My trip to Nordale Elementary School

I went to Nordale Elementary School and met with the teacher, the principal, and also some children. The experience was very interesting and the people were very nice. The school has been open for three years. It is state of the art. Interestingly, the support materials and technology are similar to Racine. Both the teachers and the principal gave me books about Alaska and Fairbanks. They would like me to share them with the teachers and students at West Ridge. This is the main entrance to the building . In the background is the main secretaries desk These are wall hangings in the main entrance to the school.

This is the main hallway of the school with classrooms on either side. They have a bunch of tutoring classrooms for the tutoring program and staff that they have. The classrooms have 4-5 computers and they have 3 wireless ibook labs just like the two that we have.

I did recess duty and I have some pictures to prove it. The temperature was 0. Everyone was happy to get outside because they hadn't had recess for the last 5 days.These are a bunch of 4th graders.

Look at the red cheeks : )

The district hires reading tutors to come to schools and tutor students in reading. The position is paid at $12.00 per hour and no benefits. They can only work 15 hours per week.

This is the lunchroom. It is actually one of the smallest lunchrooms that I have seen.

After meeting people in the school, I headed for lunch at a little restaurant called Wolf Run. After lunch I returned to the cottage for a little nap and to wait for Pete and Dolores to have dinner.

I am writing this on 1/17/08. The temperature when I got up this morning was 10 above and we got 10 inches of snow on the ground last night. This is the most snow they have seen in years. The snow is very powdery and light. It is much easier to shovel here than in Racine... Even when we have light snow, it is never this powdery... Today we are going to go to the North Pole and Visit Santa's Workshop. I am going to leave Santa a note thanking him for all the gifts that West Ridge students received. Hopefully he is back from Florida...

Talk to you tomorrow