12 Days and COUNTING! (But who's counting...)

The countdown is on!  This time in two weeks I will be sitting on my back porch in Oakville, summery drink in hand, cuddling my darling Bobo and soaking up the rays - enjoying the beginning of my much-deserved summer vacation!

Hopefully the trip home will be uneventful and quick.  We have the long hours of daylight on our side for this drive so while we have to wait until the final bell at 3:40pm to leave Wemindji, we won't be racing the sunset for optimal driving conditions.  Summer is really the best time of year to drive obviously, no ice, snow, dumb caribou or eternal darkness.  Bugs however, are another hazard altogether.  This is my first drive down in the summer with my WHITE van, so based on what my green car looked like last year covered in dead bugs the size of chipmunks, I can only imagine it will be a bloodbath against the clean white paint of my car.  I vividly remember hitting a giant dragonfly last year and it getting stuck in my windshield wipers.  I swear I locked eyes with that beast and it stared at me for at least 45 minutes until I finally got it unstuck.  Anyways, I have hours of Jim Harold's Campfire podcasts uploaded and ready to go and some good tunes to keep me company and a great convoy consisting of MARSHA BROWN, Carmen, Monika, Raquel and Meredith! We will be staying at the Amosphere (of course) but will be too late for dinner at Mike's :(

Anywho last week was crazy busy with the wrapping up of standardized Cree School Board testing and some other math testing.  The kids were visibly DONE with exams and they have been pushed to the max.  I am really glad that is all completed successfully and now we can finish the last few days of school with lots of really fun activities!  This week is PACKED with cool stuff, visiting artists will be coming to the school and to our class on Wednesday to do some great activities, Sports Day on Tuesday, swimming on Friday and a pizza party on Thursday! My class won the School Spirit year-long contest for best school spirit (participation in themed spirit days) and we got the party!! The kids were not totally overwhelmed at first but once I told them there would also be cupcakes they lost their minds.  So mission accomplished I guess ha!  The party will celebrate a few different events I have decided.  Our class read 100 books in a couple of months which we kept track of on a chart, and we have to celebrate all the summer birthdays so I felt this was the perfect opportunity to have a super party!

In my spare time I have been slowly packing up my classroom so it isn't such an overwhelming task at the end of next week.  I have a lot of work to do at home with getting stuff ready for going home as well as getting the place prepared for getting my floors redone.  How I am going to fit all my stuff in both bedrooms and living room in my kitchen I have no idea.  I will have to use my fine Tetris skills for that one.

Last week we also experienced some extreme weather which just tickled me like no other.  First, we had a legitimate heatwave.  Temperatures soared to almost 30 degrees and it was SWELTERING.  It was so hot, so I kept all my windows open.  Unbeknownst to me there was some tree near my house that was in its most active stage of pollination and I came home to a thick coat of yellow pollen on EVERY SURFACE.  It was disgusting.  You could write your name on the counter tops it was so thick.  It immediately coated my throat and filled my lungs and I almost died.  Then, it got cold.  REALLY cold.  Like -4 in the evening cold.  And rainy.  So there was that.

Yesterday was the luau-themed goodbye party for departing teachers Carmen, Vincent and Marion.  All are going to greener pastures and Marsha threw them a pretty epic send off!! I will miss everyone and it won't be the same without Carmen, one third of the original Triplex girls! Carmen and I met on our interview and we have been pretty inseparable ever since, so it will be a different year next year!  Luckily Monika decided to stay on another year so I won't be completely alone. Unless she dumps me.  :P

Luau decor!

POLLEN FOOTPRINTS.

A canoe that magically appeared in my backyard Friday night...

Beautiful sunset!

My countdown as of a few minutes ago!

Sunburned Saturday

Well folks it has happened.  I have acquired my first sunburn of the "summer"!  Not that this makes me proud but it has me dreaming of sitting outside all summer with a good book, a fancy drink in hand and the breeze in my hair.... Or my mom asking me to do yard work, the bloodhound next door howling all afternoon and the ice cream truck singing its magical tune on some distant street that I am too far away from to run to.  So either my summer could go really well or terribly.  I am leaving it to fate to decide. 

After a LONG week of testing and overall end of year business, Karen and I threw an impromptu girls-only BBQ at my house.  It was great to see some faces at my house that I don't normally get to hang out with and we had some good laughs (many at my expense hmph).  I was supposed to go to a teepee night afterwards but after the week I had I was just too pooped. 

