My First ENGLISH DAY!

The last few weeks have gone by ridiculously fast and have been some of the most stressful/exciting yet during my time in Samoa.  About two weeks ago, my principal approached me and said that that week was the last one for me to teach my lessons. He told me I was to start preparing the English Day for the school and all of the village and it would take place in three weeks (the last week of school in term 1).  I was: a) totally shocked he wanted me to stop teaching, because hello, I’m here to teach,  b) super worried what I was going to do for three weeks while I’m “preparing English day” because seriously, how long could that take? And c) feeling really out of the loop because I have never heard of English day before.  I guess it’s not a very common thing when you live in an English speaking country. So I did my last two lessons, feeling really sad that those would be the last days with my students for the next month.  I’m still feeling really worried that they are going to forget everything we learned. Oh, and then I came down with laryngitis.  Which was mostly just annoying because I couldn’t talk for two days and it was accompanied by this nasty cough/runny nose type of deal….which has lingered and I’m convinced is never going to go away. 

So after I rested for a long weekend and asked a lady from the Peace Corps office to explain “English Day” to me, I started the preparations.  For those of you who don’t know what English  Day should include, let me tell you.  All years (classes) should prepare a song with dance moves, obviously! It’s Samoa! The upper levels (years 6, 7, 8) should prepare a play.  There should poetry, so I made that a poetry contest.  And then there should be advertisements. 

So we will start the day like normal, with our morning devotional/prayer service.  But on this day, it will be done in English.  The kids will do a song in english, read an english scripture, and say a prayer in English.  Then I will give the welcome speech, which ironically enough, is supposed to be in Samoan.  Funny that I’m the one giving it, especially since it’s ENGLISH DAY.  But whatever.  So I’ll give this welcome speech.  And then all of the kids will perform their songs, skits, advertisements, poems, etc.  I’m going to show a couple videos on the projector just because I think the people will like it.  And then we have a student giving the closing remarks in English and that’s it! It has taken me literally two weeks to finalize the program because there have been so many changes, but I think we finally got it! 

I had to write the plays for the students, which anyone who knows me and my creativity skills is laughing right now.  Luckily the topic that we chose is “God is Good” so all the skits are taken from bible stories, which made writing them a lot easier!  One thing I love about Samoa is that we can have a theme about God and everyone things it’s fabulous.  So all the songs are Sunday school songs, too.  It’s cute. 

Preparing English Day has really helped me to continue my progress with my patience skills.  There was one day particularly where I was already having a bad morning and then came to school and had about five thousand things to do, most of which revolved around making copies and printing things.  The problem was that there was no paper and the principal (the only one with a key to the office where the paper is) didn’t come to school that morning.  So I had many teachers coming and asking me to make copies and coming and asking me where there song lyrics were, and every time I had to say “There is still no paper” I got a little bit more annoyed.  So after the morning tea, the principal finally came and I got the paper.  Well that just added to the amount of people coming to ask me where their stuff was, which added to my bad mood.  20 minutes later I finally delivered all of the copied songs to the teachers and as I was walking around visiting the different classes, I heard the sweet voices of the kids in year 4 singing “Jesus Loves Me.”  Which has to be the sweetest song to hear a child sing, because it’s so true and it’s so important for kids to know. I actually got teary eyed.  I just stopped walking and took a deep breath and said a little prayer.  I was reminded, YET AGAIN, this is why I am here.  I’m here for these kids. I’m here to try and show the love of God to them and I can’t do that when I’m a bad mood or when I have annoyed thoughts in my heart.  So since then, I have been writing advertisements, making up dance moves for kids (which is a real sight to see), making copies, typing papers, reading and correcting poems, and doing whatever other things need to be done to make this english day great and doing it with a much better attitude.  I am really excited for it! The kids have been working so hard and I feel bad because I feel like they get their excited, happy spirits beat out of them when they make a mistake and it’s hard for me to watch that but they somehow manage to get back up there and try again.  I love them!

A few funny side notes:  My principal told me if the English Day is good the village will stop gossiping about me and my boyfriend.  (this is after he already told me that I should break up with him because he heard gossip about him).  He said maybe I should I write a poem and read it to the village. I asked my peace corps friends for their thoughts on that, Zach replied the following:  Roses are red, Violets are blue. Don’t gossip about me, or I’ll cut you.  I’m contemplating on sticking it in right between the skit on Daniel and the Lion’s Den and “He’s got the Whole World in His Hands.”  We’ll see.

A lot of my kids can’t seem to remember the correct response to “How are you?” But have no problems remembering every word to the “Lazy Song” by Bruno Mars.  “Today I don’t feel like doing anything….”  I think it’s kind of appropriate for Samoa. 

I got attacked by six (not exaggerating) on my jog a couple weeks ago.  I had to scream and throw rocks to get them to leave me alone, that and the fact the owner came out of his house.  That helped too. 

I got a package from my mom with like six new shirts in it,  I was more excited about than I am when I go to the mall and actually have money.  I basically just doubled my wardrobe! 

The day in the life of a substitute teacher....

Most teachers have probably had the experience of substituting at some point in their lives.  It’s kind of a stressful thing, in my opinion. 

