Brook Nordeen: UMC Alum Goes West

Brook Nordeen has seen the Alaskan wilderness up close and personal. Maybe a bit too close. The 2002 University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC) graduate explains:

“There are moose everywhere here; it’s like seeing deer back in Minnesota, only here it’s moose. When there’s not a lot of sunlight in the winter you have to crowd all of your plants as close as you can to your windows. Well, the moose come up to your windows in the winter and blow snot all over them trying to get at the plants so they can eat them.”

It’s probably a safe assumption that the Alaska Tourism Office won’t be hiring Nordeen anytime soon as a spokesperson to share that image with potential visitors. That’s fine with her, however. She’s too busy teaching kindergarten at the Williwaw School in Anchorage and having the time of her life.

“I’ve had a wonderful first year here,” she said. “I haven’t once regretted my decision to come.”

Nordeen first heard about teaching opportunities in Alaska while attending a job fair at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. She visited Alaska shortly after graduation in May 2002 and had a job in July.

The Williwaw School is home to approximately 600 students, with 22 kids in Nordeen’s kindergarten class. Of those, 15 are bilingual, speaking languages ranging from Spanish, to Asian, to Tongan. Since it’s a Title I school, the Inclusion Model is followed in each classroom, meaning the students never leave the regular classroom to receive English language instruction. Instead, Nordeen explained, bilingual support staff and Title I teachers are in the classroom with her to bridge any language gaps.

“It’s an amazing thing to witness, all these children from so many different cultures learning and growing together,” she said.

Climate Lesson

Anchorage, with a population pushing 300,000, is a tourist haven located on the far southern mainland of Alaska. If Nordeen was shocked by the climate in any way upon her arrival, it had to do with it not nearly living up to all the stereotypes.

“This past winter it didn’t get below zero once, and we only got a couple feet of snow,” she said, adding that in order to find “winter fun” she had to go into the mountains outside of Anchorage, where several feet of snow pile up. “It’s ten times colder in Minnesota than it is here,” Nordeen continued. “My parents suffer with 30 below and frozen pipes in Duluth, while it’s absolutely beautiful here.”

The dark winter days and marathon sunny summer days did require some adjustments, Nordeen admitted.

“In the middle of the summer it never gets totally dark, dusk but not dark. It’s not real bright, but it’s definitely not dark,” she explained. “At first, my eyes would get so tired waiting and waiting for the sun to go down so I could go to bed. You have to look at the clock to know when it’s time to go to bed, and then someone starts mowing their lawn at midnight. A lot of what goes on around here is like Minnesota, only on steroids.”

She’s more philosophical about the dark winter days, where the sun rises around 10:30 a.m. and sets around 4 p.m. “I just compare it to the middle of winter in Minnesota, where you go to work in the dark and come home from work in the dark,” Nordeen said. “And I’m not going to complain about sleeping until 10:30 a.m. in the winter, guilt-free.”

Teacher pay in Alaska is significantly higher than in the lower 48 states, but so is the cost of living, Nordeen explained. She figures she could buy a house in Minnesota for what she’s paying for rent in Anchorage. “If you live in the bush you’d make quite a bit more, but then you pay more for everything, too, because all the food and supplies have to be flown in,” she said.

Nordeen lives with her boyfriend of seven years, UMC alumnus Derek Hoffbauer, and her brother, Mike. Both work at Triple A Fencing in Anchorage. This summer it’s become even more of a family affair with the arrival of Nordeen’s dad, who works as a fishing guide during the warmer months.

It was Hoffbauer who turned Nordeen on to UMC. She was attending the University of Minnesota, Duluth when he was playing hockey for UMC.

“He said UMC was awesome, and the rest is history,” she said. “UMC was awesome.”

The number of times her colleagues have commented on the quality of her education is the best indication of the value of her UMC experience, Nordeen said. The University of Alaska, Anchorage is in the early stages of launching an early childhood program, Nordeen said, but they don’t have the luxury of having UMC’s integrated technology and hands-on Early Childhood Center. Still, she said she’s offered to consult UAA on its endeavor.

“Everything I see at my school every single day I was trained for at UMC,” she said. “Everything I learned about and debated in my own mind and with others is played out right before my eyes every day. To see it all come to life like that is really something.”

She recently attended a six-day conference in Florida, where renowned early childhood specialist, Dr. Becky Bailey, coordinated numerous workshops. Nordeen said it was reassuring to hear Dr. Bailey sing the praises of the Guidance Approach to Discipline, which is what she was taught at UMC. “It felt so good to know that I’m on the right track and not out in left field somewhere,” Nordeen said, adding that she’s emailed her instructors at UMC and even the recently retired Chancellor Don Sargeant, “just to tell them how amazing this all is.”

She even complained to her UMC instructors, good-naturedly, about the technology in the Anchorage School District. “All the teachers got Macintosh laptops, and I was like, ‘Come on! A Mac? Get with the real world!”

Bonnie Goen, principal of the Williwaw School, attended the Florida conference with Nordeen. She said the school is lucky to have a teacher as “incredibly talented” as Nordeen.

“She is just a wonderful addition to our faculty and a pleasure to have at Williwaw,” Goen said.

Written by:
Mike Christopherson, Assistant Director of Service Learning, UMC