Saturday was supposed to be a "go for a walk, work in my classroom a little, do some chores" kind of day but I decided to head over to Marsha's first to check out what I knew would be an awesome yard sale.  I ended up scoring some awesome loot, eating about 50 million hotdogs AND staying outside on her deck for the entire day, earning myself a toasty little burn.  It was an awesome and beautiful day though.  I got to hang out with the besties and just relax.  And of course spend money on buying other people's "junk", which, if you know me, is one of my favorite things to do (card-carrying member of Goodwill right here).

I came home after a nice long day and sat down to start marking one of my many standardized tests we administered in class this year.  This one was to measure the overall abilities of my students in all areas of the mathematics curriculum.  We started the test at the beginning of the year at a grade level lower because at that point we needed to get a baseline and testing them at grade level would have been pointless, it would have been way too difficult.  Now, at the end of the year, my students have aced the grade 1 test and I am going to test them one more time on the at-grade-level test this week.  I am curious to see how successful they would be now that we have finished the year of grade 2 instruction, since they did so well on the grade 1 test.  For those of you who might be a little confused as to why we are testing them at a lower grade level, the Cree School board has recognized that due to an alternative education system they had been employing until last year, the students are generally 1-3 years behind what we consider "normal" Canadian standard.  Since implementing the GVC (Guaranteed Viable Curriculum) last fall, the kids and teachers have made great strides in closing the gap, but a small gap still remains.  My students have had now almost 2 full years of 80% English instruction with the GVC and are very close to grade level in mathematics.  So, when we do our testing, we are measuring success against a slightly lower standard.  This standard however will not remain as the more "generations" of students pass through the education system with the new curriculum.  I could already see a huge difference in ability by comparing my students from last year (first generation of GVC kids) to my students this year (second generation of GVC kids).  I am sure the grade 3 teachers could see a difference between their first GVC class and this year's as well. 

That being said, not all of the subjects are being held to a lower standard.  For example, I started and finished my last round of PM Benchmarking (a reading and comprehension measurement system) and was BLOWN AWAY by the exponential progress my students have made in their reading, comprehension and retell abilities.  Starting at the beginning of the year, none of my students were reading at a grade 2 level, where they should have been for the beginning of the academic year.  A few were at a grade 1 level, many far below that.  Now, about 80% are reading at a HIGH grade 2 level (close to grade 3), and the rest are just about there!  I am so proud of the hard work my students are doing to improve their reading skills and so glad that we have worked together to create a love for reading in my classroom.  I have to constantly remind myself that these kids are learning some pretty difficult concepts in a second language.  I have to cut them some slack, not too much but just enough to keep their confidence and motivation high.  I believe that providing plenty of opportunities for reading with lots of high-interest choices is a fantastic way to ensure success in this area.  Sure my bank account may be empty (my kids ask me if I have money and I tell them that I am poor because I buy books for them to read!) but it is really worth it to hear them read their favorite stories to each other and beg me for time to read when they are finished their work.  Love it!

Anyways enough about that.  Today is Sunday and I have some prep work for, wait for it, ANOTHER standardized testing block I will be doing this week in class.  After the few weeks of test after test we have some really fun things planned for the following week and the kids (and I) really deserve some fun! I am slowly starting to pack up my classroom because I will be moving rooms next year to teach grade 1 with Monika and Marsha.  I also have to check up on our bean plants we planted last week, they are growing like crazy and the kids are ECSTATIC.  We wrote little how-to books describing the steps it takes to grow a bean plant and following the instructions faithfully, we have managed to grow some pretty awesome plants.  I explained to the kids that singing or nice music can help plants grow faster, so they now sing to our plants at every opportunity.  It is adorable.  We also Skyped with a grade 1/2 split class this week which was AWESOME.  I hooked up with a fellow Brock graduate and we had some Q&A prepped for the two classes to participate in.  My kids were SO excited, behaved fairly well and asked some great questions.  We ended up learning a lot about each other and the other class was very interested in knowing about the northern lifestyle.  We were all interested to learn that we had a lot more in common than we did in differences, so that was nice.