I came to school Thursday 30 minutes late because it was raining, and I have learned if it is raining everyone is going to be late. I was right.  There were only 2 other teachers at school and then only two more showed up with in the next hour.  So I was obviously asked to substitute.  They were being nice to me by giving me the older kids, years 7 and 8.   The difference between substituting here and substituting in the states, is that here there are no lesson plans left for me and I have no ideas of what to teach the children or what I should be doing with them.  You are literally just thrown into a class with the kids.  So I go into the class and think, “wow they literally have nothing to do and I don’t even know where to start because this is four of my classes combined together into one and their levels are so incredibly different that I can’t really do my normal lessons with them.”  So I did a little reading exercise with them at the beginning of the class, for the first 30 mins. Then it was the break, which gave me time to try and think of something creative to do with them for the next three hours after the break was over.   I came up with a few games that I thought I could adjust to fit the levels of all the students and one new concept that I could teach them together as a class that would be new enough to be interesting but easy enough that even the lower level kids could get it.  So for the next two hours we played games, which was fun.  Kind of exhausting, but fun! And then I told them we were done with games and it was time to read. One of the kids started saying something to me about singing songs, and I thought, “ok, we can sing songs.”  What I didn’t understand was that by singing songs he was telling me they were going to do a talent show.  So the students all moved their chairs to make rows around the front of the class, or “the stage,” if you will.   Then it began! They sang so many songs.  Samoan pop songs, Samoan rap songs, Samoan church songs, English Disney songs, that Hallelujah song, and then my personal favorite, JUSTIN BEIBER! Yes.  Two girls led the whole class word for word in “Baby, Baby, Baby, ooooh.”  I may have been laughing a little more than what is normally appropriate at a talent show, but they were just so darn cute.  I don’t know what exactly this says about my classroom management skills, but I know that I had fun and I think they learned at least a little something.  

A much needed reminder...

You know those days when you just feel very aware of all of your imperfections? When you feel like if you make one more mistake that day, you might just hit your head against a wall? Yeah…I have these days sometimes. For example, when I make 50 copies (front and back) for another teacher, only to realize once it’s finished that I somehow managed to do it upside down.  This may not sound like a real problem but when your copy machine takes 30 seconds for each copy and paper is about as hard to come by as an honest man, it’s a big deal.  Or when I laminate 20 sheets of paper with words for flash cards and have this idea to put two pieces of paper in the laminate sheet so that it’s not see-through when we play games with the flashcards (ie, memory and go fish) only to later realize that when you cut the paper, they will come apart because the paper is only held together by the laminated edges and when those are gone, there is nothing to hold them together. So I had to cut 200 flash cards and then glue each of them together.  Super fun use of my time! These are just a couple examples of the silly things that I do on a daily basis that make me think, how am I so….well, I won’t say dumb, but just not very bright, sometimes??? Its days like that I have to remind myself that my patience, while still very much a work in progress, has to be extended to myself. I think sometimes being patient with ourselves can be one of the hardest things.  It’s easy to be patient with other peoples imperfections, but with ourselves we see the worst and tend to be our hardest critics.  I’m also very aware of this with my Samoan skills.  I get frustrated with myself pretty much on a daily basis when I can’t understand something, but I always overlook how much I can and do understand after only 5 months.  Anyways, the point is this- Samoa has made me very aware of the many things that I need to work on in my life and has made me want to be a better person, but it has also made me realize that sometimes we just need to be patient and kind to ourselves and say “you know what, yeah I’m not perfect but I’m trying to get better.” 

In other news, school is still going very well. I have kind of realized I’m spreading myself a little thin with all 5 of my classes. The way the school schedule is, I can only meet twice a week with all of my kids and the lessons are only thirty minutes long.  And then with having 5 classes, it’s hard to give really specific attention after school so it generally just ends up being me reading with whatever students are there that day. My PC job description says that I will work with years 4-6 and then help out co-teaching as time permits (like once a week, or so).  But when I talked to my vice principal and SRO (kind of like a super intending) they said they thought it would be nice if I could work with years 7 and 8, so I have been doing that since the beginning. But I think next term (which is in 4 weeks, how crazy fast is time flying???) I will work with years 4-6 3 times a week, dividing each class into 3 groups of 5-6 students.  That a way I can give the students more individualized attention and make my lessons more specifically suited for the needs of each student in the group. I’m going to try and see if I can take out groups from years 7 and 8 on Fridays, but that’s a hard day because it’s mostly just for singing and playing.  However, I am going to have 2 days a week dedicated to years 7 and 8 in the after school program, so that they can come and I will just work with them on their reading without the distractions of all of the other 50 kids that usually come.  Sorry if this is boring, I never know how much people care to hear about the specifics of the job. But anyways, that’s pretty much all the news about school.  It’s still good. I taught myself how to change the toner in the copy machine today, I felt pretty cool.  The kids still seem to enjoy my classes and I haven’t had many behavior problems which is nice.  I give stickers for good behavior and take away stickers for bad behavior, so my most common used Samoan phrase, besides Sole! and Kaukaulaikiki! (cheeky!), is “ave ese lau sticka” or “I’m gonna take away your sticker!”   But honestly the kids really are very well behaved during my lessons, which I am very grateful for.  I feel like I have been very blessed with my school situation, it’s pretty stress and drama free, which is nice since I spend all of my time at school when I’m not playing volleyball.

Random thought for the blog, my little 12 year old host brother drove me to school in my family’s 16 passenger van one morning because it was raining so hard.  We picked up about ten other kids on the way to school.  I was very aware that this was something that would never happen in the states, given, you know, the laws and stuff. 

some pictures of the school....

These are the books sent from home...the kids were pretty darn excited about them!

This is the bookshelf in my library. and that's all of the english books. 

my classroom and library...

just some pics of the kids reading...i love their enthusiasm!

Love the smiles!

nothing is better than when they get so excited about a book they get on their hands and knees...

this is the morning assembly/prayer meeting.