Today Wasn’t So Bad

I walked into sixth period whistling. Often at that point in the day, particularly on dreaded Tuesdays, I’m down-trodden and grumpy, but not today. And during sixth period, I had one of those fleeting moments where I was enjoying myself so much I briefly thought it would be fun to be a chemistry teacher. Now that the clouds of cynicism have drifted back in, teaching chemistry sounds absurd. But today sets the tone for my final school term, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Okay, so I half-assed my double-period with the year 13s this morning. I got them started in Microsoft Publisher—one of two units we have left before cramming for their final exam—and then sat down at my laptop to work on the magazine. In spite of yesterday’s post, I realized today I’m actually having a pleasant time working on it. It’s an outlet for creativity and obsession, and I thrive under those conditions. At points I zone out and the perfectionism takes over. I wake up 4 hours later, and very little has been accomplished, but the pictures on every single page are exactly flush with one another.

Educationally, it was not my high-point with the year 13s today, but it’s Publisher. It teaches itself.

Ever since the second half of COS last week, the weather has been terrible. But in a good way. We probably got 4 inches of rain during school hours today, no exaggeration. It’s a welcome respite from the heat. Cold-ish rain and gusting wind are a rare treat, and sitting at the staff room at Interval, a lethargy set over the staff, and I was fine with that.

I’ve decided I’m going to sing with my year 10 English class as much as I can this last term. It’s what they seem to like doing the most, and it’s what I enjoy teaching the most. Today I started them on Simon and Garfunkel’s "At the Zoo". Truth be told, the lyrics aren’t entirely appropriate. I haven’t decided what to do about "And the zookeeper is very fond of rum" or "Hamsters turn on frequently", but I’m not all that worried. I can gloss over it quickly, and who uses the phrase "turn on" anymore anyway? In any case, we only had time for the chorus and the first verse today.

And that’s why I walked into 9.2 science whistling. I was on a high (turned on?), and the kids seemed to respond. I was pleasantly surprised when many of them had done their homework, particularly since my assignment was somewhat impossible. They were supposed to find the chemical symbol for a bunch of different metals, but they have neither textbook nor even a photocopied periodic table to work from. But somehow they figured it out.

First day back wasn’t so bad.

I hope you’re well.

Term 2

We finally conquered the school break that refused to end. Technically school started last Monday, and seven weekdays later I have yet to teach a single period of class. All the same, today did feel more official, and my pule announced we would hold regular classes tomorrow. So it’s clear we’re building to something. Also, before we all left for the day, we met with our intramural houses to getting ready for athletics (i.e. track and field). Priorities are in order.

I’ve been keeping a highly visible low profile, hanging out in the secretary’s office compiling grades. Over the last 4 weeks I’ve received a steady trickle of marks—by the time I left for Hawai’i I already had a sizable stack—and I’ve been able to keep up pretty well. At this point, when a teacher hands me a stack of grade sheets I can input it into the computer and a have a report ready to go in a matter of minutes. About 90% of grades have been submitted at this point, so when a form teacher (i.e. homeroom teacher) asks for the results for his/her class, I can give them something.

The only factor slowing the process is the small group of teachers who are lagging in submitting marks. Fortunately most staff seem to recognize I have no control over these procrastinators. I admit I’ve been all too willing to point fingers and name names; it’s win-win for me. The impatient teachers are happy to have someone to blame, and I don’t have to go hunting for missing marks because the impatient teachers take matters into their own hands.

Even with all this madness it felt good to be back in the swing of things. Though we had an official day of school last week, it was tentative and attendance was poor. Nearly all the familiar faces were back, staff and students alike. There were all the normal conversations about “how was your break” and “it’s so cold in New Zealand” and “O fea lou teine?”

It’s strange how pervasive the Peace Corps is here. After school as I was walking back across campus toward my house, one of the year 11s ran up to me. “Matthew, do you know Jim?” Jim 80 lives with a host family on Savai’i. I nodded to the girl. “He’s my brother!” she smiled.

I guess the first day of school is always like this. It’s a dark spot on the calendar, and I’ve dreaded it as a student and as a teacher now, but once you get there it feels kinda good. It’s like bringing the old gang back together. Don’t get me wrong—I loathe teaching—but with Jim’s sister smiling warmly and the impatient teachers chasing the slacker teachers, today was a pretty easy day.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Today they started painting the track onto the big field in front of my school. Step 1: Hammer a makeshift post into the ground. Don't have a hammer? Use a rock.

Step 2: Wait for the guy at the far end of the field (the very tiny guy wearing light blue standing at the back of the group sitting on the ground in the distance) to hammer his post into the ground.

Step 3: Paint along the rope that connects the two posts. Don't have a paintbrush? Use a coconut husk.

In Like a Lamb

As soon as it was figured out Dustin would be at my house for the first day of Term 2, I quickly realized what a non-issue the whole thing would be. In fact, when they handed out the academic calendar back in January, I immediately found it peculiar we’d start Term 2 the day before Samoan Independence Day. The first day of a term, already a completely underwhelming occasion, sandwiched between a weekend and a two-day holiday? Pshaw.

I must have articulated my prediction for today’s schedule at least 50 times over the last month and a half. It goes like this, “My bet is we will all show up, we’ll practice marching for an hour, an hour-and-a-half, and then we’ll go home.” This is almost exactly what happened, the one exception being we had an assembly where it was announced students wouldn’t have to come back to school until next Monday. The academic intensity of this term doesn’t instill too much apprehension at this point.

Last year Term 2 started the Monday after Independence Day. And from what I hear, last year was the aberration. The problem was Term 2 needs to be 12 weeks long to fit in all of the curriculum required (since Term 3 is supposed to be wall-to-wall review), and if those 12 weeks don’t start until the week after June 1, the last week of the term overlaps with the Teuila Festival, which is lousy. Also, within the Congregationalist school system, the final prizegiving last December was the 11th. This year the last prizegiving will be the 3rd. I’m particularly happy about this since we’ll be last this year. So essentially we’re claiming we have school this week even though there will be no instruction so that we can celebrate the Teuila Festival and get out a week earlier in December. Cool with me.