I also learned that I will be getting rid of the ugly blue AstroTurf carpet I currently have in my living room and bedrooms this summer!  For those of you who don't know, I have a gorgeous house but the flooring leaves a lot to be desired.  Not one to complain (ha ha), I am grateful for even having a house all to myself at this point, but the floors are nasty.  I don't know WHO decided that blue plastic/rubber was an esthetically pleasing choice for a home but it sure makes picking out decor difficult.  So anyways I will be moving all my furniture into the kitchen over the summer and coming back to something far more fabulous and neutral. 

Well the countdown is on and I will be packing up and coming home on Friday June 27th (arriving June 28th late) and I can't wait to start my summer!  Seeing all my friends and family, shopping, traveling and just RELAXING is on the agenda and I am ready.  Ta ta for now. 

EDIT: I apologize for using the word "Awesome" about 400 times.

Skyping with the Ontario class!

Guitar Heroes! (Super Hero Day)

Super Hamster!

What a Week

TIRED.  I am so tired.  Last week was jam-packed and I truly feel I deserved this weekend.  And I deserve my upcoming summer vacation.

Having just finished the CSB Math exams, my students and I were mentally drained.  It was a culturally sensitive test which was cool, but the problem solving aspect was quite tricky.  I tried my best to take the pressure off and not make it seem like such a "test" but the kids are wise and knew what the stakes were and were considerably stressed and nervous.  This resulted in some of the weirdest math I have ever seen my kids do.  So anyways, we tried to keep it light the rest of the time when we weren't writing the test by making fun how-to books on planting beans which we then tried in real life, finishing our self-portrait paper mache masks for art, and a few "early recesses".  Overall the week was busy but good.  This week they have more CSB testing for Cree Language, I start my units on Fairy Tales and Multiplication and I am doing my PM Benchmarking and CAMS standardized math testing.  AAHHH!! However, we will be Skyping with another class from Ontario this week which will be really cool!  We will be learning all about them and they will be asking us questions about Wemindji and our school.  This is going to be super fun!

I am also working on an article for The Nation magazine focusing on the accomplishments and achievements of the upcoming Wemindji Rocks Nicaragua trip a few colleagues have organized.  This trip is amazing, they have a handful of carefully selected students traveling to Nicaragua this summer to embark on a volunteerism trip of a lifetime.  The fundraising and organizing has been endless and exhausting and they have finally reached their financial goal and now all they have to do is wait the few short weeks until they hop on a plane and take off!  I am proud to have been asked to write for these guys, I can hardly call myself a writer but I am humbled nonetheless and hope that I do a good job!! I am interviewing one of the trip organizers/chaperones my wonderful friend Carmen tomorrow night and hope to have the article finished by mid week!  I will definitely have to cut back on my exclamation marks and witty sense of humor as this piece is supposed to remain professional.... Stay tuned! 

Otherwise this weekend was really nice.  Friday night I stayed in and did some marking, watched a good show, finished my classroom orders for the upcoming year and got an early night.  I meant to get up early to attend a walking-out ceremony but I set my alarm wrong and slept through it!  Perhaps it was my subconscious telling me I needed to sleep in a little more.  I still ended up waking up at 7:45 so that was a bust.  Saturday I took a gorgeous walk/mountain climb at one of the popular hiking spots.  It was a beautiful day for a walk and I enjoyed the solitary time with just me, my music and my sweaty beastly body.  Sometimes you just don't need witnesses for that sort of thing.  Luckily my playlist shuffle was cooperating and I was able to keep up a reasonable pace.  Stopping only a handful of times to take picture after picture of rocks, I got some good sun on my skin and no longer look like an embalmed corpse! Yay for natural light!!  So after that I came home, baked 13 banana breads because for some reason I have about 7654 frozen bananas and no room for such crucial items like ice cream in my freezer.  Then I had the ladies over for some homemade pizza and girly drinks and just unwound.  Today was foggy, misty and cool but I still decided to get outside.  I know I am headed back to heatwave city this summer and if you know me, after mountains of snow, there is nothing I hate more than extreme heat.  Basically I have managed to pigeonhole myself into a very select climate that no country can seem to provide.  I am never happy.  So I wanted to take advantage of whatever non-heatwave buggy weather I could.  Then as usual I went into the classroom and did some prep for the busy upcoming week. I am lucky to have Monika's sister Raquel substituting for my class tomorrow as I take the day to PM Benchmark my class's reading comprehension level.  Fun stuff!! Then I came home and Skyped with my mom and Auntie Melanie and BOBO and it was really nice to see everyone. 

Anyways I'm pooped so goodnight!!

