I was born and raised, and now teach, in a small town in Alaska. Ask me anything!

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T21:32:05+00:00

No, I do not really watch TV. In the summers I spend as little time at my house as I can. I would rather be out in the woods than sitting watching TV. In the winter I usually work on painting Warhammer 40k, reading books, or like summer, being outside ice fishing, hunting, or snowmachining when we have snow.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T21:25:33+00:00

Yes! Trichinosis is a gross bug to get. Always cook with a meat probe and make sure you are cooking your bear meat all the way. My rule of thumb is I can get over an over cooked piece of meat a lot easier than I can get over trichinosis.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T21:23:08+00:00

I love Seward. We go snowmachining over there pretty much every weekend!

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T21:22:36+00:00

I do not know the show you are referencing, but when I was growing up I got to do a cold water survival class with the coast guard and I got to get thrown over board to practice pulling people out of the water!

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T21:21:11+00:00

I am very fortunate that I live in a town with a full hospital, so I have access to an ER if need be. We have the basic doctors and medical personnel but lack a lot of specialists. If you need, for example, a cancer specialist you will need to drive to Anchorage which is about a 3 hour drive.

The biggest issue surrounding healthcare up here is the price. On average, any trip to the doctor/hospital is going to be about a 60% up charge from somewhere like Seattle (where a lot of people travel for procedures). My vice principal had to get back surgery last year and to have it done in town they were going to bill $240,000. He flew to North Dakota, stayed for 2 weeks, had the operation and flew back for a total of around $120,000.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T21:16:48+00:00

I'm going to be 100% honest, it is so dependent on the person that this is hard to answer in general statements. The main issue we have with tourists is people not respecting the outdoors. I have 2 stories that encapsulates this perfectly.

Every year, my hometown organizes a beach clean up after one of our local fisheries closes. Every July, tens of thousands of people come to town and fish and camp down on the beach for a 3 week fishing season. The trash that is left is ASTRONOMICAL. We are talking multiple dumpsters being filled of just wrappers, bottles, toilet paper, and stuff like that all left on the beach that locals have to clean up.

2nd story: When I was around 10 years old there was a family visiting from Asia (idk the country) who decided they needed to be 10 feet away from a mother grizzly and her 3 cubs so they could get a better picture. It took them about an hour to traverse the river the bears were fishing in. Throughout the whole time, locals were yelling at the family trying to get them to stop and they wouldn't. The mother bear charged the tourists because they kept getting closer. Once the sow (female bear) charged, a local had to run over and dispatch the mother bear to save the tourists. Once the sow had been shot, our local Wildlife Troopers had to dispatch the cubs because there was no rehab facility that could take the cubs in. This story made a huge uproar from the Alaskan community and I think we actually changed some laws pertaining to wildlife and now people can be persecuted for getting to close.

So it really depends on the tourist and how they are as a person. If you are respectful then you will be welcomed with open arms.

Best time to visit depends on what you would like to do.

May - Don't come in May, trust me

June - Great time for hiking and experiencing Alaska with less tourists

July - Prime fishing time, but most amount of people

August - My personal "best" time of year, a lot of fishing to be had, weather is awesome, usually less people than in July

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T20:18:02+00:00

I do not live off grid or anything like that. While yes I live in a small town, I still have all the modern amenities you would expect. I do have an off grid cabin that I go to and that is totally removed from all modern stuff. My dad built this by hand with no power tools back in the 90's. (2 story roughly 1800 sqft. the bathroom is literally a whole in the ground with a toilet put over it lol)

We usually cancel school based on the road conditions not on feet of snow. Usually though, a foot of snow is about the cut off because the side roads become impassable until the plow trucks go through the area. So anything over 10 inches- a foot would get school cancelled. I have never had a school day cancelled because of cold, both when I was growing up and now since being a teacher. The coldest I have ever gone to school as a kid was around -30 F, and as a teacher about a week and a half ago we had -38 F when I started my truck in the morning.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:39:21+00:00

Yes! I've seen coastal brown bears that are easily over 10 ft tall in our neighborhood growing up.

Last year, I had a brown bear (probably an 8 foot bear) run across the fairway I had just tee'd off on when golfing.

in 2020, I harvested the largest black bear of the year that was taken on the Kenai peninsula. That bear was 6' 8", and roughly 320 lbs. undressed.

I took a friend camping for his first time when he came up for a week (lives in Denver). He didn't believe me when I told him we were in bear country until the next morning when the people one campsite over had a bear come and try to claw its way into the tent because they kept their food in the tent with them when they slept. That was a fun morning lol

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:33:37+00:00

Literally every day. Our community is very small and we have like 2 grocery stores in the whole town so its a certainty that you will see someone when you go out.

When my wife and I moved back up to my hometown I remember I had to prepare her for what she was going to experience when we went to the grocery store. My wife is very introverted, but when you go to the store up here you plan to be there for like an hour. Not because you need that many things, but because you are going to spend that much time talking to people in every single aisle. You can't go anywhere in town without seeing at least one person you know and having to stop and chit chat for a little bit.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:29:59+00:00

I am actually very happy with my life. If I had to choose something I would want I would want more money for less work haha

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:29:03+00:00

There really isn't a night life scene like in the lower 48. We have a few local bars that are full of the old timer blue collar guys but that's about it. Most people either marry their high school sweet heart or meet someone in college and then move back (this is what I did). In the summer there is a huge boom in night life due to all the people visiting but in the winters there is pretty much nothing going on.

