Merry Christmas!

I am now at the end of my first semester of teaching, and my first semester of living in Eagle Butte. I am just preparing to go see my family for the holidays, and I will have two weeks off, during which of course I will be agonizing over what in the world I am going to do next. Up until last week, I was hoping that I would only have to teaching eighth grade in the morning next semester, since one of my seventh graders is totally done with his seventh grade work and the other two are working independently to finish theirs. Unfortunately, I found out early last week that we have a new seventh grader coming in, and she did not pass any of her work in the junior high this year. My principal suggested that I use the computer program that all the junior high students use to satisfy her first two quarters, which is fine, but now I need to figure out what to do with her for third and fourth quarter of English 7. Junior high involves a lot of creativity that way.

Racial issues obviously come up semi-often here in Eagle Butte, and many of them have been kind of humorous. One rather embarrassing episode happened in the cafeteria. I was eating lunch by a few of the girls, periodically looking to see if the big boys, who literally inhale their food, had dumped their trays yet. I’m a slow eater and talk too much, so I am never quite ready to walk them back to our building. I tried to scarf down the rest of my food after they had dumped their trays, and when I decided it was no use, I told the girls, “It looks like the natives are getting restless.” I promise I did not think at all about the implications of what I was saying! I whacked my forehead pretty well over that one later, though I really don’t know if the girls got it. Another day, Cameron, one of my juniors, was working on his essay about a novel on slavery. He was sitting on my desk getting my comments on his rough draft, and when I asked him why he thought the white slave masters didn’t want slaves to be able to read, Cameron said, “I don’t know, Miss Osthus. Why didn’t you want them to be able to read?” Suffice it to say that now he knows that none of my ancestors were in America at the time, and that I wasn’t even there, though I am rather old!


And then there was the day I was taking pictures of the seniors for the yearbook, and every one of them was wearing dark colors except for our only student who is part African American. He was wearing a bright white shirt and coat, and the first thing we all noticed when we looked at my camera was how much he stuck out. When I pointed this out to him, he asked me why he stuck out, and he egged me on by saying, “C’mon say it, Miss Osthus, what am I?” I giggled and said he was white, and then he stomped off to the other room and said that I was making fun of him for being white. That obviously was brought up a few more times, though he and I really have had a rather good relationship.


I’ve had a lot of new experiences this semester. I got my first full-time job, rented my first house, bought my first Christmas tree, and had my first mouse infestation, which most unfortunately is still ongoing. I very recently bought mouse poison, which I will begin using when I return from Christmas break, since I’d rather not find dead mice in my house upon my return. The night that I saw my mouse, was the loneliest one I have ever experienced I believe, and I really think moral support is almost a must for mouse killing, but I shall have to go it alone, I suppose. My superintendent is trying to get me a housemate, I think because he’s worried I might become lonely and be overwhelmed with my gas bill. Really, I rather like having my own house, besides the mouse thing, so I think that I will decline, though I’m meeting my prospective roommate on Tuesday. I have indeed discovered the joys of utility bills, which actually are not too terrible, but they are just one more thing to keep up with.


Finally, one more big step that I have taken is to get my South Dakota driver’s license and license plates. It all made me feel rather melancholy, especially when the lady at the Dewey County Courthouse called Pierre and said that she had “a surrender from Minnesota in the office.” It was basically like changing my citizenship, except that I can still travel back and forth freely! We’ll see how long I stay in South Dakota, but since my immediate roots are in that fair state anyway it’s not as weird as it would be moving to, say, Alaska. That might be tough, even after watching The Proposal this summer made me want to visit Alaska even more! I realized today how itchy my foot is indeed getting to travel again, but it will have to wait at least until next summer—probably longer.