Skyping with my precious boy!

Our bean plants! Kinda!

I like think I can hide here in an apocalyptic-type situation.

My attempt at growing new life in my home. Fingers crossed!

Wemindji the Beautiful

First BBQ of the season!  SO DELISH.

Well another week has come and gone.  Wemindji has been #blessed with beautiful weather this week and I have been taking as many opportunities as I can to be outside and soak up this glorious sunshine before the bugs arrive!

If there is one fact I can tell you about Wemindji, it is that this town is rife with black flies once the warmer weather arrives.  If you know me you know that the outdoors are more of friendly acquaintances than BFFs so coming up here I had no idea what these little annoying bugs were.  I assumed they were little gnats, oh how annoying!  JOKES ON ME they were black flies and they FEAST on me.  They must have a special taste for ginger blood because they find me and settle in for a 65 course meal courtesy of my body.  I thought those big buggers (horseflies) were black flies but nooooooooooooooo.  So anyways, I learned quickly last year that I needed heavy duty bug spray if I wanted to keep my blood volume at a reasonable level.  I bought the best bug spray I could justify spending money on (I'm afraid of bleeding out from bug bites but not so afraid that I'll spend tons of money, I'm still cheap). Before a teepee fire one night last summer I sprayed myself liberally from head to toe and set out for the evening.  When I got there I put my sunglasses on my eyes (they were previously resting upon my head) and noticed that they were cracked all over!!! THE BUG SPRAY HAD CRACKED MY SUNGLASSES. I put that on my peaches and cream skin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Powerful stuff.  I didn't get bitten but was the tradeoff worth it?  Talk to me in 30 years when I am dying of bug-spray related diseases...

Anyways, this week was lovely, I taught my unit on fractions, we wrote some acrostic poetry on "Spring", went on our monthly swimming trip and made our cookbooks (how to make a ham sandwich). 

OH BIG NEWS.  The new Wemindji Community Store opened this week!! It is GORGEOUS and fabulous and amazing and everything you could ask for in a grocery store.  The prices were even (temporarily) low which was exhilarating! It is much bigger and easier to get around in than the previous set up in the Community Hall.  Its also great for the community to get back its hall where lots of community events used to take place.  The Grade 1 classes went on a field trip (which I participated in) on opening day and that was pretty fun.  They have tons of variety which was refreshing and as long as they keep that up I don't see much need for IGA (although the prices are still better on IGA). 

Today Monika, Carmen and Raquel and I went to Radisson to get in one last shopping trip before the end of school.  We needed to go to the craft store and spend our entire paycheques and of course fit in a little meal at Chez Mika.  It was a gorgeous day for a drive, clear skies, 20 degrees and awesome company.  We stopped on the side of the road to build an inukshuk but then we saw a snake and my hair got caught in a tree so we bailed on that idea.  We also saw the butt of a moose on the access road which was pretty awesome!

Anyways, this week is going to be a busy one as Grade 2 begins the first round of Cree School Board standardized math testing.  They will have Cree Language next week and English Language the following week.  I also have CAMS math testing to finish up as well as my last round of PM Benchmarks all to do in 4 weeks!!!! Last year it was quite overwhelming for both teacher and students so this year with a different group of kids with different abilities I am hoping it will go a little more smoothly.  I am planning on spending the ENTIRE day in the classroom tomorrow as I make some fixes on the student's paper mache masks we started a couple of weeks ago (filling in holes before we paint!) and planning my units on multiplication and division (noticed I still haven't planned them since the last time I wrote? UGH).

My sister Eryl, a **trained** writer has started a blog which I encourage you all to visit and read!  She writes like an adult and actually makes words go together like they are supposed to and DOESN'T abuse the exclamation mark or CAPITALS FOR EMPHASIS.  So if you are in for a soulful, inner-peace-inspiring read, head on over to http://erylmccaffrey.wordpress.com/ !!

The old store.

All Community Store photos courtesy of The Wemindji Community Store facebook page

Just beautiful.

Be still my heart.

Speechless.

A single tear rolls from my eye.

A single tear turns to a river.

Sweet lord.

Opening day at lunch time!

My little snakey friend.

My student-generated acrostic poetry example... Clearly they know me and how well I do things.

I think I broke my digital thermometer, it's never read that high before.

 

 

 

 

Grass.  Enough said.

Wemindji at 10pm!! Crazy!