School Days
So school has been in session for two weeks now… and I can say without any kind of doubt that I was lucky to be teaching in America. The resources for American teachers is amazing! Here… you have to be real creative to teach! Not that that is always a bad thing….
I saw a teacher using sea shells as counters for math and it was perfect! He was also using a wooden stool to act like a dry erase board with chalk.
The classrooms have a lack of books, and the teachers find ways to make due. They have stories from their curriculum books that they put on chart paper to teach with. Some schools have a library. My school has several dozen books… but most are the one sentence per page books that we give to kindergarteners in America.
At the thrift store I bought some books to share with my class including a few Dr. Seuss ones. I introduced read aloud to the kids and they seemed to love them. They do not get many books with pictures here…so it was a nice change for them.
The school day here is stressful because of how different it is to what we think of as being normal. I was given the schemes book to teach English…and the last time it was updated was in 1990. So the stories in it are old, and I am not sure are completely relevant to the children anymore. I am trying to make due and teach it as close to what they know of as being normal as possible…
I also taught social sciences the other day when a teacher was out and the schemes book I was given was from 1984. I do not know if Samoa has redone their curriculum since then, but that was all the school had.
Another time that I helped out when a teacher was not there, there was no schemes book, so I just made up the lesson based upon what I thought they students needed to know. (adding and subtracting seems to need help across the board.)
In America we have to bring in supplies for the classroom to make the living environment better for the class. They bring in tissue boxes, paper towels and other small items. Students need to do that here too…only they bring in brooms and mats (both homemade) and their own toilet paper (the bathroom is finally up and running again!)
Hearing about corporal punishment and seeing it are two different things. There is the slight hit….which I received when a student was trying to get my attention. (She did not appreciate me telling her that she should not hit her teachers in any form. ) There are also the slight taps with objects such as brooms. I have also seen the kids dragged into the teachers office to be slapped and once when I was teaching another teacher came into my classroom to hit a few of the boys.
It is mentally frustrating to deal with these issues and I am glad I have the support of others to help me keep my straight.
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Animals
Animals
In my house we have 3 dogs (1 of them being a puppy), 2 cats and a baby cow. The cow was born right before I got to my village and I love spending time with Sunshine. She is just like a dog. When I go outside to read my book, she sometimes comes and lays her head in my lap to be pet. The other day when I was doing laundry she came over and started licking me to get attention while I was trying to wring out my clothes.
Our puppy Mufasa keeps running away from home to where his birth parents are. My sister is worried that she is going to lose him. He is an obnoxious little guy, so either way would be good for me.
The other two dogs are so sweet and come over to me whenever they see me….probably because I may be the only one who has ever pet them…
The cats are so frightened of me. I try to pet them and they seriously make a mad dash whenever they see me.
As you can tell my favorite of our animals is the cow and I would love to have a pet calf when I grow up.
School Week
Rest of First week of School
At the district meeting Elisa and I learned that the School Review Officer was confused about our positions and thought we were here for the entire district. He told the schools that we will make up a schedule and teach at all of them. Elisa had schools trying to sign us up for certain days and we were like, “Hold up. What is going on???” I am glad that they are all anxious that we are here but we are not miracle workers….and I would find it difficult to wake up early and bike for 2 hours to get to a school for just a few hours. By the end of the meeting I think they understood our jobs a little more and Elisa and I began planning for a staff development road show to bring to the different schools in the district.
It is really funny because my mom warned me that the district meetings are like a fashion show. Everyone wears their brand new puletasi. Apparently I wasn’t wearing my nicest one because at school the next day I was asked why I didn’t wear the pulatasi I was wearing that day to the meeting. I was also told by my dad that teachers need to present themselves nicely. Which means wearing gel in your hair to make it look nice and smelling like perfume. The only smell they have is of the cheapest perfume so now daily I get to smell like the amazing stuff you can get at the dollar store.
My third day of school went well. I decided to go room hopping and see as much as possible. I started in the year 6 room and the teacher there was awesome. She was teaching English and using a lot of good techniques to draw information out of them and having them actually think and not always just recite the same thing back and forth. It was the first time I saw partner work actually used.
I then headed next door to the year fives, and there was no teacher in the room. They had math problems on the board and the children were really struggling with addition. I showed a few of them column addition and it appeared as though some of them got it. While I was working with small groups their teacher returned, checked some books, and then left again. The kids were done with their work and had nothing to do. I had them going around the room counting by 2’s and 5’s. Then introduced the easy version of “Bizz Buzz” where instead of saying a number you say bizz. So we had all even numbers be “bizz”. We started all the counting in Samoan then switch to English. I think the kids enjoyed it so it was good.
