K, Mr K and Ak

Almost thirty years separate these pictures of my friend KB.

The first was snapped in the spring of 1980, when K and his father invited me to join them on the family's boat to celebrate K's ninth birthday.

The location is the Gastineau Channel, near the city of Juneau in south-east Alaska.

I was nearing the end of my year as a US/UK exchange teacher, working with a third grade class at a local elementary school, where K was one of my students.

K was one of those children who come along every so often in a teacher's career: bright, inquisitive, eager, puzzling, funny, thoughtful - and voracious.

With K, it wasn't a case of him keeping up with what I was attempting to teach. The big worry was that I wouldn't keep up with him, so rapidly did he Hoover up the work.

Fortunately, it was here that my exchange teacher's 'unique selling point' came into play.

I'd brought with me a stack of materials about varied aspects of British life and culture: Guy Fawkes, red letter boxes, postage stamps and, my trump card, the Royals.

This was in those deferential pre-Diana days, when the Top Family was riding high after the success of the Silver Jubilee of 1977 - and was more or less divorce-free.

Consequently the simple family-tree diagram I'd prepared made it easy to see who was related to whom over several generations of assorted Windsors.

K was particularly intrigued and, under his own steam, began researching his family and forebears.

The busy school year rattled on to its conclusion. I left Juneau, travelled the Alaska Highway and celebrated my thirtieth birthday at the Grand Canyon - and returned reluctantly to the slightly less than Alaska-rugged milieu of my home and school in southern England.

In subseqent years I kept up Christmas-card contacts with K's family until, inevitably, changes of address (and my carelessness) ended such exchanges.

Until about ten years ago, when thanks to the www revolution, we re-established contact.

K, a man of deep and questing faith, now lives in Utah where he serves voluntarily on the staff of the local Roman Catholic Cathedral. And he pursues an international career as a genealogical researcher and lecturer.

The up-to-date picture comes from K's recent visit to the glaciers of Argentina.

I'm proud to count K among my friends.

Maybe in your town....

We're five minutes into a creative writing lesson. Heads are down, pencils are scratching, and the majority of the twenty-four third-graders in my care seem to be, er, creating. I'm an optimistic teacher.

Then the miracle occurs.

Ricky appears at my desk with his notebook. He wants a word. Could this mean that he wishes to take part in the lesson?

It does.

This is the classroom equivalent of Margaret Thatcher volunteering to hawk copies of Socialist Worker to passers by from the doorstep of Number Ten.

By this point in the school year Ricky and I have reached an uneasy truce. He doesn't disrupt the class. I don't ask too much of him in terms of work. It's not going to up the achievement profile. But it's working for us.

I've no idea what this nine-year-old native American boy makes of me, the English exchange teacher. I've gained the impression that as far as he's concerned I may as well have dropped in from the moon.

But now he wants to join in. The lesson is based around a series of cartoon drawings I've prepared. They show an old-time prospector working in his mine. Check shirt, spiky beard, the works.

We've talked about the mining history of the region - we can actually see a worked-out gold mine from the classroom window. And now we're going to imagine that Spike the miner is telling us his story. Inspiring, huh?

'You need a word, Ricky?'

'Uh huh. Strukkid.'

'Strukkid, Ricky?'

'Yeah, strukkid.' Slight rolling up of eyes.

'Er, so what's the sentence you're trying to write?'

As if speaking to a dimwit, Ricky says: 'Spike was happy 'cos he strukkid rich.'

'Great sentence, Ricky. But actually it's two words "struck it", not "strukkid".'

A sigh. 'I want strukkid.'

Two brown eyes are focused on me. This boy probably knows every disused mine shaft within a five-mile radius, just as he knows where the local bald eagles nest, and where the Pacific salmon surge up the pebbly creek beds to spawn and die. How weird is this teacher not to know a simple word like strukkid?

I give it one last shot: 'Ricky, believe me. There's no such word. It's not "strukkid", it's "struck it". OK?'

Those eyes fix me, the so-called teacher from England, wherever that is, with a look of infinite pity, as Nicky sighs and delivers his unanswerable put-down.

'Maybe in your town....'

Fair exchange

At the end of the 1970s I taught this third grade class at a school in South East Alaska.

SE Alaska is an elongated mosaic of islands hugging the north-western edge of Canada. The community where I taught, though sizeable, is inaccessible by road. You arrive by plane (two hours from Seattle) or ferry (fifty hours).

Mostly uninhabited, the region's main industries are fishing and logging. Though northern, SEA qualifies as a rain forest. And I remember the rain as constant, relentless, endless.

After a shaky start (homesickness) I fell in love with the place - and relished every moment of my Alakan experience.

More recollections soon.