I really think I need to start writing at least bi-monthly, but it’s tough enough to get one of these out each month. Since my last entry I have had Thanksgiving break, sung in a community Christmas cantata, released our first EAGLE CENTER NEWSLETTER, gone to my first Lady Braves basketball game, and gone to the AFLBS Christmas concert. The community cantata was a fun opportunity, and I met some really neat people, though I won’t run into them that often, since I was the only one from Eagle Butte. We sang in Dupree, Isabel, and Timber Lake, and we got our pictures in the Dupree section of the paper. There is an OK picture of just me in the paper, too, but the caption says “Nikki Miller of Dupree did an amazing solo during the song ‘The Safest Place.’” Yes, the world needs more editors. Many of you have probably heard me say that before! Our first issue of the newsletter turned out pretty well, too, for a first issue! Sometimes I miss Indesign from The Counterweight days, but we’re making due with Microsoft Publisher, since all of our computers have that program already. If you want to take a peek ask me and I can PDF it to you!


I had a fun day this weekend, since I really don’t have much to do with my students this week. I went Christmas shopping in Pierre, South Dakota’s capital city. Shopping is always very draining for me—I think because I don’t like spending money—but it still was nice to get out of town and see some new scenery! More relaxing than the shopping was going to the Christmas tree display in the capitol building, which really was gorgeous. The whole rotunda area of the capitol is completely decorated for the season, even the little corner alcoves, and there are three floors full of Christmas trees. My students have been telling me that the capitol area in Pierre is very interesting and pretty, and I have to agree, though I’m rather partial to St. Paul. Besides the sights of the trees, though, the smells and the sounds were also delightful. I simply love the smell of Christmas trees, and a singing group from a church was playing while I was there. They even had interpretive dancing, which kind of surprised me, and they were pretty good. Their male vocalists were extraordinary, which is always a toss-up when you try to get guys to sing in a church group.


I have two days left before I can officially say that I have survived my first semester of teaching, and in that time I have eight Christmas cards left to write (and I don’t want to hear about it—I started them a month ago!), I have a suitcase to pack, a staff Christmas party tomorrow night, a house to tidy up, presents to load in my sleigh—er, Monte Carlo, and a five-hour drive to Sisseton to make in the snow on Wednesday! I’ll pop up the pictures that accompany this post sometime, probably when I’m back in Minnesota, but for now, here is my shortly-before-Christmas update! God really is so good—He has blessed me with a smile and a laugh, with an eternal hope that I can share with others, with every material comfort I could need, and with fabulous family and friends (as well as accidental alliterative awareness). My prayer is that God would continue to use me as I “spend myself” on those around me and share everything I have (Isaiah 58). Please continue to pray for me, and let me know how I can better pray for you!
Love, Christina

Praying for open eyes!

Hello again, dear family and friends!

I need to take fifteen minutes tonight to write, and take myself right up to eleven o’ clock. I have had so many ideas to write about in the weeks since my last post, including just talking about my different students, giving some of the similarities and differences of Eagle Butte versus the other places I have lived, or of college life versus post-college life, just ranting about the general frustrations that accompany this life of mine, and I don’t even remember what else!

For now, for the sake of my readers and myself, I will just talk about some of my students, not necessarily my favorites, since I’m trying not to have those, but some that make me particularly happy. I know schools these days are pretty sensitive about what personal information belonging to their students ends up on the web, so I’ll try to be careful.

My first kudos must, must go to my little mothers and mothers-to-be. They are the best workers you’ve ever seen. They range from freshmen to seniors, and nearly every one of them is trucking through her work as if she were going to be in labor or be home with her sick toddler the next day. One of them just had a baby girl last week. The issue of teen pregnancy is an interesting one for us teachers to deal with—while we are all of slightly different moral opinions on the topic of extra-marital sex, we all agree on the practical standpoint that teenage sex is never a good idea. Many of our girls do, too, but they are caught in a lifestyle that they can’t get out of. My rockstar mommy, who finished nearly all of her junior year English in one quarter, just wrote her persuasive essay about teenage girls waiting for babies and sex until after high school. The lady who hosts the Bible study I go to on Sundays has volunteered to make baby blankets for all our new babies this year, and I’m really excited for that.

I also teach the Fine Arts elective, and I am providing an alternative to working on the textbook and packets: we are writing a newsletter and producing our own yearbook! I have a few senior girls who are very excited about it, and I can’t wait for our first issue to come out in a few weeks. One of the girls who typically has very low motivation in school is especially taking ownership of it, and every time she sees me she tells me about a new idea or something new that someone is going to write.

