A Day in the Life…

I’ve been meaning to do a day in the life post for quite awhile now but I never remember to take pictures during the day! I fail. So finally I decided to just do it with the pictures I do have. As a result, it’s definitely a mod-podge of days, but you get the point!

A few things to know before diving in: the post is a wee bit long…and also, most of the pictures were taken on my older iPhone, whose camera is just so-so. Consider yourselves warned.

Here’s what a day in Pilot Point looks like 🙂

This is our morning walk to work. We are expected to arrive at 8, so we leave at about 8. It works out very well! When we first arrived in PIP, the sun wouldn’t come up until about 10am. This picture was taken a few weeks ago, but already the sun is almost up when we head to work (and doesn’t set until close to 10!).

A couple weeks ago, we had a special guest visit us at PIP. He came from the Alaska Sea Life Center and he brought some really sweet presentations for the kids. This is not a regular occurrence out here and we totally loved it! Above, you can see one of the kids disecting a squid! And below…

The kids literally got to write a message with the squid’s ink! And that weird plastic looking pen? It also came straight out of the squid! It was totally wild and verrrry interesting. The kids loved it! (I did too!).

Normally, in the mornings I’m in the younger class. Our school has 11 students and 2 teachers, one of which is Ben. I am an aide in the classroom, so I’m mostly there to be an extra hand where/when needed, especially if some of the kids need one-on-one help. First we have reading and writing. The teacher for the younger kids is really good at incorporating cultural projects into her lesson plans. Above, the kids made masks and wrote legends. They presented their legends to the class, complete with a little skit or interpretive dance of their legend.

 

At 10:15 the kids have a break for snack, which is usually some combination of fruit, veggies, crackers, cheese or peanut butter, and, if the kids are lucky, pudding. At 10:30 we start math. When Ben first came to PIP, he really thought that the small group would be easy-but just imagine Ben’s math class. He has 9 students in the class but there are 4 different levels he has to teach. That means that he has 4 different stations he has to manage and create lesson plans for…and that’s just math! It definitely can get a little crazy. I help him out during math with the younger kids, and we also have another aide, a member of the community, who comes in at the start of math and stays through the rest of the day, so that helps to make sure everyone is getting the help they need.

We have lunch at noon and that is something I never remember to take a picture of! Today we had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Yesterday was potatoes and gravy, meatloaf, pears and a green salad. Just to give you an idea. The food is good and it’s always nice to have a break from what we cook at home! Anyway…

Above! We see foxes all the time! That little guy was just hanging out during Ben’s social studies lesson. Our first two months out here, Ben was always taking the trash out and coming back saying, “I just saw a fox out by the playground braggy, brag, brag!” I thought I’d never see one! But since the weather has turned more spingish, we see fox (and other critters) everywhere! In fact, last week Jaeger chased a fox down the beach during my run. And, long story short, there were several times where I was only  about 2 feet away from the little guy! Foxes are beautiful! And everywhere out here!

The afternoons are a little less regular for me, just depending on what the other teachers need help with. I always “teach” PE at 1:30 (because those who can’t teach, teach PE). And sometimes I’ll help more in the classroom (reading, writing, science or art usually), grade papers or organize materials. And if there is not a lot of help needed elsewhere, I work in the library! For how small the school is, I would say the library is very decent and maybe even impressive. Above is the little kids section.

Above left is young adult fiction, and to the right is non-fiction. I’ve been organizing and labeling new books. I also lexile the books-which is basically just putting a sticker on them to say what level the book is.

After school I go running! Usually on the beach. If I’m lucky, Ben will come out and meet me and we’ll walk home together. We eat dinner after. Tonight we ate burritos and peach drink (a concoction Ben’s dad made up of frozen peaches, milk and nutmeg-it’s delicious).

After that I shower. The water out here has high levels of iron in it…and does not taste very good…So we distill all of the water that we drink or cook with using the above filter. It takes about 4 hours to fill the pitcher on the right with distilled water. We try to remember to turn that baby on every night and sometimes more often. Since I have light colored hair and little desire to be a red head, I wash my hair using the distilled water. Ben’s motto is dark hair, don’t care. Which makes me a little bit jealous.

The above picture is in no way, shape or form meant to be an indicator of what kind of house cleaner I am. It’s just meant to show that I was not joking about the red hair! Our tubs, sinks, toilets and washer are stained a reddish color from the water. Just check out that shower head!

And the rest of the evening is spent doing whatever. I’ll either read (the above picture is the stack I’ve read so far out here) or…

Sew! it’s very glamorous, I know! 💁 The headlamp is so I don’t go blind, and the headphones are so I can listen to the Chronicles of Narnia while I stitch (I have a post coming soon on my sewing project).

Anyhow, as I’m finishing this post it is 9pm and I ran outside to snap this pic, just so you can all see that I technically should start getting ready for bed soon…but the sunshine kind of makes it hard. And it’s just going to keep getting worse…but that is what a regular ol’ day looks like out here in bush Alaska!