The bell rang for lunch and kids began to be covered in sugary items. I sat on one of the steps and had a group of kids come and talk to me. I decided that this will be my language tutoring each day. I learned the word for earring, hair band and school patch. I wasn’t sure if school would be over since every time I’ve visited school has ended around lunch time. However this time, the kids went back to their classrooms. So I decided I needed to try another room…
I entered the year 8 classroom. I wasn’t going to at first, but then decided that since the kids were calling out to me it was a sign I should go in. Some of the boys called me to sit next to them. I do and saw they were working on math. I felt so bad for one of the boys. He is so confused and you can tell that he was just passed along as being the “slow kid” and no one took the time to work with him. He struggles with reading every little word. He doesn’t understand much English and I know I pushed him hard to complete the work his teacher gave him. I do not think he understood everything of what we did together, but no matter what he felt good about himself. When I got up to leave to try out another classroom he called me back to give me a giant high five with a huge smile on his face. Seeing how excited he was for the little time I spent with him made me thrilled to be here. This is the reason I’m here, these kids. They are the future of this country and we want to make sure they are as educated as possible for when they reach the real world.
I left the room with one of the year 8 teachers who is excited to work with me. She asked me questions to prepare for her social science lesson. She then showed me what the kids are doing in English and tells me what they are struggling with. I told her how I had a similar problem and I decided to use their ceiling as reference space for the kids for little things like parts of speech. We then go to the book room where some places in New Zealand, Australia and America have donated their used textbooks. There are about 5 to a set of these books. There are a lot for mathematics, however not much for reading. We look through them for things she can use and I think it benefitted both of us.
My last stop was the year sevens. They were working on writing easy sentences and I helped them. Some of the kids said it was homework, while others were working on it. I would love to show these kids how to create sentences that start differently. Hopefully it will happen within time.
I really enjoyed my quick hop around the school. It is amazing how different the schools are. When I start with my teaching next week I am going to come prepared with a lot of pencils, sharpeners, and erasers as that what was missing. Several times you would come across a student just sitting there and when you would ask why you would find out that they were missing a penitala (pencil).
After school I walked home with the year seven girls. They were real funny to talk to. I then headed to the hospital as I was told that Thursday afternoons were the day that there was a doctor on duty. The hospital is in the next village next to me so it was not a far walk at all. I have an ear infection that grew into both ears and after a few weeks of medicine, I am anxious of it to finally get better! Especially since you cannot scuba dive with messed up ears!
I talked with some of the others that were waiting to see someone and the nurse came out. She explained to me that there is now only one doctor on the island of Savai’i and he is needed at the main hospital full time so they no longer have a doctor to travel to the different district hospitals. It is hard to imagine a hospital without a doctor, but I guess this is the transition I have to make from my “normal Western” thinking.
Life here is completely different and each day I am here more and more things stand out to show me how.
At the district meeting Elisa and I learned that the School Review Officer was confused about our positions and thought we were here for the entire district. He told the schools that we will make up a schedule and teach at all of them. Elisa had schools trying to sign us up for certain days and we were like, “Hold up. What is going on???” I am glad that they are all anxious that we are here but we are not miracle workers….and I would find it difficult to wake up early and bike for 2 hours to get to a school for just a few hours. By the end of the meeting I think they understood our jobs a little more and Elisa and I began planning for a staff development road show to bring to the different schools in the district.
It is really funny because my mom warned me that the district meetings are like a fashion show. Everyone wears their brand new puletasi. Apparently I wasn’t wearing my nicest one because at school the next day I was asked why I didn’t wear the pulatasi I was wearing that day to the meeting. I was also told by my dad that teachers need to present themselves nicely. Which means wearing gel in your hair to make it look nice and smelling like perfume. The only smell they have is of the cheapest perfume so now daily I get to smell like the amazing stuff you can get at the dollar store.
My third day of school went well. I decided to go room hopping and see as much as possible. I started in the year 6 room and the teacher there was awesome. She was teaching English and using a lot of good techniques to draw information out of them and having them actually think and not always just recite the same thing back and forth. It was the first time I saw partner work actually used.
I then headed next door to the year fives, and there was no teacher in the room. They had math problems on the board and the children were really struggling with addition. I showed a few of them column addition and it appeared as though some of them got it. While I was working with small groups their teacher returned, checked some books, and then left again. The kids were done with their work and had nothing to do. I had them going around the room counting by 2’s and 5’s. Then introduced the easy version of “Bizz Buzz” where instead of saying a number you say bizz. So we had all even numbers be “bizz”. We started all the counting in Samoan then switch to English. I think the kids enjoyed it so it was good.
