First Day of School

And... here we go!!

This past week has flown by! I left Colorado on the 13th and, after a 5 1/2 hour flight to Anchorage, an 8 hour overnight layover in the Ted Stevens Airport, a two hour-ish flight to Bethel and another hour and change flight out to the coast I arrived safely in Scammon on one of the most beautiful days I can ever remember seeing out here. I'm talking sunshine, little cloud cover, and temperatures in the high 50s.

Perfection.

Of course by this point I also hadn't slept in about 34 hours, so I was also  a little loopy and bleary eyed.

At home I found some new additions that included a new front on our house to help deal with the snow build up we experience in the winters, a new tank farm out behind our home which sadly obstructs my view of the Bering Sea but does allow us to have more fuel oil during the winter, and three dead mice (or shrews... I was too busy freaking out like a girl to take a close look.)

Needless to say, I spent the next five or six hours deep cleaning our house and unpacking until I fell into an exhausted sleep in my comfy bed (with clean sheets).

Since then I've spent almost every available moment at school setting up my classroom. I had to scrounge up four extra seats to handle our largest class (a combination senior/advanced class) and a new bookshelf shelf to replace one that broke last year.

I feel more organized than I did last year but also less prepared. Maybe coming back took away the panicked edge that got my butt in gear last year. It's a good thing the weekend is close so I can have a little extra prep time =)

More to come soon, stay tuned. First day here we go!!

Wordless Wednesday

The Final Countdown!!

This is it! The school year is right around the corner, I can smell it it's so close! I leave for my village one week from today. My plane tickets are purchased, my trusty sidekick has an appointment for his travel certificate, and my stuff is slowly piling up in a corner of my room so I don't forget anything.

This summer has been awesome and I'm kind of sad to see it end, but I am so excited to see my students again! Now that I have one year under my belt and I know what to expect I'm much more excited and a lot less nervous than I was last year.

I'm psyched to add a ton more technology to my class set up in a much more effective way and gear up for an awesome-tastic year of social studies (election year, woohooo!!!!!).  This will also be my first time trying to incorporate some elements of a flipped classroom, which puts a lot of the learning responsibility on the student and creates a more individual experience for each kid. I'm thinking it will work well in the levels system our district has and it also gives me a chance to do more interacting with the students and less lecturing.

It also takes a lot of prep time!! Holy Cow!

I've already started in on the lesson planning with the help of some great apps I got for my iPad (see? technology.) and have started authoring classroom blogs for each of my three levels. Fingers crossed that I will have those done before I leave on Monday....

More to come soon, Northern Teacher is back in gear!!

And if you're interested in learning what the heck a flipped classroom is, watch this video- it's quite informative.

Yes, this is an ad for Camtasia Studio. I use iMovie and it works just as well =)