One Month Down

I have officially been in American Samoa for a month and have almost completed my first month of school. Once the school year starts my year just seems to fly by with all the things that I have to do. We have some major praises in my classroom this past month. First of we have almost tackled word form for place value with decimals. Let me tell you having English Language Learners write out a math problem in words can be very difficult and we are almost done. My kids are troopers. Secondly, they have written complete paragraphs using seven words in each sentence. This was also a task but they are getting the hang of it.  Lastly, we have made improvements in our reading. I really work on fluency with my students because they just don’t know the words all of my kids were way below average when school started and some have already made it to grade level. Yay!! I was so excited to see that. We celebrated by playing games for the last hour of school today.

Next week will be a week of craziness for me. I have White Sunday practice every day. I just got asked to be a tutor after school so I have training for that across next week, master’s classes, and school. I have decided that once White Sunday is finished I will be so happy I have my nights free again! Some days I wish I could go back to the summer where I did absolutely nothing.

Through all of this craziness it finally does feel like I got my life back to normal. After a summer of moving around visiting people and trying to spend as much time as possible with everyone. Then I came back to the island and tried to clean my house and classroom before the school year began. Now as I reach the one-month mark I feel like I am back to normal. As this is my last year of being here I tend to get a little nostalgic about every thing. Lusi and I have been trying to really enjoy the island before all too soon we will be gone. One night we spent a couple of hours sitting on the rocks listening to the ocean waves and looking at the stars. If I could capture this moment for you guys I would. It is my absolute favorite. Whenever I have a bad week I go sit on the rocks and watch the waves roll in and from a distance I can see the kids playing and running around. I am really trying to take these things in before I won’t have a chance anymore.

*If anyone has books sitting around at home and has no idea what to do with them. I would love to take them off of your hands. My students love reading this year and are going through the small amount of books that I have quite fast. You can send them to

Abby Drenth

P.O. Box 2219

Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799

With Love,

Abby

P.s. I really love getting mail! ;)