The bell rang for lunch and kids began to be covered in sugary items. I sat on one of the steps and had a group of kids come and talk to me. I decided that this will be my language tutoring each day. I learned the word for earring, hair band and school patch. I wasn’t sure if school would be over since every time I’ve visited school has ended around lunch time. However this time, the kids went back to their classrooms. So I decided I needed to try another room…
I entered the year 8 classroom. I wasn’t going to at first, but then decided that since the kids were calling out to me it was a sign I should go in. Some of the boys called me to sit next to them. I do and saw they were working on math. I felt so bad for one of the boys. He is so confused and you can tell that he was just passed along as being the “slow kid” and no one took the time to work with him. He struggles with reading every little word. He doesn’t understand much English and I know I pushed him hard to complete the work his teacher gave him. I do not think he understood everything of what we did together, but no matter what he felt good about himself. When I got up to leave to try out another classroom he called me back to give me a giant high five with a huge smile on his face. Seeing how excited he was for the little time I spent with him made me thrilled to be here. This is the reason I’m here, these kids. They are the future of this country and we want to make sure they are as educated as possible for when they reach the real world.
I left the room with one of the year 8 teachers who is excited to work with me. She asked me questions to prepare for her social science lesson. She then showed me what the kids are doing in English and tells me what they are struggling with. I told her how I had a similar problem and I decided to use their ceiling as reference space for the kids for little things like parts of speech. We then go to the book room where some places in New Zealand, Australia and America have donated their used textbooks. There are about 5 to a set of these books. There are a lot for mathematics, however not much for reading. We look through them for things she can use and I think it benefitted both of us.
My last stop was the year sevens. They were working on writing easy sentences and I helped them. Some of the kids said it was homework, while others were working on it. I would love to show these kids how to create sentences that start differently. Hopefully it will happen within time.
I really enjoyed my quick hop around the school. It is amazing how different the schools are. When I start with my teaching next week I am going to come prepared with a lot of pencils, sharpeners, and erasers as that what was missing. Several times you would come across a student just sitting there and when you would ask why you would find out that they were missing a penitala (pencil).
After school I walked home with the year seven girls. They were real funny to talk to. I then headed to the hospital as I was told that Thursday afternoons were the day that there was a doctor on duty. The hospital is in the next village next to me so it was not a far walk at all. I have an ear infection that grew into both ears and after a few weeks of medicine, I am anxious of it to finally get better! Especially since you cannot scuba dive with messed up ears!
I talked with some of the others that were waiting to see someone and the nurse came out. She explained to me that there is now only one doctor on the island of Savai’i and he is needed at the main hospital full time so they no longer have a doctor to travel to the different district hospitals. It is hard to imagine a hospital without a doctor, but I guess this is the transition I have to make from my “normal Western” thinking.
Life here is completely different and each day I am here more and more things stand out to show me how.
2nd Day of School
The second day of school
Again I awake to get to school at 7, you think I would have learned that when given a time to show up someplace that it is a lose time. While I was heading to school the teacher that told me school started at that time stopped me and asked where I was going. (She was not dressed for school yet.) When I explained she looked half impressed half confused, I am not quite sure which one.
The previous night the matai came around the village calling out for people to come in the morning to cut the grass on the road to the school. It sounded like it was going to be the village men again. However when I reached the sign to my school I saw some of the boys in years 4-8 with their machetes cutting the grass that was on the side of the road. There were probably boys in younger years, however I am not sure. For about 45 minutes they were out there trimming the grass and the weeds in their school uniforms. When they were finished the girls came out with brooms to sweep up the cut grass and weeds and put it on the other side of a fence.
The bell rang and the students lined up on the field. The lined up by class with the cute little year one’s in the front and the older year eights in the back. They performed their morning prayer and the vice principal had a brief talk with them and sent them to their classrooms. I headed to the teacher’s room with the teachers. Some of them grabbed notebooks to hand out to their class while others stayed to chat. Some of the teachers said they were going to clean the library/storage room. I told them that I was going to go around and look into the classrooms. They seemed happy that I was going to do this and they escorted me down the hall to the year seven room and told me I can get started and another teacher would come to help me out shortly.
I was confused and told them that I didn’t even know what was in the curriculum and they handed me the year seven schemes book for English. There was no chalk in the room, no newsprint to write on, just a class full of students. The desks are made to sit two sit two students and at many of the desks there were more kids and some of them still were sitting on the floor because of a lack of space. I had the kids go around the room and introduce themselves and their favorite subject in school. It seems like the kids have been forced to memorize a speech when introducing themselves in English and it was difficult for them to cut out of the mold. They wanted to tell me about their family instead (a hot conversation topic).
When that was over I was at a loss. I had no clue how to continue with the class. I knew I could have been like some of the other teachers and head to the teachers’ lounge instead of teaching but I did not want to give up. I began to think of games that I could do to entertain the kids while working on a little language. I thought of one that we did during training to recall words. After taking a long time to model and explain the game the students caught on and loved it!
While they were playing it gave me a chance to look over the book about English (did I mention it was from 1990? It is older than the school building. I thought they updated the curriculum since then…) and see if there was anything I could do in there. It had lessons in depth to do with the students but of course, I lacked the materials to do any of it! So after playing the game several times I decided to improvise again. I had the students gather onto the mats for an improvised story hour.
