For the last two or three months our school has not had a landscaping service on contract to mow (or as they do here in Samoa, weed whack) our campus, so the grass has gotten pretty intense. Last week our principle apparently got fed up with the occasionally chest-high lawn and decided that since the DOE was taking too long to work out a contract for a new service he would take matters into his own hands.
Cue the announcement of "Staff Field Day". We found out that Our principles solution was to decided that the staff was going to all bring their week whackers to school and we would have a half day and then take care of the lawns ourselves. The idea was to show the DOE that if they didn't hurry up and get a contract we would have to have the kids leave early so that they staff could take care of the lawn, therefore reducing learning time. Interesting idea...
As it turned out, when we showed up at school yesterday ready for a half day of classes and then the afternoon slave labor we found out that they had decided to have a full day of school after all. Wonderful. I love having classes that I was told I wasn't having so that I can be completely unprepared. Luckily I all ways have some back-ups ready because hey, this is American Samoa.
The day continued, the kids are ticked because they thought they were having a half day too, and we realize that we are still supposed to stay after an do field day after school. Thanh, Julia and I decided that we don't want to be the lazy teachers so we decided to stay and help, but only til 4 when we are technically supposed to stay at school until. So for a bit over an hours we filled garbage cans up with piles of grass clippings and carried them across the way and dumped them into a giant pile. This was all while we realized that there were only about 10 of the other staff actually doing anything...
Is this stuff in our job description? Who knows. The things we do to look good at our school...