I Really Hate to Brag

... But I only have eight more days of school left. Well, only a half a day left today. And Friday is a half day. Plus next week is a total wash, academically.

I feel a little bad that I'm so excited about the end of school. I love my job. My students are, for the most part, awesome. But damn if I'm not at least as hyper and spacey as my students are.

One of the second graders shot his first goose last week. The "first catch" is a big thing in traditional Yup'ik culture, and it's still celebrated to a certain extent. He certainly had cause to be excited. Students come in every day not wanting to talk about nouns and verbs and vowels and consonants. They want to talk about ducks and geese and cranes and swans and muskrats whatever else they shot the night before. As far as I can tell, the whole of summer is a "getting ready" season, where you hunt, fish, and gather plants. Even now, with our store and its neatly packaged Tyson chicken breasts, people manage to do an extraordinary amount of self-feeding. My students may be poor, but during hunting season, I'd wager they eat better than kids anywhere else.