I began reading the first reading passage and asked questions to the students. They were at a loss for words. They appeared to be completely confused with what I was reading to them. The word culture was in the story and I tried to explain the differences between the American culture and the Samoan culture, but because I was speaking in only English I am not sure all of them understood it. While the class was going on one of the boys was being cheeky (a word that I never used back at home but it is used way too much in Samoa!) and I had him move to sit right next to me. A lot of the students told me to hit the boy for misbehaving. It is strange how it is so engraved into their heads that they need to be hit for every wrong they do.
While we were in the middle of our lesson I was called out of the room for a staff meeting, so the kids would be on their own again. The staff meeting was incomplete Samoan and I picked up my bits and pieces. After they talked for about 30 minutes I was questioned about what they were talking about. I knew the basics, who was teaching what (some teachers were teaching a year completely different than they originally thought), what color uniform the staff should wear each day (I need to go to the store and the seamstress to get a few more pulatasis made!), about the school grant I was working on, and about money. Since I could name the topics they told me that there was no need to translate which was probably just as good.
After the meeting the students learned who their teachers were and clean up number two began. Furniture was again moved from class to class and the kids took out brooms to tidy to the best of their abilities. ( I was curious as to how this was going in year one with the children being so young, but I stayed away.) In the year 7 classroom there were two empty Vailima bottles and I am really puzzled as to how the beer bottles showed up in the school.
The children then had their afternoon assembly. They sang a song, prayed, had a little chat and that seemed to be the extent of all school assemblies. During the assembly one of the teachers had a stick that they used to keep time when the students were singing. However when the principal was talking the stick was used by that teacher to tap a student on the head. It was not hard by any means, but it was still a shock to see. I know this will not be the first time, and I am happy that I did not see anything brutal with corporal punishment. I know this might happen in the future, but it does take time for a culture to change. By just creating a law to stop it when it is a tradition that has been happening probably since the existence of Samoa is not a quick cure to stopping this. It will take time and patience. Hopefully I will show to be a good example for this while I am here.
Tomorrow there is no school as there is a district meeting. This first week is shaping up to be quite the adventure!
Again I awake to get to school at 7, you think I would have learned that when given a time to show up someplace that it is a lose time. While I was heading to school the teacher that told me school started at that time stopped me and asked where I was going. (She was not dressed for school yet.) When I explained she looked half impressed half confused, I am not quite sure which one.
The previous night the matai came around the village calling out for people to come in the morning to cut the grass on the road to the school. It sounded like it was going to be the village men again. However when I reached the sign to my school I saw some of the boys in years 4-8 with their machetes cutting the grass that was on the side of the road. There were probably boys in younger years, however I am not sure. For about 45 minutes they were out there trimming the grass and the weeds in their school uniforms. When they were finished the girls came out with brooms to sweep up the cut grass and weeds and put it on the other side of a fence.
The bell rang and the students lined up on the field. The lined up by class with the cute little year one’s in the front and the older year eights in the back. They performed their morning prayer and the vice principal had a brief talk with them and sent them to their classrooms. I headed to the teacher’s room with the teachers. Some of them grabbed notebooks to hand out to their class while others stayed to chat. Some of the teachers said they were going to clean the library/storage room. I told them that I was going to go around and look into the classrooms. They seemed happy that I was going to do this and they escorted me down the hall to the year seven room and told me I can get started and another teacher would come to help me out shortly.
I was confused and told them that I didn’t even know what was in the curriculum and they handed me the year seven schemes book for English. There was no chalk in the room, no newsprint to write on, just a class full of students. The desks are made to sit two sit two students and at many of the desks there were more kids and some of them still were sitting on the floor because of a lack of space. I had the kids go around the room and introduce themselves and their favorite subject in school. It seems like the kids have been forced to memorize a speech when introducing themselves in English and it was difficult for them to cut out of the mold. They wanted to tell me about their family instead (a hot conversation topic).
When that was over I was at a loss. I had no clue how to continue with the class. I knew I could have been like some of the other teachers and head to the teachers’ lounge instead of teaching but I did not want to give up. I began to think of games that I could do to entertain the kids while working on a little language. I thought of one that we did during training to recall words. After taking a long time to model and explain the game the students caught on and loved it!
While they were playing it gave me a chance to look over the book about English (did I mention it was from 1990? It is older than the school building. I thought they updated the curriculum since then…) and see if there was anything I could do in there. It had lessons in depth to do with the students but of course, I lacked the materials to do any of it! So after playing the game several times I decided to improvise again. I had the students gather onto the mats for an improvised story hour.
I began reading the first reading passage and asked questions to the students. They were at a loss for words. They appeared to be completely confused with what I was reading to them. The word culture was in the story and I tried to explain the differences between the American culture and the Samoan culture, but because I was speaking in only English I am not sure all of them understood it. While the class was going on one of the boys was being cheeky (a word that I never used back at home but it is used way too much in Samoa!) and I had him move to sit right next to me. A lot of the students told me to hit the boy for misbehaving. It is strange how it is so engraved into their heads that they need to be hit for every wrong they do.
