Sunday morning football

If a football game starts at 1:00pm/12:00pm Eastern/Central time, that means that it starts at 9:00am in beautiful Alaska. This means that while all of the country is enjoying beer and brats, we are at a bar enjoying eggs and bacon with a good Bloody Mary (after 10am).

I skipped church this morning to watch the Packers take down the St. Louis Rams along with half of Anchorage. Football here is so much different than anywhere else I have ever lived, first...there are a ton of Packer fans (strange for being almost 4,000 miles away), but also fans from just about every other state. It is so much fun to be at a bar, eating breakfast and cheering on your team with fans of five other teams sitting next to you. Since this is such a migrant city (is that the right word?), people here cheer for everyone from the Steelers, to the Gators, the 49ers (lets not talk about how they screwed up today), and the Cowboys. It makes for quite the rowdy crowd.

The only downfall to these festivities is that you have to get to some of the bars at 8am to get a seat, I am not sure where I have ever been where people fight for bar stools at 9 in the morning. I love this place :)

Oddities around Ancorage

I decided to dedicate this post to the odd announcements heard around town:
Me: Look! There is snow on the top of the mountains!
Teacher: We call that terminal frost.
Me: I don't care what fancy pants term you have, it is called snow.
Teacher: Yes, but terminal frost makes me hopeful that snow will not reach us before October.
My bud Leslie heard this on the radio today: On the way home this is what I heard on the radio: "ALERT ALERT there is a bull moose on Nothern Lights Blvd. The moose is appearing agitated and dangerous and slowing traffic. Please stay in your vehicles."

A school announcement the other day: Remember students... as it gets closer to wintertime today, if there is a moose at your bus stop, stay away. Move down the street and the bus will come get you there, do not irritate or try to pet the moose.

Frustration

This week was rough. In a school of 2400 students, 300+ of whom have IEP's, it becomes very difficult to manage my caseload of 33. It is my job to make sure that the students pass classes and the High School Graduation Qualifying Exams and meet IEP goals. To do this, I have to communicate with 66 parents/guardians/social workers, 87 teachers, and countless other support staff and with progress reports due this week I am feeling a bit hopeless. It is an impossible task, and though I am doing the best I can, I can't help but feel like I have failed some of my students in some way.

To make matters worse, I have this stinking nasty unending cold that has taken hold the majority of our building, but don't fear... this blog is not meant to post my pity party announcements or to feel sorry for myself (which I caught myself doing this morning). This blog is about God whacking me upside the head, telling me to do what I can and ask him for help with the rest.

Now, I know this may sound tacky, but I was perusing iTunes today when I stumbled across Whitney Houston's new CD. If you haven't had the chance to listen to it yet, you are really missing out. This album puts any other Christian album I have heard to shame, and it is because she speaks from experience and the heart...real life stuff that anyone can relate to. Start out listening to "I Didn't Know My Own Strength" and then the cover track "I Look to You", and I guarantee you will not be sorry.

Just listening to the sample tracks made me stop and think. I can't do it by myself, but the best part is that I don't have to... God is there to help (or rather I am there to help him:). I figure if he can help Whitney overcome addiction, get out of a bad relationship and get her life back on track, then helping me get 33 kids to pass High School English is like asking the post office lady for a stamp. I just need to remember that it is not MY doing, it is GOD's doing through me.

*Not my typical post, I know, but I really do think you should check out the album.

Churchy church church

Today I tried out what I think is my final church. After roaming the internet for a while, I found a website for Central Lutheran Church in downtown Anchorage. Someone had mentioned it a while back and I just ignored the nudges to go there, but God had other plans. After taking a further look on the web page last week, I noticed that the pastor is from St. Olaf, and it gets better... the associate pastor is from Wartburg (uggg, oh well... God forgives all sins :).