Not cool with me was arriving on campus early this morning. Even with my half-cynical,-half-realist prediction for today’s schedule, I managed to get to campus this morning at the normal time, only to be greeted by a very slow trickle of students and staff. I showed up before 8:00, and things didn’t actually get going until 8:45 or 9:00.

Later I found out the collective tardiness was due to fautasi races (long boats with ~50 paddlers) in Apia Harbour this morning. I grumbled a little—I would have liked to watch—but the half-assed nature of the day blunted my frustration.

After the short assembly and the marching practice, the teachers had a meeting where it was decided we’d all show up on Thursday and Friday of this week so we could finalize grades for Term 1. I have elected to compile grades for the entire school, so I’m a little nervous about Thursday and Friday. That said, I got a lot of grades turned into me this morning, and they’ve already been entered into the computer. I’m in good shape, and in that sense today was surprisingly productive—so productive, I say we take the next 2 days off.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Marching around the field this morning.

Supy and Dustin on the airport shuttle.

Trent and the Aggie Grey's Samoan Mariachis this evening.

Morning has Broken

My alarm goes off at 6:45 a.m., and I wake up somewhere around 7:36. February is off to a great start. I am supposed to get to school early today to print the timetables for each class and each staff member, but I also plan to shave this morning, so I don’t quite make it on time. I dress myself, feed the cat, grab my backpack, and walk out the door. On my walk across the lawn, I realize I’d unpacked most of my backpack from the weekend except for a can of Estonian beer some couchsurfers had brought for Koa. Oops.

My vice pule greets me as soon as I get to campus. “Can you print the timetables?” I tell her I’ll do it, but I’d found a couple of clashes when I was going over the schedule last night. She doesn’t seem too concerned. “We’re still hiring teachers, so we’re going to have to redo a bunch of it anyway. So just print out what you have.” Yes, ma’am.

I head to the secretary’s office since she’s the only one on campus with a working printer. When I find her, she is using a straightedge to make the T-chart for today’s page in the staff sign-in book. Any sense of urgency I project is completely lost on her. Her office is still crowded with parents waiting to register their children. There’s been a long line of them sitting outside the school for the last week and a half. No one seems in a big rush, and I feel better about oversleeping. Eventually my secretary allows me to use her computer, and only then does she tell me the printer is out of paper. She refers me to the vice pule.

By then, this morning’s assembly has already begun. Most of the staff, my vice pule included, sits on stage sitting behind the speaker, who leads a lengthy prayer. The first part of the assembly is always a prayer, and students who show up late don’t enter the hall until the prayer portion has ended. I wait outside with them.

Eventually we are let in for the announcements portion of the assembly. After it’s all over, I walk with my vice pule to the supply room to get paper. “We should get one of the boys to carry this,” she says, pulling out a box of paper. Am I not a boy? I asked myself. If one of the Samoan male teachers were on this errand, he would have carried it himself. But before I can protest, my vice pule calls to the student passing by. It’s a year 11 girl.

The petite 15-year-old carries the box back to the secretary’s office. I follow her. We walk past the long line of parents. I feel like an idiot.

I print out the schedules and deliver them back to my vice pule. “Do you want me to take these to the classes now?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “We’re not going to have class today. The homeroom teachers can pick them up at Interval.”

I spend the rest of the day in the computer lab taking the mice and keyboards out of mothballs. Yeah. February is off to a great start.

I hope you’re well.

Distraction

My dishes are clean. There’s a fresh pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator, and another couple of liters of water brewing in the filter. The kitchen table has been cleared off, the garbage taken out, the cat’s litter box cleaned, the cat herself fed. I swept the ant hills out of the kitchen and wiped down the stove. I would claim this is all in an attempt to start off the school year with my house in good shape, but I think we all know this wave of cleaning is just an excuse to avoid thinking about school.

Now that the class schedule is finished, it seems inevitable classes will begin tomorrow. Okay, maybe Tuesday. Either way, I feel pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. On one hand, it’s about time! Students showed up every day last week, and we didn’t do a thing. I read 300 pages. It was a little ridiculous. At the same time, I loathe lesson-planning. I’m not exactly looking forward to standing in front of the room lecturing on blah blah blah.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the students. And if I do say so myself, as a teacher, I’m not half bad. I keep a good rapport, I explain things well, I try and keep it fun. But I can’t help feeling a wince of dread.

There are parts of the day I’m looking forward to. I am nervous and excited to see who shows up for my year 12 class. As I explained Friday, the kids have a choice, and I can’t help but feel like the whole thing is a little popularity contest. Or at the very least, a sort of referendum on my teaching of year 11 last year. If no one shows up, it’s probably because they all hate me.

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. Given I’ll have to cut students if that class is too big, I’d prefer it wasn’t too well attended. Ideally there will be exactly 24 smiling faces 3rd period tomorrow, but that may be too much to hope for.

Just the same, my knee-jerk reaction to teaching is one of fear. I remember hearing Chris explain the CNET Sales Pitch-Off to Jen back home. He had his undies all in a bunch because he had to give a 10-20 minute sales presentation to a group of his colleagues. Jen was not impressed. She teaches 8th grade and has to get up every day and give hours-long lessons to an arguably more difficult audience.

What if they don’t like me? What if I forget something? What if they laugh at me? It’s funny because as a teacher, I feel like I’m fearing the first day of school for all the same reasons the students are. It’s like when you see a big spider in the shower, and someone says, “He’s probably more afraid of you than you are of him.”

Speaking of the shower, that could use some scrubbing. In fact, I should probably bleach the whole bathroom. And my Peace Corps Medical Kit could use a reorganization.