There are also a few of my big boys that really make me smile—yeah, I admit, it’s because they remind me of my football and CW boys. Most of them have really dirty mouths and are kind of embarrassing sometimes, but they are hilarious and really fun when they are interested in working with you. I’ve got two guys in particular who have a really hard time with reading, but when they sit and work with me they catch on just fine and can get a few of their questions answered.



I do also have a few kids with pretty strong reputations in the community for things I would rather not know about. Two of my smartest seniors are pretty high up in the local gang and drug hierarchies, and I occasionally wonder at the contradiction, but from their points of view, it probably makes total sense to stay with the sweet deals they have. I just hope that this part of their lives does not interfere with thoughts about college, but it might. Again, it might be hard to convince yourself to work your tail off in college if you have a nice racket going in your hometown.

Then there’s my junior high, who are another story entirely. One of my eighth grade students is cognitively delayed and has typically been ignored in school in the past, and so has hated it. I am learning new things about him every day, but he is definitely a fine kid and can learn. I grinned from ear-to-ear when his mom told me at parent-teacher conferences (when he wasn’t around) that he has been excited to go to school this year, for the first time ever. I definitely feel like I lose him sometimes in English, but I’m praying every day that he hangs in there and that I can find new ways to keep him engaged.



I have a definite soft spot for one of my seventh graders as well. He has had a tough time of it in school as well, and gives up quickly when he doesn’t understand something. Some concepts seem to be especially difficult for him to grasp, but I see so many flashes of deep intelligence in him that it is boggling to think that he sees himself as stupid. The book that we read in seventh grade for the first quarter was The Outsiders, which is a fantastic book about social groups and gang violence, and this kid practically ate it up. He said in his book report that it was the best book he had ever read, and it is very timely for him, because he is just starting to get sucked into one of the gangs, and I pray that it is making him think. If I have accomplished nothing else during the first quarter, I know that I have helped my seventh graders to really understand the deeper meaning of their novel.

Alrighty, my assignment for tonight before I go to bed is to finish this post up! There are actually many more kids I could talk about, and I’m sure many of them will come into later posts, but those are at least a few groups that particularly pull at my heart strings! I think part of the thing that kept me posting in Ecuador was all the cool pictures I took, and since I have barely taken any pictures in Eagle Butte, I know these posts might not be quite as exciting. However, it is still my life, and probably in a more real way than Ecuador was, because I really think I’ll be here for a bit.

God is meeting my needs with His care and His new mercies. I have not experienced or felt anything here that I might not have expected given what I knew at the beginning, and most importantly, I have not experienced or felt anything here that God has not spoken of. When I was in college one of my friends was going through a rough time for a while, and when we would chat she would sometimes just raise her eyebrow at me and say, “I guess the Bible probably says something about this, doesn’t it?” Now I have to do that for myself a lot, and I am having to search out and find God in Eagle Butte. I had to do the same thing when I first moved to Morris to go to UMM, so I know that He will show up in millions of ways. Right now I’m just in the waiting period, but sans facebook this time, which makes it harder and easier at the same time to be in friend withdrawal. Letters and phone calls are very much welcomed!



Speaking of Morris, though, I actually did end up becoming quite attached to the blessed little place, and now that I live in a town less than one fifth the size I shake my head at how little it used to seem. : ) I was able to go to Homecoming at my alma mater, though I had to drive through an ice storm and sit through a cold football game that we lost! Here is my lovely car. Yes, Morris and inhabitants, that's how much I love you!



I’ve had two teachers over to my place this week, actually, which has been lovely. Barb had supper with me yesterday and Karen came over for tea today so that we could conference about our peer analysis observations for professional development. A few weeks ago I also had the honor of serving lunch to George and Sharon Gardner, my Moorhead “parents” that I lived with for a few months earlier this year. They were on their way back from visiting their son Philip in Rapid City, and I was so pleased that they chose to take their lunch break at my place! It made me try out my George Foreman to grill chicken, which was exciting.

