"Should I send in some powdered eggs?" I asked in preparation for my first year on the island.
"Why, what are those?" the person on the other end of the phone replied.
"Well, they are dried eggs that you rehydrate... never mind, can I get eggs there?"
"Yes, they sell them right in the store."
I had been out to Saint Lawrence Island the year before as a part of a church mission trip, but we had traveled there with all of our own supplies in boxes we carried onto the plane. There had also been a potluck held as part of a church conference we were there for. I still think back in awe to the size of the bowl containing green jello that seemed to evaporate as people moved through the line. So, I was not thinking about what I would eat for an entire year for the three days we had visited like I was now in preparation for my first year as a middle school teacher there.
I had grown up reading Hatchet, My side of the Mountain, and watching movies like Swiss Family Robison, and Mountain Family Robinson. Living in a tree with a pet raccoon seemed like an ideal existence to me even at the age of twenty-two. When I had walked into the job fair in Anchorage, I knew that I could not walk out without a job. I didn't have the pet raccoon yet, but I was willing to live in a tree.
"What would it take to make you happy in Alaska?" Jim Hickerson, the Bering Strait School District representative had asked.
"Well, I grew up in northern Michigan, and so I'd like good fishing, hunting, and trees," was my very simple response.
I had laughed when he offered me Savoonga, "I've been there and know they don't have trees."
He began describing the other offering as clinging to the side of a rock in the middle of the Bering Sea, and all of a sudden Savoonga looked really appealing.
While at new teacher in-service, I bought one box of silver salmon and one box of king crab from the local fishery in Unalakleet. I ordered what seemed like a fortune at the time in groceries from Sam's Club's bush department. They informed me that my food would arrive in Savoonga in a week.
When a week came and went, I waited another before calling them.
"We have no record of your order," the frank individual informed me, "but we would be happy to help you place one."
Having two boxes of crab and salmon, I was not starving, but fish on the menu every night was starting to get old.
"You need to call Steve and Sherry Frank," my two new teaching friends, Cory and Susie insisted.
"You need one spark plug, and you can call them up and they'll get it for you," Cory had explained.
"Or, if you need a fifty-pound bag of rice, they'll get that for you," Susie added.
I needed the rice.
Two decades later, and Steve and Sherry of ASAP Shopping Service still hold a position of sainthood in my heart. They found everything on my list and shipped it, and when they were all done, I still had both my arms and legs... and my belly wasn't growling anymore.
When the boxes arrived via the local airlines, I felt like the wealthiest man in Alaska. I unpacked each box slowly on the kitchen table, almost drooling over the contents as I dreamed of what I would cook first on my avocado colored cook stove two feet away. I packed the perishables in the freezer/fridge. In 2001, I never gave a second thought to the longevity of 1970s appliances, but I wonder now if a new teacher was greeted to that same duplex by the welcoming glow of a pilot light from that same cook stove this year.
I made breakfast the next day and looked out of my living room window, around the clod of mud lodged between the two panes of glass, with idealism.
Food was not the only hurdle that greeted me upon arrival. I walked into the room that would be my first classroom and was met by a bare plywood floor, tables with boxes piled three high on them, and shelves full of library books and the reading primers for the entire school. The old school library was being converted to become the new seventh grade classroom, and I was assured that in a week that the boxes would be gone, the floor carpeted, and my room ready for the twenty-two young teen bodies that would be occupying it. I optimistically took the new assistant principal's word and loaded on the plane for the all staff in-service that would be taking place in Unalakleet. Oh, and my living room window would be replaced by maintenance before I got back.
All staff in-service in the Bering Straits School District is a unique experience. There is no hotel in Unalakleet and no possible way that the few bed and breakfasts could host the teaching and administrative staffs of fourteen visiting schools. So, it is basically a huge adult slumber party with single males occupying one batch of classrooms, single females in another, and married teaching couples spread around to smaller offices and support rooms.
