Saturday Morning Lights

Hello Football!

In American Samoa, high school football is a big deal. You may or may not have heard this amazing statistic but it has been estimated that a Samoan boy is 40 times more likely to reach the NFL than a boy growing up in the United States.. These kids, parents, schools and coaches take this sport very seriously.

Since there is only one football stadium on the whole island all of the high school football games are played there. As there are 7 high school varsity football teams, typically one game is held on Friday night and the other two are played on Saturday morning with one team getting a bye each week. This past weekend the mighty Leone Lions (my school) were playing against the undefeated Warriors of Tafuna, which is the biggest school on island. From the very beginning, the game had all the makings of a close and fierce battle. Every time the Lions scored a touchdown, the Warriors answered with one of their own. Even with some 40 seconds left in the first half the Warriors marched down the field to tie the game up right before halftime.

In the second half, the touchdowns kept coming at first and then suddenly each teams defense woke up and started to make some great plays. Luckily our defense got the best of the Warriors and we pulled it out with a 25-22 point victory! It was a great game. The students, teachers and parents in the crowd were going crazy. The players on the field were ecstatic. To see the pride and joy on their faces was amazing. It was a wonderful moment to witness.

Another truly American Samoan experience.

Ants

Captain we have a problem.

ANTS!! Everywhere. I mean, this is a tropical island in the middle of nowhere, so we should expect to deal with our fair share of insects but I'm convinced that I sleep and eat and live with a family of ants everyday. Whenever I can, I will spray them with windex, bug spray or whatever else is closest to me to kill them off. Less than 2 minutes later a new group of them will appear. FROM NOWHERE. The live in the walls, on the floor, behind counters and probably under my pillow. It's so gross. I thought I was learning to deal with them since they're the least bothersome of all the insects we see on a daily basis, but today there seems to be an influx in them. I just want to kill them all.

Ants go marching five by five, hurrah hurrah. The ants go marching five by five, hurrah hurrah. The ants go marching five by the five, the little one stops when Drew sees him alive. The all go marching down. To the garbage...across the street at Samoa Tasty!

Pep Rally

So yesterday we had our first "official" pep rally at school. Mind you we had a pep rally like 3 weeks ago, but this was the first real one. It was supposed to start a 1:30pm. We were still going to have all our regular Friday classes however they were to be shortened to 45 minutes each. Well after lunch as 5th period was starting a kid brought around a bulletin stating that 6th period would be canceled and the pep rally would start right after 5th period. WELL.... 5 minutes later the vice principal motioned for everyone to start making their way to the gymnasium right away. BUT I had scheduled a short vocab quiz for the day because I knew the periods would be short. That's the last time I'll do that. SO, I forced my 5th period class to stay and finish their quizzes before I let them go to the pep rally. In the end, the pep rally ended up being 3 HOURS LONG!! 3 HOURS!! Are you kidding me?!?



Since kids had been missing my class all week in preparation for this event, I had to see what it was all about. I mean, it was just a pep rally, right? NOPE. It was a super duper over the top pep rally madness! As you can see below, there was banners, costumes and makeup, cheers, skits and so much more. These kids and staff get so into this event. It was quite the production.

My students, the Junior class, celebrating after being declared the overall winner of the pep rally.



Another truly American Samoan experience.

Labor Day Weekend

Well it was quite the weekend here in American Samoa. With three full days off in a row us volunteers knew we wanted to explore the island as much as possible. We had to take advantage of a relaxing and for the most part good weekend of weather to get a break from the grind of lesson planning.

On Saturday we woke up around 8am so we could take a bus over to Vatia where we would begin a long hike up and over Mt. Alava back into the "city" of Pago Pago. When we began, our group consisted of Mike, Leslie, Kelly, Eric, April, Brenden, Rosa, Jenn, Mark, Ethan, Bret and myself. We took a bus to the wall in Aua in hopes of finding a bus over the mountain to Vatia.