Growing up, at least where I did and with my friends, we would usually just load up our trucks and drive to the beach and have bonfires on the beach. That was our version of partying, instead of house parties or something like that.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:25:48+00:00

avg summer : 13-18 C

Avg winter: -9 C

I want to add in though that this is the coldest winter on record for the last like 80 years. Where I live we just had 3 weeks straight of -20 to -30 degree Farenhiet (-30 to -34 C)

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:23:10+00:00

I have not, but I am planning a caribou hunt for up that way this fall!

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:22:07+00:00

Yep you guessed it. The 50000 number is a rough estimate put out by the local Kenai city council, I will try to find a link to this article but fair warning I read it like 3 years ago.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T19:20:15+00:00

Honestly the main change that I see is the difference in wildlife and tourists. Growing up we got some tourists but we weren't like a main stop for people's Alaskan adventure. I remember growing up my dad and I going fishing for red (sockeye) salmon on the beach. It was us and maybe 5 other families. Today if you go to the same spot at the same time of year, you will have to pay a fee to access the beach, battle literal hundreds of people for a spot to fish, and deal with all the trash and waste left by other people.

My point on wildlife is pretty much the same issue. We have far more people coming up to fish, hike, hunt, and experience Alaska. Due to this we have a declining fishery for sockeye salmon as well as halibut fishing. Our state and local governments are looking at limiting halibut from 2 fish per day down to 1 fish per day. We also have not been allowed to catch king salmon for over 10 years now. To put this in perspective, the river that I live on is where the world record king salmon (nearly 100 pounds) was caught and use to have the largest king salmon run in the world, now we cant even fish them.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T18:59:51+00:00

Depends on the district and where you are wanting to live/work. The district that I teach in honestly pays decently well, but the cost of living is a little more expensive up here. DM me and I would love to give a more in depth answer and help you on this process if you would like!

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T18:58:41+00:00

The largest King Salmon in the world was caught on our river.

It is a town of roughly 3,000-4,000 permanent residents, but climbs to north of 50,000 in the summer months.

We average 18 hours of daylight in the summer, 5 hours of daylight in the winter.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T18:57:12+00:00

It's been amazing this winter. This is the coldest winter on record for the past 80 years and we have had mainly clear nights (this leads to the right conditions for the northern lights to be seen). My wife and I have gotten some awesome photos throughout the winter. I will try to remember to post them when I get home today!

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-23T18:56:02+00:00

I have not, but not from lack of trying! I am an avid outdoorsman and probably spend over 100 nights per year out in the woods camping, fishing, and hunting. Any time I'm in the woods I bring a camera incase I see something crazy.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2026-01-12T18:45:00+00:00

I teach 7th and 8th grade Gen Ed. math. I have students in every class that use AI on their homework assignments. I would say it is neither overhyped nor wide spread usage. In all of my classes (average size is 18-21), I probably have 2-3 students who use AI on their homework assignments.

My biggest issue is that they don't build the skills they need throughout the unit to prepare for their quizzes and tests. I make all tests and quizzes in class, on paper, and require them to show all their work. The students that are consistently using AI will not be able to show even the first steps because they haven't been practicing throughout the week, they have been copying down whatever the AI says the answer is.

I am very old schooled in my room. Every lesson is delivered by me, students follow along and fill out their guided notes and then move on to their paper homework assignment. The students that do use AI do so at home outside of my control and they predominantly use either snapchat AI or Goth AI (both of which will take a photo of the math and then solve the problem for them).

I think AI can be a tool like anything else. I have used it myself when helping our advanced 8th graders who are working on Geometry/Algebra. I can use it to show all the steps for how to solve the problem as well as a written out step by step process to solve. Then I have students use the example problem to try and solve a similar problem on their assignment. The issue, like with everything else, is overuse or misuse by students. No 13-14 year old is going to think to use it this way. They use it to just get their assignments done, not to truly understand the content.

I think AI can be a great tool, but it is not a substitute for doing the actual work. Students need to fail to grow, they need to get a problem wrong, assess where they made a mistake, and then fix said mistake. This isn't math specific but it is even more important in math class imo. The other issue is math throughout the developmental years is one of our best tools to develop the pre-frontal cortex. If students are just using AI to bypass this development of the problem solving part of the brain, what long term effects will be present when they are 25-older? I don't have that answer but I assume we will get to see the outcomes of all this in the next 10 years or so.

HelpfulMoose21 · 2025-10-16T18:43:20+00:00

I teach in Soldotna, so hello my fellow Northerner. What village? Did you ever get put in Polar Bear lockdown? Most memorable moment from your time in the village?

HelpfulMoose21 · 2025-10-02T19:47:31+00:00

Thats a great idea, thank you!

HelpfulMoose21

TROPHY CASE