Anything to avoid the inevitable.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

I'm going to try not to be that guy who lives alone and posts lots of pictures of his cat on the Internet. But last night Scout crawled into my backpack after she finished eating. It was cute.

The Schedule

Our after-school staff meeting yesterday was the annual Distribution of Teacher Supplies. Last year the event was a little more exciting because it had the whole surprise factor going for it. This year felt a little anticlimactic in comparison. When The Distribution finished, it felt a little short—that’s it? But I may have perceived the event that way because my nose was buried in the first distributed object: my school purchased a 2010 planner for every teacher. In addition to a series of calendars, metric/imperial conversion tables, and a list of regional and territorial local authorities in New Zealand, it also lists a thought-provoking quotation for every day of the year.

If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

– Anonymous

Cut to this morning. I awoke at 9:37 when my phone rang. My vice pule yelled into my ear, “Hi Matt. Sorry to wake you!” I nodded groggily. “I forgot to tell you yesterday that we are meeting this morning to make the schedule of classes.” I nodded again. Last year my staff was more on the ball: we’d already created the class schedule before students every showed up. This year we’re over a week behind.

My vice pule continued, “I hear you have a computer program that will create the schedule for us. Can you bring it?”

A good deed, no matter how small, is worth more than the grandest good intention.

– William George Plunkett

After last year’s day-long meeting to put together the class schedule, I had meant to get software that would do the work for us this year. I’m pretty sure we have freeware in the Peace Corps office built to handle this sort of thing. I’ve been putting it off for a year, which sounds ridiculous, but I’m sure you have your own procrastinations you’ve been putting off longer. I know I do.

In any case, one of the things on my to-do list for today was to go to the Peace Corps office to pick up that software. I swear. So it seems that my vice pule’s almost-but-not-quite waiting til the last minute—i.e. holding the scheduling meeting today rather than Monday—canceled out my almost-but-not-quite-waiting til the last minute—i.e. going to the Peace Corps office today rather than Monday. Really, the whole thing just goes to show we need to do a better job of coordinating our procrastination.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

– John F. Kennedy

Now the meeting is over, and the schedule is set. I was able to use the fancy Excel Spreadsheet I created last year to expedite the process and to double-check for schedule clashes and redundancies, which was cool. But all of the scheduling was still done by hand.

I still plan to acquire the software and teach someone at my school to use it before I leave in December. I’m worried it will be difficult to motivate anyone to use the program now that it won’t need to be used for another year (let alone to motivate myself), but we’ve got some time. I can make it happen. Maybe in November.

If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.

– Anonymous

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

My Excel file caught a bunch of human errors today. Despite its inability to actually create the schedule, it still proved its worth.

Taleni asked I take his picture standing next to his masterpiece.

Make Good Choices

While Chris was here, we reminisced about our first experience with electives in the first year of middle school. Back then every fifth grader had to choose between playing an instrument in the marching band or attending “pop singing” classes once a week. Chris chose to play trombone. I chose clarinet. “Wait. You didn’t choose pop singing?” asked Blakey. No Blakey, I did not choose pop singing. In sixth grade the frequency of the elective period increased, and the options grew wider. And so on through the rest of middle school and high school. With this conversation fresh in my mind, I sat in on the year 12s choosing their electives this morning.

At my school, there are no elective courses until year 12. I don’t know what the students experienced in primary school, but I figure they didn’t have much choice in their education there either. Here in years 9, 10, and 11, students are all in the same class for each period, and within the weekly schedule is a mix of English, Math(s), Samoan, Science, Social Science, P.E., music, and computers (only for year 11 this year). But once they reach year 12, they have 2 “option” classes.

The meeting took place immediately following this morning’s assembly. All of year 12 gathered in the back of the assembly hall as Bernie, the head of the business studies department introduced the meeting. Before too long, a group of 10 students from year 11 came and sat in the back of the group.

Here in Samoa, it’s not uncommon—in fact, in some places it’s quite common—to go directly from year 10 to year 12. At St. Joseph’s college here in Apia, I’m told they don’t offer year 11. Blakey reports her school has a very small population of year 11s relative to the size of the other years. Here at my school most students take year 11 except for a handful of top performers. And I’m pretty sure that the actual skip happened this morning when they walked from the 11.1 classroom to the assembly hall to sit in on the year 12 elective meeting.

In any case, the meeting agenda went as you might expect: a teacher or the Head of Department from each subject gave a brief presentation on what the class would study over the year. When it was my turn, I was brief. I had all of them in year 11 (or 10) last year, so they had a good handle on what to expect, and I was bored and wanted the meeting over more than the students I think.

That said, there were 3 crowd reactions to what I said:

• I gave a list of the programs on the year 12 curriculum. I said, “We’ll be doing Microsoft Word, Mircrosoft…” I trailed off, and a couple students yelled, “Excel!” It warmed my heart.
  
• When I told them I could only enroll 24 students because of the finite number of computers in the lab, there was a small but palpable collective gasp. I like to think it was a collective sigh of disappointment, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Not that I want to disappoint; I just want to be wanted.
  
• Finally, I ended by pointing out the computer lab is air-conditioned. I may have been playing to the lowest common denominator. Sue me.

After the last speaker, the students split into 3 groups: Accounting, Science, and Art/History. In terms of who will actually be in my computer studies class, this meant very little. Both Accounting and Art/History students can take computers, so I won’t know who’s actually interested until Monday.

I can tell you that about half the group chose Art/History, and of the remaining students, more than half chose Accounting.

And after Interval, all the students headed back to the assembly hall for a little pop singing.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Mandatory haircuts for boys whose hair who exceeded regulation this morning.

Students raking the grass with their flip-flops yesterday.

More raking.

The entire student body raking.

Second First Day of School

Nervousness and self- conscious- ness abounded on the first day of school last year. I was a rookie, and there was so much new stuff. There are a ton of parents registering students, the Welcome Back assembly, the staff room politics, the falas and salus. Living on the school compound with virtually no one around, the first day of school took my social and professional life from 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds.

