School Insanity

Please take a moment to answer this question honestly: "Am I a type A person?"

If the answer is yes, NEVER EVER EVER come work in American Samoa, especially if you are a teacher.

Since I am a total type B, I'm cool with how things go down here, but allow me to give you just a few more fun facts about what it is like to teach here. Keep in mind that they overarching theme is "chaos". Two weeks ago there was a letter to the editor in the paper about how it was unfair that Leone gets off at 1:40 two days a week and at 2:30 the other days, while the other high schools get out at 3:00 every day. Hilarity ensued as our school received word just two days later that the DOE just noticed that our schedule was not fulfilling the minimum amount of instructional time for each day. They say that the schedule was only approved at the DOE by two people, and that this lack of hours just came to their attention. The funny part is that Leone has been using this schedule for the last TWO YEARS. Somehow the DOE didn't notice that there were not enough instructional hours at our high school for TWO YEARS. It took a parent writing a letter to the editor to get noticed. So two weeks ago we began having our block schedule run until 3, which by the way they didn't tell the teachers until the day it started. Surprise!

That's not all… the next Thursday (which was this past Thurs) our administration informed us that the block schedule simply would not work with the new hours we needed, so that starting Monday we would be starting with an entirely new non-block 6 periods a day schedule. So throw you lesson plans for block out the window, because in three days you will have 50 minute classes daily.

Monday rolls around and the new schedule is in place, and the students are PISSED. One of my brightest students was talking to me about actually getting the students to go on strike, and I told her that I would be right on the picket line because change that fast is crazy.

Just as we are settling into our schedules, today I find out that we are changing our schedules – yet again – to go from 4 classes in the am and 2 in the pm, to 3 and 3, starting next week. Oh, and starting next we are also having homerooms, which were just posted outside for the kids to see. Funny, I wasn't given a homeroom list…

After some counting I realized that in our seven weeks of school so far we have had 4 entirely different schedules. All with at most two days notice. How chaotic is that?



So there you have it – just a few reasons you should never, ever, ever, ever come work here if you are type A. You may flip out.

PS. On the positive side, we had an assembly this Monday morning to try to cheer the kids up and get them on the administrations good side. It consisted of performances from the "Brightest Stars" group, which is a collection of the most talented singers between middle school and college ages around the island. IT's actually pretty sweet because I guess there are people form American Idol coming and the one who is the best gets to have a trip to be on the show, but this might just be hearsay. Regardless, there were some pretty sweet performances and they were in accordance to classic Samoan taste. This means that there were some pretty fly renditions of some 80's love ballads, a little Miley Cyrus, "My Girl", R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" and a duet of Backstreet Boy's "Quit Playing Games with My Heart".

To better understand how performances work here, you need to imagine a concert. When the singer hits a high note, or performs a sweet run everyone in the audience screams and cheers, with many jumping up from their seats and punching the air. Even more awesome, in Samoan 'fiafia' tradition people walk up to the stage and throw money at the singer's feet, or go up on stage and put money in their shirt (yes, I know you are equating this to strippers, but its traditional here…). The best though is that when people go up they will also sometimes kiss the performer on the cheek. So when the stud who sang the R. Kelly was up there he was literally almost knocked over while girls were shoving money down his shirt, kissing him, and taking pictures – all while he is trying to sing! He deserved it though; the kid had an amazing voice.

It was a great way to improve moral as the kids and we the teachers loved to hear the singing, and were dying laughing as some of the singers were assaulted by fans with money and overzealous affection. It made me realize yet again, that if I leave next year, I am going to miss the assemblies here, as I don't think there is anything quite like them in the states.