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.