I also just started practicing with a group in Dupree for the Christmas cantata that Dupree and two other towns have joined together in for the last several years. I really miss singing, so this will be a treat! Last week practice in Dupree consisted of only Dupree’s music teacher and me, but this week we are carpooling up to Isabel for a combined practice, so I will meet more of the people involved! Practice is shortly after Bible study on Sunday afternoons, so it is just perfect, and makes me get my lesson planning done before Sunday night! This is a very good thing.



There are still so many more things I would like to say and so many more things I probably need to talk about, but I will close for now so that I can finally publish another entry, and so that I can head home and go to bed. And so, good night, my darling readers! Let me know if there is anything I can pray for! Besides the same old prayer for my sanity, for protection, for love, for openness from my students, and such, pray for Dan from my church back home. He had a minor heart attack recently, and now he is doing quite well after an angioplasty and a stent, but pray for continued healing and health. Please also pray that my eyes would be opened to God’s work here, just like the eyes of Elisha’s servant when he wasn’t able to see the army of angels backing them up against their enemies. I know He’s here, but I really need to see Him! I love you all! Christina Joy

Getting a little more settled, and knowing I can do all things in Him!

Well, readers, it looks like this blog might be monthly for a while, at least until my life is a little more sane. As it is, I really don’t have time to write this week, so I am using my blog as an incentive for working. I will finish lesson plans for one grade, then write for a bit, finish lesson plans for the next grade, then write, and then alternate between packets, tests, and essay assignments for senior high. I’ll go start on that.

All right, here I am quite a few hours later, since I had a few other things to do between tasks, including checking my e-mailing, making copies, and coming home to make supper. Now I’ve finished lesson plans, a worksheet, and a test, and I still have one paper to grade and more tests and assignment sheets that really need to get done! I guess I’ll be up for a while, but don’t worry, it’s not that late. : )
The last month has been extremely full, with a lot of things to figure out, sometimes on my own and other times with help. My co-workers are fabulous, but I just wish I had known right away which questions I needed to ask! My principal, Dr. Vickie Birkeland, is a great lady with an amazing amount of energy, and she really is just the kind of person to run a place like the E.A.G.L.E. Center. Her pep talks to the kids are cheesy, but over the years I’ve decided that cheesiness is totally OK. However, cheesiness is best when delivered by someone who realizes her cheesiness and is not too self-conscious about it. Either ignorance or insecurity in the delivery can ruin everything. I haven’t quite decided where Dr. Birkeland is on that scale, but she sure doesn’t seem to be insecure at all! She spends a lot of time working at the E.A.G.L.E. Center, and she has a lot of passion for it, but she also loves to talk about her family, especially her grandchildren.

Heather Murphy is the social science teacher, and she is my mentor and one of my main information sources. This is her third year teaching at the E.A.G.L.E. Center, as well as her third year teaching out of college. She is from Nebraska originally, and one of my favorite stories about her is that once when one of the students got really frustrated in her class and was ready to blow up, he said, “Miss Murphy, I wish that you would just go back to Nebraska!” She had geared herself up to be totally cussed out, and she had to fight to keep from laughing when the tension was broken. She is always very busy and involved in many school committees, which will probably happen to me soon! She loves her students very much and is well respected by the rest of the staff.

Deb Gropper is the math teacher, and she has now been at the E.A.G.L.E. Center for nearly a year, since she came on in October of last year, after hiatus from teaching while she went through cancer treatment. I got to know Deb almost as soon as I arrived in Eagle Butte, since we were both at the training for new teachers in the district before classes started. She is unbelievably generous and helpful, almost to excess, and she loves to give things to people, especially food. We had a school improvement meeting last week, and Deb went out between the end of class and the beginning of our meeting to get enough snacks for a whole year’s worth of meetings! She calls me over often to give me information about the way things work at the “EC,” and to ask me to check her word choice in her objectives. I’m glad I can help her in a small way.