Cut to this year. The nervousness has all but disappeared. My only sense of dread was waking up at 7:00 a.m., and if anything, I looked forward to coming back and seeing students and staff for the first time in 2 months. Given we’ve had no meetings to discuss the schedule of classes, I anticipated long stretches of down time, and I made sure to bring my book. I put on my new watch, fed the cat, and marched out the door.

The other big story of the day that preempted (or exacerbated?) the first day of school was the weather. It rained most of the day yesterday, and the storm only became stronger overnight. Aside from discouraging a lot of students from showing up on the first day of school, a lot of other complications grow out of rain.

For one, the first week of school is traditionally a clean-up week. Though some classrooms are cleaned, most of the work happens outside: planters are weeded, the lawn mowed and raked, older boys come around the teacher houses with machetes to clear foliage. None of this could happen in torrential rain.

An even bigger complication is tap water. When it rains hard enough, the reservoirs overflow and mud gets into the tap water, and the water department shuts off the tap. Thankfully, school policy dictates we send students home when there’s no running water.

As the morning wore on, the rain continued its off-and-on pounding, and it became increasingly clear that very little student activity would go on today. The teachers met briefly, the bell was rung, we had a slightly-longer-than-usual assembly. The rain continued.

We met back in the teacher’s lounge, and it was decided we’d have departmental meetings and students would do clean-up work tomorrow. I asked my vice pule who else was teaching computers this year.

“You’re the only one,” she said. Apparently the guy lined up to be my successor, Loto, transferred to another school in the Congregationalist system.

So at my departmental meeting, attendance 1, we decided to read “The Girl who Played with Fire.” It was quite a productive day.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Showing up to school in the rain.

Rain during the assembly.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

I belonged to a group called Troy Camp at USC where, in the first couple weeks of the summer, we bussed a bunch of inner city kids out to woods for a week for summer camp. We had year-round weekly meetings where we planned camp and organized fundraisers and such. These meetings were led by two Executive Co-Directors who set the agenda for meetings and set the tone for organization. And as I recall, the first co-directors I knew were the best and no subsequent administration every lived up.

Talking to other people in other organizations, this seems like a common sentiment: assuming things are somewhat amicable your first year doing something, no subsequent year can live up. And so I begin my second year teaching in Samoa, and I’m already skeptical of some of the changes going on around here.

As always with school, last year’s year 13s and most of the year 12s will be gone, and a new class of year 9s will have taken their place. One of the teachers, Saleupolu, retired at the end of last year, and another, Uesile, left to take up a faifeau post. There’s bound to be more staff turnover as well as a new batch of rookie teachers sitting around the staffroom on Monday.

Similar changes have happened within the Peace Corps with group 79 exiting, and group 82 moving on in (By the way, Group 82 has lost 2 more within its ranks bringing the total count of fallen to 5.).

The make-up of teachers living on campus has changed. As I mentioned last week, I have a bunch of “Bye-bye” girls living next door now, which will not stand. I’m not sure what it will take to rid the kids of the bye-byes, but I will do whatever it takes.

More than anything though, the biggest change for me might be the outlook for the school year. Rather than aiming to build relationships and figure out the system, this year will be about using what I know about the system to prepare it for me not being here next year. It’s a weird 180° turn: figure out the system, insert yourself, help the system function without you, remove yourself. I guess there’s some stress in that, but there’s also a lot of relief. No longer do I feel like I need to walk on eggshells and constantly brace for being blindsided by unfamiliar customs and practices.

Working at my school last year sometimes felt like walking through a dark room full of furniture: there was a lot of falling down, and between falls there was a lot of apprehension. I think this new year should be better. That isn’t to say that the lights will be on in the room, but I have a pretty good idea of the path in my mind, and I can seem some light at the other end of the room.

Hooray for mixed metaphors!

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Sunrise over the clothesline in idyllic Falese'ela, Lefaga.

Briony and Blakey on the river hike.

6 days on the island and Chris is Samoan.

Back to Business

Hey there. Between the Australia trip, Cultural Exploration, and Chris’s guest post, I haven’t written a run-of-the-mill post in a while. This is weird. How does this work? This disorientation has manifested itself all over the place recently: coming back from Sydney, falling back into the Peace Corps lifestyle, preparing to go back to school. It’s a new year in lots of different ways, and I’m just to remember the old routines.

The problem with all of this re-adjustment is there’s been a helluva lot going on. I arrived back late Saturday night, Chris came in early Wednesday morning. I’ll leave for the airport with him tonight where Supy’s family will pick me up (along with Supy’s American friend who comes in from Tonga) and take me to Group 81’s Mid-Service Conference, which actually started today. That goes until Wednesday. Thursday is the Peace Corps Samoa All Volunteer Conference, and Friday Phil, Koa, and I will attend the Congregationalist School Teacher Conference, which actually starts Wednesday. Then a short weekend, and students show up on Monday.

So I’m starting to feel a little frantic.

Some transitions are easier than others. The Samoan heat has been oppressive lately. At first I attributed my discomfort to my acclimation to Sydney, and I thought it would take a few days to re-acquaint myself with Samoan’s unholy heat. But I swear—people who didn’t leave the country have corroborated this—it is abnormally hot here.

Beyond that though, things haven’t been too bad. It’s been nice having Chris here to ease the transition. He’s had a hotel room, so I’ve been able to shower with hot water a couple times, and I’ve had time to get back into the Samoan lifestyle.

But now Chris is leaving and it’s time to sit down to work. Phil has been drafting some preliminary curricula for the year 9s, 10s, and 11s, and I’ve got to start reading through those so we can all agree on a teaching schedule before the school year starts.

My computer lab is in a slight state of disarray. Our school secretary is currently using one of the computers from the lab because hers pooped out at the end of the school year last November. Max helped me reinstall the operating system on my server, but there were still kinks to work out, so he was planning on making a trip out to my school before he left. But time got away, so now I’ve got to figure out the kinks myself.