There were no cell phones at that time, internet was limited, and so we did what people did in our off hours: cards, board games, read, talked, and the younger folks (this included me at the time) would play pick-up basketball in the evenings. The working hours were occupied with meetings on Success for All (the reading program I was told I would not be teaching), curriculum, and a few just for fun classes mixed in (I learned how to make a fire with a bow drill at one one of my early BSSD all staff in-services). At night, I'd crawl into my sleeping bag over a Thermarest sleeping pad on a hard classroom floor. In the morning, I'd wake early in an attempt to get a shower in the small locker room before the other couple hundred educators woke to start their day. All the meals were served in the school lunchroom. Being fresh out of college, I was still very used to cafeteria food, and not having much food at my apartment back in Savoonga, was not very picky about what I ate.
I sat down with a retirement counselor and set up my retirement investments because it seemed like the right thing to do, not because I ever thought I would reach retirement age. That was an eternity away, and I was only planning on being in Alaska for three years. In fact, I had promised my mother that I would return to Michigan to teach and farm after that time. She cried anyway watching me pull out of the driveway.
When inservice was over, optimistic teachers from around the entire district waited their turns to board airplanes heading back to their sites. It was a Friday, and school started on Monday. We were excited and ready for another, I was ready for my first, year.
It didn't really bother me that the mud clod was still in my window when I arrived home. I was sure maintenance would get to it. And, when the visiting Success for All (SFA) facilitator told me on Sunday afternoon that I would end up teaching an SFA class after all, I took it in stride as though it was something normal to find out I was teaching a class I had never taught before the day before I would be teaching it. I spent Sunday night preparing my SFA lessons and setting up my classroom (which did have carpet albeit the books and shelves were all still in there) for SFA.
Clean shirt and tie, I stood before my first classroom of students for homeroom on Monday.
"John?" I read from my classroom roster.
"He is at fish camp," a student replied, "and probably won't be back until after whaling season."
"Oh, how long is that?" I asked naively.
"Next month or the month after," the same student offered.
I tried to hide my shock and went on to the next name, an evidently feminine one.
"Here," came a voice from the middle of the class.
My students knew I was a first-year teacher, and evidently were trying to pull a fast one on me.
"This is a girl's name," I pointed out.
"I'm a girl," came the same voice again and I reassessed her short bowl-style haircut.
"Oh, yeah, of course you are," and I continued on down the roll discovering that most, if not all, of my students went by their native names rather than the English ones listed on the paper the office had supplied me with.
I somehow survived day one, came back for day two, and went on to have a great first semester filled with more than my fair share of learning experiences, bumps in the road, and hurdles. Somehow during that time, I learned all 22 of my students' English names as well as all 22 of their native names. I picked up a small Siberian Yupik vocabulary to the point that I could understand when a student was calling me stupid (which I was on some occasions). I also made the choice somewhere in there to love my students like they were my own kids.
"Are you coming back after Christmas?" a student pointedly asked.
"Of course," I answered.
The thought of not returning after Christmas had never crossed my mind, but evidently it had crossed my students' minds as it was something they had experienced with teachers in the past.
"You came back," was the chorus that greeted me from a class of smiling faces after the holiday break.
It was not all easy sailing after that. Students didn't just magically start doing what I asked of them. Attendance for some was a real challenge, homework was almost impossible to get back, classroom management was held together by a thin thread at times, and I continued to try to fit into a culture very different from the one that I had grown up in, but the simple act of returning after break made a big difference in the trust my students had in me.
"Hey, cut it out," a young man in my classroom corrected one of his classmates, "you need to hear this, Jason cares about us."
His classmate quit his screwing around and got back to work. I hope my student advocate understands how much I needed and appreciated his help.
After the students left on the last day of my first year of teaching, I held my hands above my head and made a guttural noise of elation. I had made it. My first year was behind me and living through and enjoying two more in Alaska seemed much more attainable than it did on day one.
A couple of days later, I packed up my bag and took one more look past the mud clod in my living room window and headed out to the airport.
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| My first kitchen in Savoonga |