Rita Murray is our computer lab manager, and one of my favorite people. She is related to a majority of the people on the reservation, or seems to be, so she has stories and information on every student we have coming in, which is often helpful. “I know your grandmother” seems to do wonders for some kids’ behavior. I sat with Rita at the rodeo a few weeks ago, and I had a good chat with her as we watched her daughters barrel-race (one of them won the competition!) I love her attitude, because I’ve seen her a little ticked off at work, but she always has her sense of humor.




That was half of my co-workers at the E.A.G.L.E. Center, and I’ll describe the rest for you in some other post. We are close to our capacity at the EC, which is seventy-five students, though some have not come to the school yet, and we do take emergency placements throughout the year. The students really are great, and just as in Ecuador and at CGB and Morris, my favorite experiences are meeting my students outside of school. Some kids say it’s embarrassing to see their teachers outside of school, but I don’t think any of my students have ever felt that way. My students in Ecuador mobbed me when they saw me at a movie theater, and Jacob, one of my freshmen, wouldn’t leave me alone at the grocery store where he works. He told me I would need to bag my own groceries even as he bagged them for me, and right after I paid for my food he asked me to buy him a pop. I’ve got a great bunch of students, even though a lot of them really need to get on task. Some of them take advantage of the whole independent study concept by not doing any work at all. It’s just like homeschooling, unless your mom gave you deadlines. My mom probably should have, but she didn’t give very many.

I just finished a handful of rubrics for essays, or at least got further on them, which is good. There just are not enough hours in a day for me, and every task seems to take so much longer than it should, including my Bible study. A few weeks ago, I started a weekly Bible study written by Beth Moore with some ladies in Dupree, and the homework Bible studies for the other days of the week are fantastic, but they are also long. I guess I expected them to be, but I dared let myself hope when the woman facilitating the study said that it should take us about twenty minutes. Ha, ha. Try an hour. I work on it for half an hour every morning while I eat breakfast and usually have about half of it to finish that night when I get home from school. The study is really good, regardless. It is called Living Beyond Ourselves, and it is about how the Holy Spirit can empower us to live supernaturally. Thank God! “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength!” (Philippians 4:13) However, resting in God's power is easier with a good night’s sleep, so I guess I’ll pick this up later… Maybe tomorrow…

Nope, two days later! I just finished grading and writing a test, so I’ll take a few minutes to write. Now that you all know my daily schedule from last month’s long post, I’ll just tell you a few fun things I have done so far. First of all, Labor Day weekend consisted of two big things: the Eagle Butte fair and Jordan and Sarah Langness’s wedding. I sandwiched the wedding in Sioux Falls between the carnival and the pow-wow first and the rodeo afterward. Barb and the rest of the LaPlantes adopted me for the weekend of the fair, which was so nice! I always enjoy carnivals, and while I didn’t feel like spending my non-existent money on rides, I did get some cotton candy and have fun visiting with parents and saying hi to a few of my students. I hadn’t been to a pow-wow since I was about six, even though I always planned to go to the Wacipi at Morris during World Touch Cultural Heritage Week. I had an Indian Taco, which is taco fixings on frybread. I really like frybread, which I guess isn’t that surprising. Now I need to learn how to make it!



Sarah and Jordan’s wedding was on Sunday, so I left around lunch time on Saturday, went to Cracker Barrel with relatives as soon as I got there, and then spent the night with my grandparents. The next day I met my sister at Abiding Savior only to find out that the 11:00 service was canceled because of the LifeLight music festival, so we went back to grandma’s and watched church on TV. Actually we were both kind of glad, because we got to watch a televised speech by some bishop from South Dakota about the vote to allow gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. My grandparents are still part of an ELCA church, and my grandma’s been pretty upset about the liberal direction in which that body is going, so we had many interesting conversations. Julia and I eventually returned to Abiding Savior, watched the totally cute ceremony of Sarah and Jordan getting hitched, and then went our separate ways after enjoying cake and companionship of old Bible School buddies. I stopped at Target to get a few things that are not so available in Eagle Butte, and then headed home! The rodeo was quite an experience, as it was my first. I really enjoyed the calf tying and the saddlebroncs. Team-roping was not quite as exciting, just because there was a ridiculous number of teams. I visited with Rita and Barb during the competitions, and learned a bit more about the area.



