About Me

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My journey with the Alaska Gateway School District began in the fall of 2012. For the first two years, I was teaching the kindergarten through 2nd grade groups in Tetlin. For the next two years, I taught the same ages at another village school in Northway. In the fall of 2016, I transferred to Tok School to teach 4th grade for two years. This year I requested the third grade, as I always enjoy taking on a new grade level of students. Before moving to Tok, my background consisted of four years living in Botswana, Africa, with my husband where I taught mostly English as second language learners in grades kindergarten through fourth. Previously, we were long time Alaska residents. Most of our years in Alaska were spent living in the interior bush community of Galena, where I taught an alternative program for teens, 7th and 8th grades, Title 1 reading, and kindergarten. For a number of years before obtaining my teacher certificate, I was part of the classified support staff in addition to serving on the local school board. It has been great to be back in Alaska, and Tok has been a good fit for us.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Week 10

 Weekly Greetings!

Before I recap some highlights from our past week, there are a couple important things I need to inform you about this week.

First, the pool at Fort Greely should be opening on this Monday so we are going to celebrate the end of our first quarter together by taking a field trip there on Thursday. Please return the permission slip attached to the weekly parent letter. Your child will need their winter gear for traveling, a swimsuit, and towel. We will leave as soon as the students finish breakfast, and will return sometime around 5:30pm to 6:00pm. Please leave me a phone number on the permission slip, so that I can call you with a more accurate time to pick your child up when we get close to Tok. We will take a bag lunch and also have pizza after swimming. You can send additional snacks if you think your child will need more than that for the day trip. There will not be any homework that night.

Halloween will be in a week. It is my understanding that the students can bring costumes, but they are not to wear hats, masks, or any accessories that will distract them from learning. We will have a normal morning, and then a school parade starting at 2:30pm. Class parties will begin when the parade is over. Then that evening, there will be the Trick or Treat Street and carnival at the school for Tok and  the local communities. Please fill out and return the party food request that will be at the end of the parent letter this week.

Now on with a few highlights from our short week...All the drums went home last week and the students were so proud of their work. We took a class picture of them all with the additional 16-sided class drum we will display all year.
In addition to the regular classroom curriculum covered each week, the students enjoy a number of enrichment classes. On Tuesday after they have Library, they take a Computer class and are learning to keyboard from Mrs. Hack. They also have a structured P.E. class three days a week with Mr. Cronk.
On Wednesday, we participated in another AK Teach activity with 13 other schools from Alaska and the Lower 48 states. Scientists in Action connect students to scientists in the field via the Internet, and are a live and inter-active experience. Through this activity, we were able to travel to a “Mogollon” (Moh-gee-yohn) site in New Mexico with Dr. Steve Nash of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and Octavius Seowtewa of the Zuni Cultural Resources Assessment Team as our guides. The people archaeologists call Mogollon lived in mountainous regions bordering Arizona and New Mexico from AD 300 to about AD 1300. In the harsh but fertile environment, they hunted deer and other animals, grew corn and other crops, and lived in pit houses before switching to above-ground structures. At the site, there were numerous rock paintings that are believed to tell the origin story of the ancient culture.  We will have another AK Teach experience in November.
Have a great week!

Kind Regards,

Julie Brown


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