We waited. I laid down on the road because I was so tired and sick. And we waited some more. Finally a nice man came up in his pickup truck to tell us that he didn't think the buses were running on Saturday to Vatia but he could send a bus down for us that would take us over the mountain for $2.50 a person. Since it was only $.50 more than we expected to pay, we agreed. A couple minutes later a bus came and took us over to Vatia. Vatia is a beautiful village on the north side of Tutuila that has a gorgeous bay. Jenn and Leslie live there and after we packed some lunches, used the lu we set off on our hike over the mountain. With our group down to 10 palagi's we started the rigorous climb.

It was quite a steep and daunting climb up this side of the mountain. We had to take many breaks for water and deep breaths. We were warned that their would be many ladders while hiking up but I don't think any of us were prepared for the sheer amount of them that we encountered. This is by no means an accurate number but I'm convinced we climbed at least 40 of these ladders at some point. Here is one of them.



The 10 of us finally reached the top a little under 2 hours. We took a group picture and enjoyed a great lunch of PB&J sandwiches and some snacks that Jenn (thanks Jenn!) packed for us. A little after 1pm we began our decent. To be honest it was way more boring but far less treacherous than the climb up because we were going down the front side of the mountain which was basically an old truck route. At the top of the mountain is an old or maybe still working radio tower so trucks or something at one point had to get up there. Anyway, after 2 hours of careful walking we made our way back down and were almost home. It was quite an adventure. One for sure that we will complete again.



Sunday was a nice relaxing day at Tisa's Barefoot beach. Unfortunately only a couple of us made it there due to no buses running on Sunday and a couple rides falling through. But those of us that made it there had a nice couple of hours in the water.

On Monday we again set out early to head to a place called Sliding Rock. It is on the west side of the island near Leone, which is the town that I teach in. I'll let the picture describe it best. We had been warned by many locals that Sliding Rock can be quite scary and treacherous if you are not careful. As we led the group over the rocks to a place that I had previously been to that has amazing tide pools, we stopped and explored the beauty of the waves crashing over the rocks.



A couple of girls were standing on a rock ledge that separated two little pools of water. A minute earlier I was standing with them but had left to find out if anyone had wanted to climb higher to another big rock. Right then a gigantic wave came crashing over the rocks and swept 4 of our friends off their feet, sent them flying in the air and threw them against a rock wall. Luckily everyone was pretty much okay except for some major scrapes and blood. It was quite a scary sight but I am so glad that nothing more serious happened to anyone.



After sending the injured home in a car with our dear friend Jessie, the rest of us continued to swim in a calmer pool and enjoy the beautiful weather. Some of us thought it would be a good idea to try and get to that higher rock that I had wanted to go to before the wave that hurt our friends came a-crash-in. So a few of us ran across the rocks as quickly as we could and made it to the top of this beautiful rock that overlooked the crashing water. On our way back, we again had to navigate the waves that swept our friends away so we could make it back to safety. We made it and started our walk back to catch the bus. A scary trip but beautiful in its own right. I guess when I told the ocean to "bring it" earlier in the day, it did. I will not test it again. But I will certainly visit one of the most beautiful places that I have discovered on this island again.



An exhilarating, exciting, strenuous and fun weekend came to a close. And today we were back to our jobs being the wonderful teachers that we came here to be. ;)

Journals

So everyday at the beginning of class, I have my kids write in their journals. Each Day I pose a question to them. This week we have been talking about their home lives, families, church, etc. Their main complaint seems to be about doing so many chores around the house.

Here are two of my kids journal entries from today. One heartbreaking, the other slightly amazing and amusing but also a little sad. The first comes from a pretty shy guy in class who only speaks when I call on him. The latter is from a pretty outgoing guy who's awesome, smart and has a huge Afro with a comb always stuck in it.

Today's journal question was..."Something I hate doing is.....because....."

"I hate being alone, meaning I hate being alone everyday because I don't have a sister or brother, it's just me and my grandparents. I hate it because it's boring, no one to talk to me, and I don't have someone to play with at home. Everyday I always think of having a brother or sister to play with."

"Something I hate doing is breaking up with girls. Out of all the girls I've been with I was always the one to break up the relationship. I broke a lot of girls hearts. I just wonder what would happen to me when a girl breaks up with me. I think I can handle it because i did it a lot. Now that I'm with this special girl, I'm afraid of her breaking up our relationship. I'm really afraid of getting that broken up feeling like all my ex girlfriends. I don't want to have that feeling cause I'm not use to it. I guess it's true, 'whats goes around, comes around.'"