Now it’s been a week since I started, and I plan to finish up tonight as I watch Anne of Avonlea. One other fun experience that I got to have was a huge auction for a couple from the Lutheran church that I’ve been going to. They just moved to Chamberlain, where the wife is in a nursing home, and they had a very full house to empty. The community center, the lot outside it, and the yard of the house were all full of the various collections that both John and Millie had. Some of the highlights were about thirty splendid quilts in star, wedding ring, and thunderbird patterns, antique farm tools, collectible thimbles, and a collection of rosemauling, which is Norwegian painting. I helped a little bit with the lunch stand that Emmanuel Lutheran had, and had a great time participating in the auction, though I was really nervous about it ahead of time. There were four auctioneers who switched off the whole time, and they knew what they were doing. Everything was sold, though it took more than twelve hours. I was pretty happy with my purchases, which included a lawn mower, a rake, a fan, two gorgeous stained glass lamps that I had seen in their basement when I helped them clean down there one night, and a few other things that I am saving for presents. It wiped my day out pretty well, though I think I got a tiny bit done that night after I got home. That is where I will leave off for now, since more than a week on one post is pretty ridiculous!



Please pray for my students, who really have a lot of hurt in their lives. A small handful of my students even have the same last name of one of the parents that they live with, and many of the problems of poverty and infidelity are both cyclical and generational. We just had parent-teacher conferences last week, which I enjoyed a lot, and I found every one of the parents who attended to be very likable and very concerned about their children. However, I still see a lot of hurt, and no solutions besides Jesus. On a happier note, here is a picture of the EAGLE Center float for CEB's homecoming!


I love you all and would love to hear from you! God bless you! Christina

Getting my feet soaked!

Hi readers! I have returned to the happy occupation of blogging at last! The consistency of my posts is up in the air at the moment, just because of the busyness of a new teacher, but I will try to regularly update you all on my new life in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. Last week I started teaching English at the E.A.G.L.E. Center, the alternative learning center with an acronymic name that stands for Education, Assessment, Goals, Life Skills, and Employment, since these are all things the staff wants for our students.



I arrived in town on August 16th, and was greeted by my lovely family who were warming my house for me! My parents had taken most of my furniture out the previous week, and my mom and three siblings drove out on Saturday to bring everything else, as I was in Pipestone, MN that day for a wedding. We visited about our experiences over the last two days, got a lot of my unpacking done, and watched a movie before hitting the hay. I am living in a lovely little three bedroom trailer house, which I am happy to announce is much more space than I need for all the junk I have accumulated throughout my life. I have added a few pictures of my new domicile. I am enjoying nesting in a lot, and cooking has been great fun!



The next morning I left a few minutes before eight for EEEI (Essential Elements of Effective Instruction) training, which was for teachers of Lakota language and culture and all teachers who were new to the district. There were about twenty-one of us total in the workshop, and the presenter’s name was Charlsie Savage. She has been training Eagle Butte teachers for several years now, and she was very energetic and motivating. We had quite a bit of class time, seven hours a day Monday through Thursday, but I really liked having the refresher on many things I had learned in the education program, and meeting many of my fellow teachers. I will only be working with one of those teachers directly at the E.A.G.L.E. Center. Deb is a math teacher, and she joined the EC team last year in October, which is why she missed EEEI training and had to go through it this year. I also had my first company outside of my family on Tuesday afternoon, when Elizabeth drove from Lemmon to visit me! We made tacos and walked around town, and then she showed me pictures from her summer in Brazil.