While we were in the middle of our lesson I was called out of the room for a staff meeting, so the kids would be on their own again. The staff meeting was incomplete Samoan and I picked up my bits and pieces. After they talked for about 30 minutes I was questioned about what they were talking about. I knew the basics, who was teaching what (some teachers were teaching a year completely different than they originally thought), what color uniform the staff should wear each day (I need to go to the store and the seamstress to get a few more pulatasis made!), about the school grant I was working on, and about money. Since I could name the topics they told me that there was no need to translate which was probably just as good.
After the meeting the students learned who their teachers were and clean up number two began. Furniture was again moved from class to class and the kids took out brooms to tidy to the best of their abilities. ( I was curious as to how this was going in year one with the children being so young, but I stayed away.) In the year 7 classroom there were two empty Vailima bottles and I am really puzzled as to how the beer bottles showed up in the school.
The children then had their afternoon assembly. They sang a song, prayed, had a little chat and that seemed to be the extent of all school assemblies. During the assembly one of the teachers had a stick that they used to keep time when the students were singing. However when the principal was talking the stick was used by that teacher to tap a student on the head. It was not hard by any means, but it was still a shock to see. I know this will not be the first time, and I am happy that I did not see anything brutal with corporal punishment. I know this might happen in the future, but it does take time for a culture to change. By just creating a law to stop it when it is a tradition that has been happening probably since the existence of Samoa is not a quick cure to stopping this. It will take time and patience. Hopefully I will show to be a good example for this while I am here.
Tomorrow there is no school as there is a district meeting. This first week is shaping up to be quite the adventure!
Day 2
The second day of school
Again I awake to get to school at 7, you think I would have learned that when given a time to show up someplace that it is a lose time. While I was heading to school the teacher that told me school started at that time stopped me and asked where I was going. (She was not dressed for school yet.) When I explained she looked half impressed half confused, I am not quite sure which one.
The previous night the matai came around the village calling out for people to come in the morning to cut the grass on the road to the school. It sounded like it was going to be the village men again. However when I reached the sign to my school I saw some of the boys in years 4-8 with their machetes cutting the grass that was on the side of the road. There were probably boys in younger years, however I am not sure. For about 45 minutes they were out there trimming the grass and the weeds in their school uniforms. When they were finished the girls came out with brooms to sweep up the cut grass and weeds and put it on the other side of a fence.
The bell rang and the students lined up on the field. The lined up by class with the cute little year one’s in the front and the older year eights in the back. They performed their morning prayer and the vice principal had a brief talk with them and sent them to their classrooms. I headed to the teacher’s room with the teachers. Some of them grabbed notebooks to hand out to their class while others stayed to chat. Some of the teachers said they were going to clean the library/storage room. I told them that I was going to go around and look into the classrooms. They seemed happy that I was going to do this and they escorted me down the hall to the year seven room and told me I can get started and another teacher would come to help me out shortly.
I was confused and told them that I didn’t even know what was in the curriculum and they handed me the year seven schemes book for English. There was no chalk in the room, no newsprint to write on, just a class full of students. The desks are made to sit two sit two students and at many of the desks there were more kids and some of them still were sitting on the floor because of a lack of space. I had the kids go around the room and introduce themselves and their favorite subject in school. It seems like the kids have been forced to memorize a speech when introducing themselves in English and it was difficult for them to cut out of the mold. They wanted to tell me about their family instead (a hot conversation topic).
When that was over I was at a loss. I had no clue how to continue with the class. I knew I could have been like some of the other teachers and head to the teachers’ lounge instead of teaching but I did not want to give up. I began to think of games that I could do to entertain the kids while working on a little language. I thought of one that we did during training to recall words. After taking a long time to model and explain the game the students caught on and loved it!
While they were playing it gave me a chance to look over the book about English (did I mention it was from 1990? It is older than the school building. I thought they updated the curriculum since then…) and see if there was anything I could do in there. It had lessons in depth to do with the students but of course, I lacked the materials to do any of it! So after playing the game several times I decided to improvise again. I had the students gather onto the mats for an improvised story hour.
I began reading the first reading passage and asked questions to the students. They were at a loss for words. They appeared to be completely confused with what I was reading to them. The word culture was in the story and I tried to explain the differences between the American culture and the Samoan culture, but because I was speaking in only English I am not sure all of them understood it. While the class was going on one of the boys was being cheeky (a word that I never used back at home but it is used way too much in Samoa!) and I had him move to sit right next to me. A lot of the students told me to hit the boy for misbehaving. It is strange how it is so engraved into their heads that they need to be hit for every wrong they do.
While we were in the middle of our lesson I was called out of the room for a staff meeting, so the kids would be on their own again. The staff meeting was incomplete Samoan and I picked up my bits and pieces. After they talked for about 30 minutes I was questioned about what they were talking about. I knew the basics, who was teaching what (some teachers were teaching a year completely different than they originally thought), what color uniform the staff should wear each day (I need to go to the store and the seamstress to get a few more pulatasis made!), about the school grant I was working on, and about money. Since I could name the topics they told me that there was no need to translate which was probably just as good.
