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Posted On 07/29/2010 04:19:18 by pigshow

FARMINGTON ? In about a month,10 students and three teachers from Farmington will fly to Alaska and get on a bush plane to land on an airstrip in a remote town 300 miles northwest of Anchorage.

For two weeks, the eighth-graders will be immersed in a cross- cultural experience in a community where homes do not have running water, where residents live off what they can catch in the Kuskokwim River, and whose customs go back generations.

The students will be meeting the local students at Johnny John Sr. School in Crooked Creek, who they have been videoconferencing with for months.

Crooked Creek has a population of approximately 125, with 93 percent of those Alaska Natives of mixed Yup'ik Eskimo and Ingalik Athabascan descent.

The trip, a year in the making, is being led by social studies teacher Tim Shumway, who taught at the Crooked Creek school for two years before returning to his hometown of Farmington to teach at Mt. Blue Middle School. Shumway, 26, is a graduate of the University wholesale sexy lingerie of Maine at Farmington.

The remoteness, the people and the experience of being in a culture where he is a minority had a huge impact on Shumway. He has been offered his old job back at the Crooked Creek school and he will be staying in Alaska when the Maine kids depart.

"When I was first there, it was an experience of a lifetime. I wanted to come back to Maine to relate that to our students here. That was how the idea of the trip started," he said on Monday. "And now, I have accepted a semi-permanent job in the village we are visiting."

On Tuesday, the board of directors of Mt. Blue Regional School District voted to approve the trip. Directors had informally supported the concept when Shumway first presented it to them earlier this year.

Student Anthony Franchetti of Wilton said when he first heard Shumway describe the trip in class last fall, he knew it was something he had to do.

"I really wanted to go. I wanted to see how other people live, how they make a living, and how they can take out their small boats and catch fish to feed their people. I have been dreaming about this. It will be unbelievable," he said.

"They live in a place that is unlike anything we have ever seen, and they have been living that way for generations," Franchetti said Monday.

"What particularly surprised me was the sense of family and community they have there. They would do anything for anyone else who needed help. They can rely on each other," he said.

On a website that students at Johnny John Sr. School created when Shumway was first teaching there from 2006 to 2008, they write about their school, the region and their community.

One a page, titled "Kinship," student Tracy Parent wrote: "In Crooked Creek, 'family' doesn't mean Monogram vernis Replica Handbags only your mom and dad, your brothers and sisters. As a community, we are an entire family. The people are what makes Crooked Creek special. From our leaders and elders to our children and students, each member of the community helps make Crooked Creek what it is."

Franchetti said he is also looking forward to the challenging assignments that will be expected of each student on the trip.

"It will only make the experience better," he said.

Assignments will span social studies, science and language
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