The Year of Miss Agnes

Miss Agnes works with the children on their speech. The students believe they don't speak English correctly because other teachers have told them this, but Miss Agnes disagrees, telling them it's all a matter of context. She teaches them more formal speech, which Fred finds tricky and slightly unnatural. Jimmy Sam loves learning the correct rules. The children turn this into a game, putting checkmarks by others' names on the board if they make mistakes. The person with the fewest checkmarks wins, and Fred wins a lot.

The children are all back in school for a while after Christmas, and Miss Agnes chooses new books to read. When they return from beaver trapping in February, she reads them the story of a priest who traveled by dogsled around Alaska, and who built the Allakaket school. The children like hearing about people they know; even Fred's grandfather is in the book. Miss Agnes's favorite part is about a native boy who travels with the priest, who initially speaks no English, but who is intelligent and plans to be the first native doctor. However, he drowns after a ship he is on hits an iceberg. The students are interested to hear that native people can be doctors.