After the meeting the students learned who their teachers were and clean up number two began. Furniture was again moved from class to class and the kids took out brooms to tidy to the best of their abilities. ( I was curious as to how this was going in year one with the children being so young, but I stayed away.) In the year 7 classroom there were two empty Vailima bottles and I am really puzzled as to how the beer bottles showed up in the school.
The children then had their afternoon assembly. They sang a song, prayed, had a little chat and that seemed to be the extent of all school assemblies. During the assembly one of the teachers had a stick that they used to keep time when the students were singing. However when the principal was talking the stick was used by that teacher to tap a student on the head. It was not hard by any means, but it was still a shock to see. I know this will not be the first time, and I am happy that I did not see anything brutal with corporal punishment. I know this might happen in the future, but it does take time for a culture to change. By just creating a law to stop it when it is a tradition that has been happening probably since the existence of Samoa is not a quick cure to stopping this. It will take time and patience. Hopefully I will show to be a good example for this while I am here.
Tomorrow there is no school as there is a district meeting. This first week is shaping up to be quite the adventure!
Again I awake to get to school at 7, you think I would have learned that when given a time to show up someplace that it is a lose time. While I was heading to school the teacher that told me school started at that time stopped me and asked where I was going. (She was not dressed for school yet.) When I explained she looked half impressed half confused, I am not quite sure which one.
The previous night the matai came around the village calling out for people to come in the morning to cut the grass on the road to the school. It sounded like it was going to be the village men again. However when I reached the sign to my school I saw some of the boys in years 4-8 with their machetes cutting the grass that was on the side of the road. There were probably boys in younger years, however I am not sure. For about 45 minutes they were out there trimming the grass and the weeds in their school uniforms. When they were finished the girls came out with brooms to sweep up the cut grass and weeds and put it on the other side of a fence.
The bell rang and the students lined up on the field. The lined up by class with the cute little year one’s in the front and the older year eights in the back. They performed their morning prayer and the vice principal had a brief talk with them and sent them to their classrooms. I headed to the teacher’s room with the teachers. Some of them grabbed notebooks to hand out to their class while others stayed to chat. Some of the teachers said they were going to clean the library/storage room. I told them that I was going to go around and look into the classrooms. They seemed happy that I was going to do this and they escorted me down the hall to the year seven room and told me I can get started and another teacher would come to help me out shortly.
I was confused and told them that I didn’t even know what was in the curriculum and they handed me the year seven schemes book for English. There was no chalk in the room, no newsprint to write on, just a class full of students. The desks are made to sit two sit two students and at many of the desks there were more kids and some of them still were sitting on the floor because of a lack of space. I had the kids go around the room and introduce themselves and their favorite subject in school. It seems like the kids have been forced to memorize a speech when introducing themselves in English and it was difficult for them to cut out of the mold. They wanted to tell me about their family instead (a hot conversation topic).
When that was over I was at a loss. I had no clue how to continue with the class. I knew I could have been like some of the other teachers and head to the teachers’ lounge instead of teaching but I did not want to give up. I began to think of games that I could do to entertain the kids while working on a little language. I thought of one that we did during training to recall words. After taking a long time to model and explain the game the students caught on and loved it!
While they were playing it gave me a chance to look over the book about English (did I mention it was from 1990? It is older than the school building. I thought they updated the curriculum since then…) and see if there was anything I could do in there. It had lessons in depth to do with the students but of course, I lacked the materials to do any of it! So after playing the game several times I decided to improvise again. I had the students gather onto the mats for an improvised story hour.
I began reading the first reading passage and asked questions to the students. They were at a loss for words. They appeared to be completely confused with what I was reading to them. The word culture was in the story and I tried to explain the differences between the American culture and the Samoan culture, but because I was speaking in only English I am not sure all of them understood it. While the class was going on one of the boys was being cheeky (a word that I never used back at home but it is used way too much in Samoa!) and I had him move to sit right next to me. A lot of the students told me to hit the boy for misbehaving. It is strange how it is so engraved into their heads that they need to be hit for every wrong they do.
While we were in the middle of our lesson I was called out of the room for a staff meeting, so the kids would be on their own again. The staff meeting was incomplete Samoan and I picked up my bits and pieces. After they talked for about 30 minutes I was questioned about what they were talking about. I knew the basics, who was teaching what (some teachers were teaching a year completely different than they originally thought), what color uniform the staff should wear each day (I need to go to the store and the seamstress to get a few more pulatasis made!), about the school grant I was working on, and about money. Since I could name the topics they told me that there was no need to translate which was probably just as good.