Central is by no means Hope, and it is really hard for me to accept that I can be happy outside of Hope's welcoming arms, but it is a nice church. According to the bulletin, last weeks attendance reached 98, although I think this week the made it well over 100 (including my school principal)! The sermon is very traditional even though they call it the contemporary service (out of 5 hymns, two were "contemporary"), but I felt at home. The environment was warm and welcoming, the people seem active in both their church and their community, and mostly I feel that it is where I am supposed to be.

Not so Great Expectations

Tomorrow morning I have to take the Praxis II: English Competency test, which is not, as some might think, a test of my knowledge of the English language, rather a test of everything the word encompasses. Let me explain: in Alaska, as in most states, one has to be "Highly Qualified" in order to teach a specific subject at the secondary level (i.e. a masters in Biology to teach Biology). The big difference for me is that when in Iowa, I was never required to teach a mainstream class, therefore I was not required to be "Highly Qualified". This, however, is not the case in Alaska where it is assumed that the one teaching study skills or resource, is basically an English teacher (which is pretty much true, as well as a math, science and social skills teacher but lets not get into that), which leads to all secondary special educators needing to procure a "highly qualified" status.

This brings us back to tomorrow morning's test....ack. I would be just fine taking the Jr. High level test, which focuses on young adult literature.... a topic I am quite familiar with, but the test I have to take is the High School exam. Now, you may be thinking that the test would be filled with typical high school reading and writing material, but this is where you would be wrong! This test covers advanced poetic verse as well as Dickens and Chaucer, and when it gives you "samples" of work to identify, you have to know the author and title based on a 1-2 paragraph section. I am starting to regret that I did not double major in English Literature.

So, in preparation for this test I have bought the cliff notes for the most commonly referenced books on the test: Beloved, Great Expectations, Canterbury Tales, and Gulliver's Travels. In true form, I have just finished Great Expectations by Dickens and have yet to read the other three (though after scanning Beloved by Toni Morrison, I realize that I did, in fact, read it in college freshman English, thank you Paideia). The surprising thing is that I really enjoyed the short version of Great Expectations, and am seriously considering going out to purchase the full copy this weekend for leisurely reading.

All-in-all, wish me luck, pray for me and hope that I pass with a 64% (which by my calculations is the passing percentage for this particular test). If all else fails I am scheduled for the Jr. High test in November.

Oh, did I mention if I don't pass this test, the district will terminate my position at the end of the school year and I will have to re-apply for another? Crazy, I know!

Labor Day weekend...thus far

God could not have blessed us with better weather for this weekend. It has been sunny and 65 all weekend making for an outdoors-man's heaven on earth. Zoey and I checked out the Chester Creek Trail on Friday after school (it is an extension of the Coastal Trail), and with the colors of the trees already changing for Fall the walk was surreal. I don't have a lot of pictures to post, mostly because after a while all of the mountains look the same on film (not in person, I could never tire of the view).

This morning I tried out another church in the area. I am finding it hard to find a fit after being so spoiled by Hope! The first church I tried did not let women participate in leading roles, which I really have a hard time with. Then my physical therapist wants me to attend his church (he belongs to a Luther Church Missouri Synod church), but once again the woman thing is a problem, and they have to "approve" you before you can take communion...which, I feel, is not the church's decision to make. If a person has committed his/her life to Christ then he/she has the right to take communion (even if they have not committed, the issue is between him/her and God). I just do not think it is something that we as a church have a right to decide, how can we tell someone that they are not worthy of taking communion?

Finally the church I attended this weekend. It has joined up with the local christian radio station, which I do listen to as it is the only one in town, but is quite conservative. Recently, Alaska voted on a law to allow people of any sexual orientation equal rights under the law, and correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that this law did not include marriage. This radio station aired commercials asking the listeners to protest this law... how can you protest a law that aims to treat people in a fair and equal way? I just don't think that the Church and politics should always co-mingle... I am not even sure how to phrase how I feel. The point is, this church was not a fit for me.

Check out this website... I think that God is trying to shove me to this church. Read the pastor profiles carefully...

http://home.gci.net/~centluth/staff.html