When Charlsie’s workshop was over, I felt pretty overwhelmed with everything I had to learn about the area, the school, and the people I would be working with, so I vowed I would get some work done over the weekend, (one thing being to start my first blog post!) On Friday morning I went to the E.A.G.L.E. Center to talk with Dr. Birkeland, the principal, and get some materials from her. I got a tidy stack of papers, including what I wanted most, the staff and student-parent handbooks for the EAGLE Center. The program still confuses me, since it is so different from a normal school, but some of it is starting to make sense. EC I is for 7th through 9th grade, and I teach half-hour classes to them during the morning, along with my fellow teachers. I teach two English classes and do back-up for the other teachers, and then I supervise the students as they work on an online reading program called TeenBiz. After lunch, these students are either dismissed to the junior high for afternoon classes or dismissed to go home. Then the EC II students come, who are 9th through 12th graders, and they are all doing independent studies as we their teachers guide and mentor them. In addition to English class, I am also in charge of the Fine Arts class, which I love, since that is kind of my area.



On Friday afternoon Emanuel Red Bear, one of the Lakota teachers, took me for a tour around the western side of the Cheyenne River Reservation, and then on Saturday we covered the eastern side. On Friday night I went with him to Jerry and Rita Farlee’s place for a sweat ceremony, which was a new experience for me. This is a prayer ceremony from the Lakota tradition, which I knew a little bit about, and wasn’t quite sure I felt comfortable with it. However, since I know I can pray to God anywhere and I’ve actually had great prayer times in rooms where there was eastern meditation going on (yeah, my driver’s ed instructor was kinda different), I wasn’t too worried about trying it once. Besides Jerry, Emanuel, and me, Jerry’s grandson, a volunteer working with Habitat for Humanity, and a friend of his were in the sweat lodge. The sweat lodge is a very small tent, and in the middle are heated rocks. During each of the four different parts of the ceremony, the tent is closed and water is poured on the rocks, causing steam. Each of the four parts has a slightly different purpose, most of which I can get behind. During the segments, “God” is praised for being the creator of all things, prayers of intercession are spoken, and at the end the spirits are dismissed.

Besides the murky view of who God really is, the things that didn’t really jibe with my faith were mainly the smudging at the beginning to drive evil spirits away and the dismissal of spirits at the end. As I expected and hoped, the setting really did focus my mind on my prayers in a way that has been very difficult for me lately. I told Emanuel that I thought it was kind of similar to fasting in the way it focused the worshipper’s mind, and he said that was exactly what it was supposed to do, since instead of sacrificing food, one is sacrificing his own comfort in order to focus on “God.” Emanuel and I talked about quite a few things during those two days, and God came up pretty early. Emanuel thinks that God has given each people group a slightly different way to reach God, and that there is no difference between the Great Spirit of the Lakota and Yahweh of the Judeo-Christian tradition. I said that I agreed that each people group could have different traditions and different modes of worshipping the one true God, but told him that I thought it was ridiculous to assert that all religions were true, since some blatantly contradict others. I do not think that I should probably participate in the sweat ceremony again, but I may try praying next time I’m in a sauna.

I went over to Orville and Barb LaPlantes’ house for supper on Saturday night, which was really fun and relaxing, even though we weren’t able to have a bonfire like we’d been hoping, because it was too windy. I had quite a time finding the right turn to their house, which isn’t that surprising if you know the weakness of my sense of direction. We had a delicious supper, Winston and I fed the ducks and geese while the big boys played basketball, and then we sat on the porch and visited. Their daughter Abby went to Bible School with my sister Julia, which is how I got to know their family. The next morning I went to church at Emmanuel Lutheran, and then tried to get some work done for the rest of the day.



The next three days were workshop days, and I met many more of the teachers and got a lot more information about the school and the area. I’ve eaten fry bread at least four times in the last week, and I could get used to it very easily! We actually started classes on Thursday, though many students will probably not start regularly attending until after the fair and pow-wow on Labor Day weekend.

Now it is Wednesday, and we have been in school for almost a week, which means I have been rather delinquent in getting this post done. Now we are on break for the fair, so I need to hurry up and fill in the rest of the details. Quite a few students have shown up at least once, many more haven’t, and our list is growing a bit almost every day. Students can come into the E.A.G.L.E. Center this year during the first two weeks of any given quarter, and I’m glad they have that restriction, because one of the ninth graders came to the Center from the high school two weeks before school got out last year, so it was really hard to know what to do with him. In English, I guess he mainly did word searches. He occasionally still asks for one of those, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, since he has plenty of other work to do.