After the meeting the students learned who their teachers were and clean up number two began. Furniture was again moved from class to class and the kids took out brooms to tidy to the best of their abilities. ( I was curious as to how this was going in year one with the children being so young, but I stayed away.) In the year 7 classroom there were two empty Vailima bottles and I am really puzzled as to how the beer bottles showed up in the school.
The children then had their afternoon assembly. They sang a song, prayed, had a little chat and that seemed to be the extent of all school assemblies. During the assembly one of the teachers had a stick that they used to keep time when the students were singing. However when the principal was talking the stick was used by that teacher to tap a student on the head. It was not hard by any means, but it was still a shock to see. I know this will not be the first time, and I am happy that I did not see anything brutal with corporal punishment. I know this might happen in the future, but it does take time for a culture to change. By just creating a law to stop it when it is a tradition that has been happening probably since the existence of Samoa is not a quick cure to stopping this. It will take time and patience. Hopefully I will show to be a good example for this while I am here.
Tomorrow there is no school as there is a district meeting. This first week is shaping up to be quite the adventure!
My first day of school
First Day of School
I have been to more than my share of first days of school and none of them come close to comparing to the one I had in Samoa. My principal (who is also my mom) was away sending my sister off to Vanuatu for her law degree (Go Sheliza!). The teacher who lives across the street told me that school started at seven o’clock and how she was worried that I would struggle getting up at that hour. So I made sure to set my alarm to get up extra early just in case.
The night before I had my first day of school jitters in which made it difficult for me to fall asleep and by four o’clock I was completely awake. My brothers had promised me that they would go and buy pankeke in the morning, but I felt bad waking them up. I had heard that school would not be long and decided that I would just be Samoan and eat a big meal when it was over.
I put on my pulatasi and headed to school and got there at 6:50. There were a handful of kids and I sat outside with them and chatted. They were from Foailalo and so it made me feel okay that I didn’t know their name since it was a different village. Pretty soon I saw some of the men in my village show up with their machetes. The word men is very loose as it is the healthy men in the village and one of them looked as young as 13, but a majority of them were in their late teens and early 20’s.
They began cutting the grass and trimming the weeds. There were probably around 30 men from my village. And on the other side of the yard there were about that many cutting the other side of the yard. I found out they were from Satuatua . Our school is made up of three villages and I guess they all share their responsibility of the yard work. However only the two villages showed up. So on both sides of the yard the grass is cut short and in the middle it is extrememly long. It seems like a strange way to get the grass cut because if the village men come whenever they feel the need to, it will never be close to even grass. (Something that I have learned to love living in Colorado with the best neighbor Mike!) While they were working the rest of the teachers and students scattered in.
After they finished it was the students turn to get to work. The vice principal rallied the troops and told the students what jobs they needed to do to clean the school. While they worked I chatted with the teachers and MESC (Ministry of Sports Education and Culture) wanted the teachers to come the previous week to set up the classrooms and school so that education can begin right away, but it did not seem like many schools were listening to that. The students were carrying furniture from one room to another, taking the mats and beating the dirt out of them with a broom, sweeping the classrooms, moving the detachable walls, and much, much, more.
While this was happening out SRO (School Review Officer) showed up in a taxi. He apparently has been trying to retire for a while but because of the massive shortage of personnel in education many get guilted into staying longer. He stayed in the taxi and talked with some of the teachers. Apparently his leg is bad and he has difficulty walking up the steps to our school so rarely visits the classrooms, something that would seem important for that job.
After the cleaning the bell was rung and the students met for their afternoon assembly and prayer. School was finished after that. No teaching, not much educational interaction with the students which made it interesting.
Later that day I talked with some of the other Peace Corps Volunteers and they had similar experiences. Some of them were stuck in meetings in which they were being told how they would be tossed around, others were having their schools try to give them a full class (something that many of us have had to say, “This is not our job. We are here to teach English and work with the other teachers.” many times that we have begun to be sick of saying the same words. One volunteer was given a class and was told it was only temporarily. Being volunteers we have learned that we need to hold our ground otherwise we will be doing a lot more than we signed up for and may become completely over our head.
Seeing how the first day went, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the year pans out. All I can tell you for sure is that the Samoan classroom is completely different than the American classroom.
Biking on the South Side
Bike trip number 3
Being the end of January it had been awhile since my last biking trip and I was beginning to feel like the laziest sloth ever. My family was out of town for a few days so it was just me and my two brothers. Although my two brothers treat me great and are extremely nice to me, I decided that a break from them would be needed.
For Christmas my parents (the original and awesome ones in America) sent me a bike rack to make my travels easier since I seem to have the need to go everywhere my bike takes me. It looked amazing, however I did not have the tools or the knowhow to put it together. The directions really did not help as they did not explain what piece was called what. I decided to play the girl card and ask others for their assistance. Thankfully it worked with Dan!
