On Thursday, the teacher of the year was announced.   Katie Pemberton was surprised in the gym of her school with the award and 1,000 dollars. She is a 7th and 8th grade math teacher at Canfield Middle School in Coeur d’Alene. Ms. Pemberton will go to DC to be in the contest for National Teacher of the Year.

Teachers are some of the best people in the world. They give their entire day to help young people to learn. They spend a lot of their free-time grading papers and writing assignments. My favorite teacher is Mr. Grant. He spends a lot of time organizing notes in powerpoint form to help us do well. He explains the material very well and I understand what he is trying to get across. With him teaching, school is a lot easier.

Who is your favorite teacher and why? What qualities do they have to help school became easier or harder to make a challenge for you? Would you rather have a teacher that pushed you to do better or a teacher that made everything easy? Would they be making it easier by how well they are teaching you or just making it easier by not trying?

On Monday, Sun Valley ski resort was hit with a big avalanche. The avalanche happend on Lookout Bowl and it slid down the entire mountain.  It covered part of Seattle Ridge Lift although there was no damage to the lift. There were no injuries in the avalanche and the resort is going to be open but skiers are being warned to stay away from the top part of the mountain.

Avalanches are big slides of snow down a mountain. They occur when big piles of snow are "shaken" off the mountain. Avalaches can be caused by skiers and snomobilers. When a skier is caught in an avalanche they are in a bad spot. Skiers often get covered by snow in an avalanche and die because they are unable to be found. When someone is lost in an avalanche, search and rescue teams are sent out as soon as the avlalanche is no longer flowing.

Search and rescue teams get to, roughly the spot where the skier was buried within two hours.  This may seem incouraging but stats show that only half of all victims of avalanches live after only thirty minutes under the snow. So the reality is that if you are caught in an avalanche, you better hope that you are rescued quickly or you have a good chance of dying.

Do you now anybody who has been caught in an avalanche? If so, what happened (if you are willing to share)? What do you think could be done to prevent avalanches?

On Wednesday afternoon, the parents of Tanner Cagle began to worry why he wasn't home.  He attends Kindergarten at Washington Elementary. After 45 minutes of waiting for their son to come home they went to Washington Elementary to see where he was. The school secretary and the Cagles went back to the Kindergarten classroom to see where Tanner was. They found him in a room adjacent to the Kindergarten room, alone, crying, and in the dark. He had wet his pants and had been in the room for an hour and a half.  

The Kindergarten teacher said that she had placed Tanner there at the end of the Kindergarten for unreleased reasons and forgot that he was there. The teacher feels very bad for what happened and is being investigated. The superintendent of the Caldwell school district said that it "wasn't a preferred practice" for teachers. The room is usually used for working with students one on one or if a student becomes a danger to themselves or to their classmates.

I think that putting a child in a dark room,alone, for ninety minutes is a horrible thing to do. Keep in mind that this was a five year old Kindergarten student. The parents of Tanner are understandably angry and want the problem to be dealt with. Mr. Cagle met with the principle of the school on Thursday morning and agreed that Tanner would be placed in a different Kindergarten class for the rest of the year. The Caldwell school district also said that they were taking appropriate actions against the teacher. Her name isn't being released because she hasn't been charged for a crime.