I won’t tell you details about every day, because that would be tedious and I would never get caught up then. I think the best thing to do is to give you my daily schedule, so that you get an idea of my life at the EC so far. I have to be to work by six, though I usually attempt to get there earlier to have a moment to settle in. I mainly do have preparation time for the first half hour anyway, because during that time Dr. Birkeland meets with the EC I students, who are in seventh through ninth grade. At 8:30 we have either social skills class, vocabulary building time, or drug-related seminars. At nine we start going through our regular rotation with EC I. This program is capped off at fifteen students, and right now we have about ten. They are divided into two groups: eighth grade and seventh & ninth grade, since the ninth grade is mainly independent study anyway. After these groups are done with half an hour each of English, social studies, math, and science, they go to either lunch or TeenBiz, which is a reading program that most of us work with, though it is mainly my responsibility since I am the English teacher. I am getting trained in that over our break, and we will start it with the students sometime next week.

After I am done with TeenBiz I work for two rotations with EC II students, who are ninth through twelfth graders. At this point they are separated into five groups, and I think it will stay that way, though we still do not know how many students we will have altogether. Next week will be the test, since everyone will start coming to school more or less regularly. (Some of our students do struggle with consistent attendance, though.) They have been coming to my English “area” to get assignments from me and ask me questions about requirements. I am still working that out, since not all of the materials I have gotten about students’ portfolio requirements for graduation make sense to me. I also am not sure which books have question packets and tests already made up, but I have been doing a lot of hunting and have found some useful materials in file cabinets. However, I am still very apprehensive about interpreting the requirements in the hand-me-down plans I have, and hope that what I am giving to and requiring of my students is somewhat close to what the administration is looking for.

After those first two rotations of EC II students, I eat lunch, and when I don’t have lunch duty I am free to either eat leftovers at the E.A.G.L.E. Center or go to the cafeteria, which has pretty decent food. I suppose I should explain what the EC looks like. The Center itself is a small building with a few offices and one big room that is semi-divided in the middle by a kind of wall that does not reach the ceiling. There are ten or eleven staff members in the building every day, including the principal, the secretary, three academic teachers, one long-term substitute, the computer lab manager, and the behavioral and special education staff. When one walks into the front of the building, my desk is on the left side all the way in the back corner. I have a whiteboard, and the drinking fountain is right by my desk, which is the way I like it. If you didn’t know, I have a bit of an addiction to water. There are two long tables stuck together coming straight out in front of the white board, and this is where my EC I students sit during their class. This is also where EC II students are sitting for now, but we teachers are all very excited that we will actually be getting some rooms in the dorm next door to use for classes. This sounds like a real improvement for everyone, and though I say I’m excited to have my own room, Heather Murphy, the social studies teacher, says rightly that I have no idea, since she has shared sixty students with all the other teachers in that little building for two years. She is very excited.

When we get back after lunch, we have three rotations left, and I am usually very exhausted by the time we get done, though I think that will get better the more I know what I am doing. I really am doing a lot of things just day to day, which is a horrible habit to get into, but I feel like I won’t be able to plan some things until I’ve known the kids a bit longer. That is why I could barely get myself to plan anything for the first two days, because I knew so little about what to expect, and I don’t know if any of my fellow teachers could have prepared me better than they had.

After that I go home to read, eat supper, and work, though it is so easy to spend much of my work time doing unnecessary things. That is why I often end up staying up much later than a self-respecting teacher should, as I am at the moment. I believe I will call this blog post complete, and will update you on my fun weekend activities like fair festivities, Jordan and Sarah’s wedding in Sioux Falls, and the daily quirks of a teacher’s life later on. I will eventually try to make a schedule of when I need to blog, because that worked very well in Ecuador, but first I need to know the rest of my school schedule.

I pray God would be with all of you and bless you richly! Please pray that my students would have a passion in their hearts to learn, and that I would be a blessing and a godly example to them.

Christina Joy