I swear I’ve written about my first job, but going through my posts, apparently not.

#youareoldandforgetful

That may very well be, but I am what I am! 🙂

In 1994, we needed a job! We’d graduated in December, and married in March, so a job was the next step. Education was a place many people wanted to be so the dozens of resumes we’d sent out in Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin got us nothing. So we started looking elsewhere. Our college was one of many who went in on a massive job fair in the Twin Cities, so away we went. We interviewed in Texas (really desperate for teachers, ANY teachers), Arizona, and Alaska.

Our Alaska interview was interesting. We had an HR representative and a board member from the Bering Strait School District, a district the size of Washington State. That interview went well, so we had a phone soon afterward, and then, suddenly, we were employees of the Bering Strait School District.

So, we had a big old garage sale to see a bunch of stuff. We both sold our cars, and the little bit of furniture we had gotten along the way, and put all the stuff we had left into boxes to be mailed to our new home. We moved in with my wife’s parents, back on the farm (newlyweds living with your in-laws, not highly recommended!) Our parents were less than impressed with our new job. 3,000 miles away and a small chance of us liking it up there is scary for parents of 20-something kids! But, in July, we started gathering our stuff around to take the trip! We at the end of July because I had a week’s worth of PD dealing with an Apple grant the school received.

We took a non-stop flight to Anchorage, then hopped on a twin prop plane and took the two-hour flight over the Alaskan mountain range to Unalakleet, Alaska. This is a native village about an hour plane ride south of Nome. The majority of the people who live here are Native American, but not “Indians” in the sense that we know. The “Indians” lived over the mountain range and apparently, there was bad blood between them and the Natives of Unalakleet, or that’s what we were told.

The PD was cool, but I missed my wife and she was there alone with no one. No cell phone, no Internet, and not much else. She managed to get herself a cat which traveled back with us and actually passed away in our current home. We got unpacked, settled in, and started to explore. The village had two grocery stores, one owned by white people, and the other by natives. Each had different stuff and we tried to visit both. We were stared at a lot. New white people in the village always caught the eye of everyone. We were the minority without a doubt. There was one restaurant that had pretty good burgers.

And then, school started. I taught sixth-grade math, reading, and social studies, along with US History and World History. My wife taught 7th-grade math, reading, and social studies, HS English, and the Yearbook. We also coached varsity basketball.

This is starting to get long, so I’ll start in with the school year tomorrow! There’s a lot of memories are bubbling back up for sure! 🙂