Fairbanks

Hi everyone,
Here I am in the intensive math and english intensive with guess who?? Betty Swan, she says a big hello to everyone, boy was it good to see her. She's really working hard on her english classes. I am working hard on my math classes and I have caught up on most of my lessons. Its not as intensive as ED 330 and Ed 429 but if your not a math whiz its still intensive.
I wanted to answer a few question from my last blog about students transferring to different schools sometimes. They might have many different reasons, problems at their old school, new boyfriends, girlfriends, family situations. I have not been aware of what would happen if a principal accepted a student the village council did not want but its been my experience that the principal would usually listens to the council or let them at least know the reasons the student is excepted into the school. Each year we here in Chefornak get at least one to two new students, sometimes some years past without a student from another place. Some students have stayed the whole year and some have gone home. The schools usually communicate between each other to see where the student is in academics and usually trys to place the student in the right classes. Well I have to go and pay attention to Sandra Wilfeuer. Bye for now

Teaching in rural Alaska

This week our village traditional council had a village meeting. One thing they discussed was interesting because I wanted to see how other communities in rural Alaska would handle the situation. They were discussing transfer students from surrounding villages that may have decided to attend from another village besides the village where they were born and raised. The traditional council of this village wanted any students coming into the village to register as becoming members of this community. They were not sure how long the student would have had to stay before registering. They had different times as to how long the student was to have stayed before registering. But one thing they were clear on was that the principal of the school had to notify the traditional council before excepting the student. Since a lot of communities have a lot of turnovers of principals, whenever the new principal would change they would come in not knowing the wishes of the traditional council towards transferring students. An elder at the meeting thought it was not a good idea for excepting students from other communities for several reasons. One reason was that the student may bring in bad influences, or the student may pick up bad influences from the community they chose to move into. Another reason she stated was that the parents of any student should be the first teachers of such a student and made a point that parents should be involved in the students education. If a student chose to attend in another village, that village was sort of like a host, becoming responsible for the students welfare as well as the students education. She stated that if the student went home and became a bad influence, the host village would naturally be the blame. I guess different communities would have different views on the situation but I was curious to what the majority thoughts would be. I, myself have been to boarding school, two of my children have been to boarding school, three of my children have stayed home and attended school here and when I think about it, I would rather be involved in my children's education. What would you have said if your son or daughter wanted to attend a school in another rural village?