, but I’m sure that was put out there. 

But we are changing the out board. I do believe that it has only been changed once since school started in Aug. One of my many shortcomings as a teacher is my inability to offer more art projects for my students. I know the kids enjoy it but it is difficult for me since I have no artistic talent. My creative process usually involves bacon somehow. And I won’t waste bacon by hanging it on the wall.

The board will be changed to turkeys this week. We are involved in a project with another class in Wichita, Kansas through video teleconferencing. I went to Seward earlier this fall for training on how to work and use this equipment, so now we’ll see how we do. I know the kids are excited about talking with students in Kansas. I hope to use the VTC more this year, connecting with other schools in the country. 

Working hard in Mr. Clay's class.

We are also going to start using our VTC to receive Yupik instruction this year. We will start this on Tuesday, so we’ll be getting a lot of use with this VTC. I am excited about doing this because I am much worse at teaching Yupik language to Yupik kids than attempting to instruct art class. The Yupik language is difficult for a non-Yupik speaker because of the sounds of the language. I could be totally fluent in Yupik and still not be understood by the elders. The instructor is a Yupik speaking teacher at another school in our district. This makes more sense than having me attempt it. I fear I would totally screw up these kids’ ability to ever learn their language. 

Now with the elections over for a while, we can be bombarded with Christmas commercials. I am already sick of the jewelry commercials where a man spends way too much money to impress his wife/girlfriend/mistress. And here I look like a schmuck because I gave my wife a new bakeware set with explicit instructions on when to make Cinnabon cinnamon rolls. We call them delicious rolls. 

I want to thank all of our veterans for their service. And I want to give a shout-out to all of my shipmates. Thanks for what you did/do and thanks for the memories. Some memories are still fuzzy, some are embarrassing, and some are confusing. But most were a blast.