So on a Saturday morning I woke up early to ride to him. I was hoping that it would take around two hours. However I had nothing to base this on. I looked at the map and did not even measure the distance. I told Dan I would be there around 8 so I left my house at 5:45. I learned quickly that the villages when you head towards Salelologa are completely spread out! I felt like for some villages I would be biking for a half an hour and still be in the same village. When 8:00 came I had no clue where I was or how much longer it would take to get there. I called Dan to apologize for not being there yet and he told me that by the name of the village I had given him that I was almost there. He gave me directions to his school compound and by 8:20 I had reached it.
We took my bike inside and Dan went to work with putting the rack on bike. Apparently you needed to take the wheel off to actually fix it. After working for awhile I told him about the problems I was having with my gears and he told me that Paul was here to save the day and would probably be able to help me. Paul studied my bike for a long time and tried many different things and after awhile came to the conclusion that they gave me a bike chain that was too big for my bike. I asked if I could leave my bike there so he could see if there was anything he could do and he agreed.
I accompanied the boys to Salelologa and got to learn about Dan’s adventures biking around the island. So far only the guy Peace Corps have tried it and I want to be one of the first girls to do it. I think I can, it just means I have to keep up with my training.
In Salelologa we met with some of the other volunteers that were getting their market shopping done and headed to Lucia’s for some grub. It was my first time there but now I know why people seem to love going there. There is an awesome dock where you can jump off into the water. I saw Elisa do a flip off the edge and it made me wish that I kept up with diving when I was little.
It was an amazing day to relax and unwind to get a clear head for the start of school next week.
Getting to know you
Community Meetings
For four days we had nonstop rain with crazy wind. Flooding was happening in many villages and we were constantly getting text messages to stay put. Thankfully the cyclone that was attached to that rain just missed Samoa so we were safe. However, that did not stop me from becoming nervous of what a cyclone might feel like. This was the week that was dedicated to community mapping and we were hoping that the meetings would still go on as planned.
I went to Elisa’s meeting and was amazing at how supportive the woman’s committee in her village is as they have already taken so much initiative into helping her with all of the projects both she suggests and they do as well. Elisa came prepared for that meeting looking professional and speaking such amazing Samoan. Even though her meeting was in the middle of the rain storm so many people showed up for it.
My meeting happened to be the day the storm ended. I had planned two. One was with the church youth groups and the other was with the Woman’s Committee. I had asked the two main churches if their youth could come to the meeting and they said they would inform the youth about the meeting. For political reasons I knew I could only ask the two. One of the churches has been banished in the past and the pastors do not seem to get along and the other church is so tiny without much youth. Our meeting time passed and no one was there. One of the pastors sent someone to get the youth and about 30 kids showed up from their church.
We started the meeting and they mentioned the different things they would like to see in their village. Water tanks, piped water, computer center, farm equipment, fences, low cost in medicine (I felt like the US government-lower taxes and better health care!), fix the fresh water pool, build a malae to play sports on with the sports equipment, and much more was mentioned.
I found out after the meeting that since only the one church showed up that they feel that I should be here for their needs solely. If I write the grant the things should be given to the families in their church first. If it is money given directly to get things I should hand over any money to the church to find ways to spend the funds. I should get computers to put inside the church and not anywhere else in the village. It was frustrating how they view my position in their village.
I was hoping that the meeting with the Woman’s Committee would go better and I brought Elisa to help me with the project. The meeting time passed and no one was there. Apparently the president of the community forgot to share the word about out meeting. Slowly people began to trickle in and we began drawing village maps.
I asked them questions about what was where and the important things in the village. The most important things they talked about were the Morman church, the Methodist church, their pastors’ houses and the Womans’ Committee Fale. I also learned there is a cricket field and they told me that people spend time there, however I have never seen anyone there. (Trust me I am looking, I am getting sick of volleyball all the time!)
When asking them about what needs to be in the village they mentioned the water and also projects that seemed less important. They feel that they need a new fale. I asked them why because it appears to me that their building is in good shape. They told me that there are 109 members of the committee and they can’t all fit in their current fale. I asked where all the members were then because only about 30 showed up. They also want a toilet for the fale which does make sense. However they then took that idea a step too far and said that everyone in the village needed a new toilet. We talked about what kind of toilets they had and everyone has working flush toilets, but it is just the want of something new I think. They also want me to build a computer center inside the woman’s committee. And of course….have all the stores sell medicine and lower the cost of them. (Medicine is expensive to people here, which is why they use the old medicine with plants, but it is still a lot cheaper than it is at home.)
It seems like every group I meet with will think I am here for them and projects should be what they need and not always what is best for the community. I guess I will have to find a way to do what they want and get what I think might be better for the community done.
The Peace Corps motto is the “The toughest job you will ever love” and I can see how that is. It is very frustrating getting things done, but still at the end of the day you see all your neighbors and all the people who express their love for you being there and you can’t help but smiling. I love my life here. I do get frustrated with the little things that make my life completely different than it was in America, but at the end of the day I still get to laugh at the love for canned spaghetti sandwiches and the love for singing at every event you attend.
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