This time last year, my school’s Heads of Department were already meeting to hammer out the schedule of classes, but those meetings haven’t started yet. Part of the problem is last year’s Education Director moved to New Zealand so lots of things—hiring new teachers, holding the teacher’s conference, etc.—have been delayed.

I think it’s safe to assume most things won’t be completely finished by Monday when the kids show up. But the first week of school is all cleaning and singing anyway. So there will still be time, which is good. Because I’m still feeling a little disoriented.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Blog readers Andrew, Liz, Grace, and Christine invited Blakey, Me, and Chris to their family barbecue out in Fagalii. We graciously accepted the invitation.

Blakey with DJ 2Pua at Crabber's night club.

Chris, Blakey, Liz, and Grace.

Peace Corps had a Half Day

I’ve heard from many volunteers that school days in Samoa can change on a dime. On the second day of our volunteer visit, Cale’s school decided that it was “Cut the Grass” day, so classes were canceled and students went out to cut the grass with machetes. Other times, classes might be canceled for certain sporting events. And today, less than a week into regular classes, my school canceled classes for the afternoon.

Just like I’d been warned, the afternoon was canceled without any warning. In fact, I was never told. After Interval (the break in the middle of the day), I left the teacher’s lounge to get ready for my next class. On my way, I had to weave my way through hoards of students headed toward the Great Hall, on top of which my classroom sits. And then they started singing, and I realized something was amiss.

So I headed back to the teacher’s lounge, where a staff meeting had apparently begun. This staff meeting was one of the more bizarre experiences I’ve had since I arrived at my permanent site.

The meeting was conducted entirely in Samoan, which is nothing new. For the first 45 minutes, discussion went on like normal between the principal, the vice principal, and several of the teachers. Then one got up and started writing on the chalkboard.

We were coming up with a list of names. Initially my guess was this was a list of donors, or parents, maybe? But as the names kept coming, I started recognizing student names. While I’ve only committed one student name to memory (the sole student in my year 13 class), I did go through the same name-sharing ice breaker with 12 classes this week... so they did start to sound familiar.

Though I’ve been here for almost 4 months, I admit I have not been able to decode whether particular Samoan names are for boys or girls. So I was still unclear on what these lists were that we were creating. I half-seriously, half-jokingly started to think we were choosing a homecoming court.

And then we actually voted. For students.

We’d narrowed the list to 2. The first name got 10 votes. Hands went up for the second name. I looked over at the missionaries who both had their hands up. And then the vice principal called out in English, “Matt. We need you to vote!” And the principal barked at me with feigned urgency, “Yes. Matt, you must vote!” So I put my hand up.

The entire room found this hilarious.

And then my vote was tallied along with the rest. 9 votes for my candidate. We lost by 1. Damn.

New candidates names were written on the board. We started voting again. I pulled out my camera. Sometimes I figure, cultural differences aside, situations here become so absurd, that I feel justified in making awkward social gestures — like photographing teachers voting for a nebulous election. I voted and took the picture at the same time. The room erupted in laughter again.

And then the meeting was over.

One of the missionaries, my next-door neighbor Maegi, handed me a sheet of paper to type up and print out in the computer lab. Indeed, it was the list of names from the meeting. We had just elected the student government. We had appointed a leadership council, and we voted in a boy’s president and a girl’s president.

And classes were canceled for the rest of the day. Cool by me.

Max and Supy are here again helping with my computer lab. And that’s all I got.

Hope things are well with you. Apologies that there are no pictures below. The rechargeable batteries in my digital camera died as I was transferring the images. I only got the one above. But you'll see today's pics tomorrow. Cool? Have a great weekend.

The Big Sleep

Recognizing that we live in a world run by early risers, Liam once observed that those of us who stay up late could take over the world, but the early risers would simply take it back while we were sleeping in the morning after. Perhaps it was just the family I grew up in, but I’ve never really seen the value in getting up early. There’s the old adage about the early bird getting the worm, but I prefer the converse in which the early worm gets eaten.

Why in the hell does school start so early? Have you ever heard a genuinely good answer to that question? Is there really any value in teaching students at 7:30 a.m. that there wouldn’t be at 8:30 a.m., or dare I say, 9:30 a.m.? Could after school programs not function if they started at 3:30 p.m. rather than 2:30 p.m.? I read somewhere a while back that, for adolescents, and optimal sleep cycle goes from 1:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Why do we fight the body’s natural habit?

I’m only 4 days in, and arriving at school at 7:30 a.m. is beginning to take its toll on me. I came home yesterday afternoon and collapsed on the couch. I like to think that life will be easier once there’s another computer teacher and I don’t have to teach every period of the day, but even so, I will still be sleep-deprived.

And yes, I know I just need to adjust my sleeping schedule. I realize I shouldn’t be going to bed at 12:30 a.m. But it’s easier said than done, mi amigo. Especially with the weather here. Things get to be so comfortable right around 10:30 p.m. The heat from the day finally wears off, the roosters have finally gone to bed, and there’s a fresh episode of The Wire on my hard drive. And the second wind hits.

All this complaining probably sounds premature. It would be nice to think that since the school year has only just begun, things are bound to improve. But those who know me well know that my sleeping habits never met an early alarm they were willing to adjust to.

At eCivis, I was expected to be at my desk working at 7:30 a.m. This call time was strictly enforced to a slightly irrational point. I am not exaggerating when I tell the story of how I showed up at 7:33 a.m. and got called into my supervisor’s office. I understand that I was a polychronic person living in a monochronic society, and that my leniency toward my own tardiness is a little absurd by other people’s standards, but eCivis brought that absurdity to a new level.

There was also the time in high school when, because of construction and road congestion, the bus in the morning picked me up at 6:05 a.m. How did I live through that? I had 7 classes and water polo, and I still stayed up late. Oh to be young and ignorant of the body’s pleas for sleep.

