OK. Just a few more thoughts in a deliberately random order:

4 out of the 5 teachers at Northway School are leaving at the end of this school year. 4 out of 5. A new principal will be coming in, too. I suspect many of us heard similar stories out at our rural placements. Everything we know about education tells us that this high turnover rate is terrible for Alaska's students and yet we're not hearing a lot about what we can do to change it or better adapt to it. At Northway, I can only imagine there will be a few years of difficult transition and re-stabilization. The school's location a few miles outside of the actual village will put it at a distinct disadvantage through the course of that transition; it's just not seen as an essential pillar of the community like schools are in many Alaska communities.
 
In Northway, many of the younger kids got awards for drawings they submitted to a drawing contest Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge held earlier in the year. The rep from the Refuge said the Northway kids submitted far more drawings than any other school in the region. Go Northway Warriors!

Kids getting awards and etc

  The view of the Yukon River from "downtown" Eagle is breathtaking. Simply breathtaking. 

A view of the Yukon River from Eagle

There's a giant metal chicken in Chicken. I'm told it's the biggest chicken in the world. Ernie, the boy who told me this, tricked me several times during our trip up to Eagle and I remain dubious.

Jonny and the giant chicken in Chicken

Eagle's school building is really nice. There's a large communal meeting/library area located in the middle and the classrooms and offices are all situated around its perimeter. The building's design makes those long hallway school buildings look poorly planned and kind of ridiculous in comparison. Eagle's is a very small school; just 18 students are enrolled there in 2015-16.

Eagle School

There are many words for snow.

Many words for snow