Need I say more?!!?

I LOVE THESE KIDS!

First Week/Nu'uuli Falls

Well, I made it through my first week of school unharmed. It actually turned out to be quite a great week. I would say overall there are 3 classes that I absolutely love. The kids are great. Sure they're rowdy but they're still fun and for the most part listen to me when I speak. I think by the end of the week they really started to become comfortable with me and I with them. We played some really fun games in class that they enjoyed, though I think they assume that we're always going to play games since I'm a drama major. But I will be saving them for special occasions.

I still have one trouble class that I cant seem to get on the same page with. No matter what I do they don't want to listen. I did have one of the local teachers from the Science department who students are a little scared of come into my class on Friday to give them a little pep talk. I didn't want to have to resort to another teacher coming in but I think because these kids have such a low level understanding of English, it helped to have someone come in and speak in Samoan to them about their behavior.



All in all it was a good week. I'm spending the majority of this week assessing their levels on reading, writing and speaking so that I can better tailor my semester syllabus for them. We're working on small autobiographies that they will hopefully present to the class at the end of the week. Unless of course our Friday gets shortened by the possible "Welcome Back to School Dance" I heard about rumbling around the school today.

Over the weekend we visited an awesome waterfall in Nu'uuli. It was so cool. We had to ask permission to go because it is on someones private land. All the land here is privately and communally owned so you always have to ask someone before you do anything. However, they rarely say No.



Posted amongst the blog are some pictures from the Falls. It was really cool. Fresh water falling off the mountain. Cold water that after a while made you want to get out and warm up from the hot air. It just seemed like it was one of those secret treasures on the island that most locals haven't been to, though there are a lot of kids in these pictures, people that I talked to have not been before. It is definitely a place that we will return to because it was such a nice and relaxing scene.

The First Day of School

Monday was the first official day of school here in American Samoa for the public schools. And what a day it was. The day started with an hour long assembly to welcome all the students back to school. The other volunteers and I sat with the other teachers as Viper, one of your VP's greeted the students and got them to do some Leone cheers. It was quite intense. After welcoming the freshmen to the school and giving them the "you're not the big fish in the small pond anymore" speech, we were tasked with handing out the students schedules. As we the palagi teachers didnt know any of the students we just stood back and watched.

I should preface this next part by saying, that for those of you that don't know, I am teaching 5 classes of 11th grade English. 4 (that number was 3 until today when they changed it unbeknownst to me) are proficient level which is like Advanced in the states. I also teach 1 class of mainstream level which is like General in the states.

Because it was the first day of school we were going to see each period for 35 minutes. Periods 1 and 2 are my proficient classes and they were generally pretty good. Samoan kids are loud. Samoan kids like to speak in Samoan in front of a palagi teacher because we have no idea what they're saying. Samoan kids like to laugh and tease each other, but "it's all in good fun." Samoan kids don't want to be asked to work to hard. Samoan kinds truly have hearts of gold underneath all of those exteriors.



After having my first prep period, periods 4 and 5 were my not so easy classes. The kids were more talkative, less attentive and less willing to listen to what I had to say. I realized that with one of my classes, it is going to be a battle for the remainder of the year. In fact today, on the third day of school, I had to hold back 2 students at the end of class because they broke some of my cardinal rules that we had just spoken about only a couple minutes ago. But don't all teachers experience a class like this. I mean, that's what I've been told at least.

Finishing off with period 6 was not so good either but only because it was the last class of the first day of school and the kids were in no mood to be in school anymore. But I know now after three days that these kids are good and fun and we are going to have a great year.

All in all its been a good couple of days teaching. Hard but good. I tip my hat to all those teachers out there because it is much harder than people give them credit for. I will have to constantly think outside the box to come up with lessons that are creative and engaging for my kids. But I am up for the challenge.



Anyone out there who has any fabulous advice on classroom management for rowdy high schoolers should shoot me an email.

Included are some random pictures to make this a less boring post. MWAH!