CNET was perfect. While they weren’t keen on my polychromic standards, they valued the quality of my work, and let things slide a little.

Teaching is a monster though. Show up late and you have 30+ faces wondering where you’ve been. It’s a little daunting.

Samoa still beats Oakland though. In Oakland I had to wake up before dawn to catch Muni and then BART across the bay. Here my commute is a 30-second walk. I guess I should count my blessings.

I hope you’re getting enough sleep. One picture below.
















Kiddies using Mavis Beacon. Sharing. Good times.

Public Relations

I haven’t been wearing sunglasses very often. Sunglasses means wearing contacts, unless I want to go around blind, and there’s several reasons I’m not enthusiastic about wearing contacts. My confidence in my bathroom’s sanitation is fairly low, I sweat too much for my body to maintain the moisture it needs for contacts, and there’s a lot of dust in the air in Apia that makes contacts uncomfortable. Given this, I feel like I can see the crows’ feet growing in the corners of my eyes. It could just be mental though.

One sign that it’s mental is people at school keep asking me my age, wondering if I’m actually old enough to be doing what I do here. It tends to be prefaced with some sort of pre-apology; that is, “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” One teacher told me I look 16. Another just laughed to himself (He is large and bald. I asked how old he is. 29.). And then today a student asked me how old I am, and when I told him, he’s goes, “Oh. You’re small.” In some ways I think should enjoy the fact that my youthful glow hasn’t worn off. But living in a culture that equates aging with wisdom and respect, I do feel like some of the staff sees me as a whippersnapper.

This doesn’t seem to have gotten in the way of things too much. It also helps that I have the only working copy machine at the school right now. True, it does force people to be nice to me, which can yield disingenuous interaction, but it at least it means they’re interacting. Actually, on the whole, the staff here has been very welcoming. I am always warmly greeted, and it seems like people are genuinely happy to see me. I just worry about how it looks marching in, taking the only air-conditioned classroom (necessary for the computers to survive), and complaining about things (like how I have no whiteboard and how I’m not sure it will work having 50 students on 10 computers).

Speaking of that, today was the first time I’ve had one of those large classes use the computers. The 11.4 class used Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing today, and even though the lesson was a bit of baptism by fire, it was surprisingly smooth. I think I was bracing for the building to collapse, and it didn’t.

In fact, there were three moments today that surprised me:

• I use my cell phone to keep time, and I set it down mindlessly during that busy 11.4 class. When I went to look for it, it was still there where I left it. In Oakland, I’d be calling Verizon to see if I still had insurance.
  
• Second, I was trying to keep an eye on time in that 11.4 class so the students could rotate and everyone could have a turn. So at one point I called out, “Switch!” And nothing happened. When I asked groups why, it turned out they were already taking turns, and my attempt at regulation didn’t mesh with the system they’d already figured out. In Oakland, getting them to take turns inevitably ended in tears and a trip to the vice principal’s office.
  
• To illustrate input devices and output devices with my year 12 class, I had them play a combination of a relay race and “Telephone.” I have the year 12s for 2 periods in a row on Wednesdays, and this game was my strategy for keeping the blood flowing. And once again, despite my crude organization, the activity worked. Wowa.
  

Finally, from the ridiculous minutia department… My toenails and fingernails don’t grow on compatible schedules in this climate. In The States, I would usually cut my toenails every other time I cut my fingernails. But here, my toenails are ready to be trimmed when my fingernails are mid-cycle, and I simply refuse to cut my toenails unless my fingernails also need trimming. It’s something that you don’t really think about, but it’s a little unnerving.

That’s all. Hope things are well. A couple pictures below.
















Teri Taro Tuna. It's a dish I'm perfecting. Teriaki over taro and tuna steak. They all look the same color, so it definitely needs so garnish. And maybe some carrots?
















Students crowded on the floor around one computer. This arrangement worked surprisingly well, but right now they're only taking notes on the PowerPoint I'm displaying on the network. This won't work when we start actually using the machines.

Day 2

After spring break in high school, the swim team would come back to the pool, and for the first lap or 2, the water would feel so nice and easy. It didn’t start to feel challenging until 4 or 5 laps into the swim. And then the body would start to scream. I get the feeling the same things going on with yesterday and today. My body’s not screaming, but today the water wasn’t so smooth and easy.

Part of the increased frustration with today was I had a couple of batches of kids who spoke very little English, and standing in front of a group of non-English speakers trying to explain computer input and output devices in English feels a little foolish. I’m not saying it’s foolish to teach Samoan students computers, I’m just saying it’s difficult for me to explain the ins and outs of USB cables in Samoan.

It’s a little like college where it seemed like the more fundamental classes were always taught by a non-native English speaker. It seems like the basics are best taught in the student’s native language. And I’m not just saying this because the other computer teacher, who has yet to show up for work, was supposed to teach the lower level classes. It is overwhelming to have his classes, yes; but he could communicate to those classes so much better than I can. Although, I suppose even if he was teaching his share, the computer lab would still be loaded to the brim.

Peace Corps Samoa set out on a goal somewhere around 7 or 8 years ago for approximately 90 volunteers to teach 25,000 Samoan secondary students in some capacity. This leads to a volunteer-to-student ratio of approximately 1:278; that is, during my tenure in Samoa, I would need to work with 278 students. Many schools in Samoa are relatively small, and without double-counting the students that a particular teacher has 2 years in a row, some volunteers come in far under 278.

And then there are those of us that bring up the average.

My principal has mandated that all students in years 9, 10, and 11 should have a computer class at least once a week. It doesn’t really seem like that many when you pencil in 4 classes per week for each grade level (8 classes for year 11—they come twice a week). But when they show up, it becomes alarmingly obvious that their class sizes are huge. There are 50 students in each year 9 class. Multiply that by 12 to include years 10 and 11 and throw in the year 12 and 13 kids and I have 600 students coming through my computer lab each week.

