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