And there are only 11 student computers right now. There should be 13, but Max and I worked together to strip one of its operating system, and another needs a new video card.

600 students ÷ 11 computers = 55 students/computer = Yikes

In any case, after school today I headed over to the market to see about purchasing taro, and I ended up eating crow. See, it turns out my host family was at the market today… SELLING TARO. And $20 WST is the elastic price. Asolima explained it to me: Some vendors have to bus back to the village, and the last bus leaves every day around 4:30 p.m. If they still have goods left to sell, they’re the ones who slash prices. I feel like a jerk for yesterday’s sentiments. I guess I need to go back to the village for some cross-cultural training. A bit ironic that Fausaga was there at the market to teach me a lesson.

In the end, I bought taro from my host family. It was really fun to see them, and they provided a welcome pick-me-up after today’s classes.

Finally, I went to the internet café yesterday to use the broadband to download a bunch of podcasts. And while I was there, I figured, why not upgrade iTunes? It’s been begging to be upgraded, and I was thinking that upgrading just might help my download speed.

IDIOT.

When it upgraded itself, it got stuck and only half installed the QuickTime upgrade. iTunes refuses to load if QuickTime isn’t working. So I couldn’t listen to the podcasts I had downloaded because I couldn’t play them in iTunes AND I had to go back to the internet café today to download a new version of iTunes so I can reinstall it. Ugh.

I hope things are well with you. A couple pics below.

Oh yeah. Someone Skyped me twice this morning during class. Was that you? I'm available every day between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m. Samoa Time.
















One of my classes. Not sure if you can tell from this picture, but the girl in the bottom right looks so much like Amanda. Not from the front. Only from the side. So much. It's creepy.
















This truck is owned by one of the teachers at our school. She's fun. Eccentric.





















Asolima, Mele (Phil's cousin's wife, not my host mom), and Phil's sister, Tafale.

Cautious Optimism and the Spectrum of Unconcern

I’m trying to remember how I felt after the first day of school at Cole Middle in Oakland. I guess the fact that it wasn’t memorable means it couldn’t have been too jarring. At the same time, it couldn’t have been all that easy; nothing ever was in Oakland Unified. I assume I glimpsed the writing on the wall. There must have been at least a whiff of doom. My stint at Cole was so short that things could not have boded well after the first day.

Right?

Today went relatively well, and I have a good sense that tomorrow should be okay. In fact, it seems like the rest of the week should be able to work itself out without too much trouble. Even with the other computer teacher lost and perhaps gone forever, things seemed strangely comfortable today.

It did not feel that way last night. At 11:30 p.m. I was freaking out about what I would be doing today and whether I could occupy a large class (class sizes are somewhere around 45 for the lower grades) for 50 minutes.

I attribute today’s success to “Not taking things so seriously.” There’s a strange Spectrum of Unconcern with poles at “Giving a damn” and “Couldn’t care less.” I’m not sure of the relative values of “Not taking things so seriously” and “taking it easy,” but I know they both are on the concern side of “Ehhh…” and certainly more so than “Surprise me,” I’d say. Click on the chart below to enlarge.

In any case, I think a lot of the stress in Oakland sprang from the fact that all teaching revolved around test scores, and I was very serious about teaching my sixth graders math. I felt like I owed the school that much.

But what I didn’t really consider at the time was how incongruous that attitude was compared to the state of the rest of the school. The school was in complete disarray, and in a way, it was unfair to expect the kids to treat my class with a relatively high level of seriousness when the administration couldn’t bother. I don’t mean to equate the situation here, but I think there was definitely a lesson to be learned from Oakland.

So I decided to just roll with the day. It took quite an effort to secure some markers for the day, and that’s a sign right there. If the school is going to make it difficult for me to write on a whiteboard, then I shouldn’t stress about creating the world’s greatest lesson plan. In fact, I don’t have a whiteboard; I ended up writing stuff out on butcher paper and hanging it over a pair of large speakers that are being stored in my classroom.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m shirking responsibility. I am still writing lesson plans, and I am taking a pedagogical approach to things, but I’m not going to get worked up.

Part of the problem in Oakland was that I had the kids for 3 hours at a time, and when things like this whiteboard issue would happen there, the price of not raising hell with the administration would be 30+ sixth graders raising hell with me for 3 hours. Here, most of my classes last 50 minutes. And I can take that.

Completely unrelated: The people at the market tried to sell me taro for $20 WST again. I’ve seen it priced there for $15, and I can’t help feeling like the reason I’m getting the price I get is because I look the way I do. Idunno. It could be the relative availability of taro at the market at any given point, but that would mean incredibly frequent price fluctuation.

Not cool. As Stringer Bell would say, “What you're thinking is that we have an inelastic product here. But what we have here is an elastic product.” So there.

So that's all I got. Picture of actual students below.
















My first class this morning.

Crowded House

The social structure at my high school back home was not traditional, and I always attributed this to the size of our student body. With over 4,000 students, no single group dominated in popularity. Football players and cheerleaders were not the ruling class the way they always seem to be in pop culture. Sure there were the girls in leadership and world guard who were well-known, but their status didn’t really amount to “popular” in the traditional sense. Being a guy who would have fit best into the “geek” contingent of that traditional model, I was always happy to be a little fish in a really big pond. Growing up in that environment, I’m always a little thrown off being thrown into a little tiny pool.

Relative to other posts, Peace Corps Samoa is quite small. According to a Peace Corps staff member, there are about 280 Peace Corps in the Ukraine and roughly 220 Peace Corps in Morocco. Samoa has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40. In addition, Samoa’s land mass is quite small. In many parts of the world, the volunteer living closest to you might be 20 or 30 miles away, but here, 20 or 30 miles gets you half way across the island. And since there’s not that much land or water that separates any of us, we rub elbows quite often.

Mostly this is a good thing. Life is less lonely when there’s another American a bike ride away. There’s someone close by to chat or commiserate or gossip. But the other side of that coin is that sometimes these little islands can feel a bit crowded. It’s weird how a volunteer can grow so accustomed to the solitude of a habitat that the relative close proximity of another Peace Corps can have a style-cramping effect.

It reminds me of eCivis. In the old building, we shared the restroom with all the other companies in the building. If something was messy or there was someone in the stall, an air of anonymity was maintained. But when we moved into the new building, we had our own bathroom. And since we were a tiny company, the bathroom situation became a bit awkward. The mess was a little less anonymous. I would regret recognizing the shoes of the person using the stall.

So where am I going with all this?

We had our first Volunteer Action Committee meeting today, which is the rough equivalent of student government. Each group sends one representative from each island, and they gather 3 times a year to discuss issues pertinent to PCVs in Samoa. And while the meeting was intimate and cordial for the most part, the air felt slightly contentious at times.

Maybe it was just me. I’m a bit cranky after waking up on time for work every day this week (I know. Rough life.). School’s been finishing between 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. every day, so going until 4:30 this afternoon took some stamina. “We’re just blowing through nap time today, aren’t we?” It’s also a little weird to go from spending most of your day alone or with very few people who speak English to spending the entire day with 11 of vociferous native English speakers.

All in all, it was nice to see people, and I do feel like we took steps to improve Peace Corps Samoa. I got to write on the board at the front of the room, which I always enjoy. If nothing else, I have my penmanship to contribute.

I also vehemently advocated incentivizing certain surveys that have had poor completion rates in the past. I think the creative implementation of this idea (i.e. Finding non-monetary ways to reward people) could be effective. It was Joey’s idea, and I’m a fan.

That was my day.

Best quote from tonight’s radio news:

Regarding the cruise ship that has docked in Apia for the next 2 days, “The Europa 902 is said to be the most beautiful yacht with a capacity of 408.” I myself have seen plenty of yachts with a capacity of 408, and I must agree.

Only 2 pictures below. Have a great weekend.
















For some reason, these grass clumps reminded me of "The Wump World" by Bill Peet. Bill Peet always reminds me of one moment in fourth grade when Ms. Schoon played a guessing game and Amy won.

















This picture was on the computer at the Peace Corps office. I love it.

Supplies and Exercise

It’s a little unexpected that the school where I’m teaching in Samoa (albeit private) has a much higher budget than the school where I taught in West Oakland (albeit public). I realize that comparing private and public education is somewhat pointless, but I’m nonetheless struck by the contrast. I guess the flat screens should have tipped me off, but the discrepancy didn’t really sink in until yesterday when they started handing out supplies to the teachers.

I’ve been budgeting January carefully, but last week I realized that I was probably going to need to spend a bunch on teaching supplies. I definitely needed some sort of calendar or planner, and a couple notebooks would also be necessary. Good thing I didn’t buy anything. At our staff meeting yesterday afternoon, each teacher received a:

• 3” binder;
  
• Small notebook;
  
• Pair of mid-sized notebooks;
  
• Large notebook;
  
• Teachers[sic] Plan Book;
  
• Roll book;
  
• Pack of 50 Coloured File Folders;
  
• Ruler;
  
• Bottle of Kids[sic] Paste;
  
• Package of glue tape; and a
  
• Healthy amount of surprisingly high-quality pens.

I don’t recall ever receiving any supplies from my school in Oakland. There was a lot of secondhand stuff you could forage for in many of the seemingly abandoned classrooms around the school, but we were certainly never given new things.

And again, I understand that I’m skewing things by comparing a Samoan private school to an American public school, but if you were in my shoes, it would beg the comparison, don’t you think? Also, I was thinking about this: If you compared the wealth of my students in Oakland to my students here in Samoa, and you accounted for exchange rates, etc., who would have more? I honestly don’t know.

It’s not like the students at my school are incredibly rich compared to other Samoan students. In fact, many students who attend school here bus in from rural villages for the week and return home on the weekend. Many of them pay their tuition via in-kind donations of brooms and mats. Also (I’m not completely sure of this, but I can ask some other Peace Corps…), I believe that public schools in Samoa also charge a small tuition. I’ve heard it’s minimal, perhaps $50 WST for the semester, but it’s not like the fact that my kids attend a private school means they’re well-off. So it’s impressive that the school provides teachers with supplies.

In other news, now that I have internet at my house, I no longer have to schedule my day around making it to the internet café at a reasonable time. This has left my afternoons wide open, and I’ve taken advantage of it so far. Yesterday I had time in the afternoon to read 47 pages, ride my bike to the ocean and to the Samoa Aquatic Centre, and write yesterday’s blog. Today I met with my host family, read a lot more, and went to visit Erik at his music school where I touched a piano-like instrument for the first time in 3.5 months. My skills were rusty to say the least.

I also exercised yesterday. I ran a 3-mile loop along the sea wall. It was a slight shock to the system. Some of my group would wake up early in the training village to go running. Joey, who is here to lecture on physical education and kinesiology at the National University here, is in tremendously good shape. I’ve been waiting for the dust to settle. It wasn’t so bad; the weirdest part was wearing shoes. It’s the first time I’ve worn shoes since our first week here. My feet felt huge. Also, running 3 miles along the sea wall in Apia was a much sweatier time than doing the run around Lake Merced. I did sit-ups in my kitchen when I got home, and there was a pool of sitting water (errr… sweat) on the floor when I finished. It was gross.

And with that pleasant image, I’m going to sign off. Have a great Friday. Pictures below.
















This is the room where all the supplies came in. Students also get supplies from the school. Notebooks, pens, etc. I didn't get an itemized list of what they received.
















This girl was washing windows when I walked by, but by the time my camera was ready to take a picture of her working, she got all giggly and completely stopped working.
















While most of the school was out weeding and trekking grass clippings back and forth, the year 13 kids were back behind the school maintaining the fire that was used as a makeshift incinerator. Also, they were bumming free niu off the palm trees in the back (you can see a girl drinking one at the left of the picture.