Halloween Eve

Since becoming a teacher I never realized how much a teacher actually did for the students. One of the things I never put into consideration is holiday parties. For kids these are a big thing, for a teacher it’s a stressful day. For one students come to school with the expectation that they will get to have fun and do no work all day even after the teacher explicitly says we have to do work first. I can almost promise you tomorrow I will have at least one student upset because we are not having a party right away. Parties also mean an increased amount of sugar for students which means increased amount of energy. Not my favorite day. I also have prepare food. I am not sure how much a teacher in the states does but here a teacher usually supplies a good amount of food along with drinks for the students. For instance I made two cakes, in Samoa one cake is equivalent to two cake boxes. Along with two juice pouches, and three rice crispy bars per kid. I may spoil my kids just a little bit.

As I was baking my cakes tonight I was thinking I should just post a sign in front of my house: Lusi and Abby’s Bakery. I have baked so much food this year it is insane. We are still busy with our cookie business so far since we started we have made a total of one thousand cookies. I was curious the other day at how many we had actually made. That’s a lot of cookies. I have to say cookie business is quite successful for us. I am quite impressed at how much we have made off of them so far. We always have people asking us to make them every week but we do it every other week. Too much work and too much time. Have you ever made three batches of cookies and tried stirring in the flour by hand in 95 plus degree weather?? Can’t say its one of my favorite activities.

This week I also caught some kind of flu. No fun. I am not exactly sure what I had but I was tired and didn’t feel good from Saturday afternoon all the way until Tuesday. Lusi kept telling me to go to the doctor. Ehhhh. I hate going to the doctor and hate it even more here. Unless mother is nervous I usually don’t worry about it. The hospital here is a little different. They don’t really have a clinic you go to. Everyone just goes to the emergency room. It is usually a three to four hour wait before you get to see the doctor. It only cost twenty dollars to go to the emergency room and fifty dollars to have a baby or surgery. I can honestly say that is not the most comforting to see. I try in the worst way to avoid it at all costs. I am feeling a lot better and hopefully will avoid getting sick again for awhile.

With Love,

Abby

Hot Hot Hot

·There are these very random days that it decides to be unbearably hot. Today was that day.  Know I am not normally one to complain of the heat. Buuuut today was one for the books. You know how it feels when you open an oven and all the hot air blows on your face. Well today when I opened my door at the end of the day that was the feeling I felt. Just a reminder that our classrooms are not air conditioned so to have this feeling is rare. I opened my door because it was hot in my room and usually opening the door cools it off. Not today my friends. At the end of the day I had sweat just dripping down and my poor students got so worried about me because its not often that I am sweating here. I remember this feeling more my first year but I think that’s because my body was not adjusted to the heat yet. I was literally counting down the minutes until I could shower. Now in this weather you have to plan your shower according to the weather. There is no sense in showering when I get home from school because the second I get out of the shower I will just start sweating again. So you have to wait until the sun is setting. The feeling of showering on a hot day is similar to after running a mile and drinking a cold glass of water.

Despite the heat we still struggled through school today. By the time we reached after school we were all sweaty and ready to be done. At first I did not really care for the after school program. The more I get into it and the routine of it the more I like it. I like changing up my students and having a chance to work with other students. We are working with adding and subtracting and these kids do something I have never seen until I came here. Now remember we don’t ever wear closed toe shoes here. I think I maybe wear my tennis shoes five times a year while I am here. Wearing socks just gets too hot for me. My kids also don’t ever wear them. In Samoan culture they are taught to take their shows off before entering the classroom. So when you walk past classrooms you will see piles of shoes sitting outside. The teacher wears them but not the students. My students put their in the classroom by a wall due to upper class man stealing shoes in the past. Anyway my students use their toes when solving addition and subtraction problems. Its so funny to watch them count it out on their toes its just something I have never seen before.

Hope you are enjoying the cool weather.

With Love,

Abby 

One Class Complete

I have finally completed my first master’s class. Yay! I am so happy to have finally finished one and we are already off and running with my second one. Let me tell you sometimes I don’t think the professor’s factor in the fact that we are full time teachers and cant read six chapters a week from a textbook. That may just be a little excessive.  So now I am spending what little free time I have reading from textbooks. How exciting…

Our school is currently in the middle of doing WASC. Don’t ask me what it means because I honestly have no idea. Anyway it’s a long report about our school and how its running and how we are ensuring our students are performing. All of the teachers have to get together every week to discuss this and work on the report. Then when we complete this report people from the United States will come to evaluate the school and determine if we are reaching the needs of our students. Each school in American Samoa has to complete this and we are one of the last ones left to do this. I can’t wait until we are finished with all of this.

This week it has been raining since Thursday. I hate when it rains in a constant rain like this. Everything feels damp. Your clothes, bed, and everything just has a damp feeling to it. Even the floors in my house are damp and slippery. I am ready for some sunshine. I also have not been able to do laundry because it will never ever dry in this weather and I am running a little short on clothes… So sunshine is needed!

My students are still doing very well. I am very proud of how they are doing in writing. I am telling you this is so hard to teach to them. They hate doing writing everyday but I keep telling them the more we do it the easier it will get. I often tell them they write better than the now fifth grade class to give them a little motivation. Works like a charm. One of the things I never expected as being a problem in my classroom is a toothache. This is a common problem in my classroom. We just covered taking care of our teeth along with a dentist. I have had multiple students come up to me and ask me what’s the word is for the person that fixes our teeth. A dentist. And then they will tell me they are going home to tell their parents. I have had a couple just break out into tears in the middle of class because it hurts so bad. Poor kiddos. Part of the problem is these kids eat soooooo much candy and have at least one or two sodas a day. One time I watched a kid drink three sodas while eating their lunch… McDonalds took away the self-serve soda because they kept running out because everyone would get so many refills! Safe to say we have a little problem with it.

With Love,

Abby

Little Things

This week has been filled with so many little but good things. One thing as a teacher I have really learned to do is focus on the little things. Think of the little progress your students have made so far in the year. Some days it can really feel like they have learned nothing and its all been for nothing. Those are days I break down my day and think well this student did remember to put a period at the end of the sentence. After telling them five hundred times. When they do things like that it is not uncommon for me to start jumping around and praising them. They think its funny but I just want them to feel encouraged. No one forgot periods for the rest of the day either. See little positive things.

Some days I get a little in my head and forget to appreciate the things around me. For instance today after school I grabbed my speaker and just listened to the waves crash and watched the palm tree. I just love how pretty it is here and looking at my surrounding and some days I just forget to look because I have about a million other things tumbling through my mind.

After school teaching has proven to be quite a struggle for me. My after school students are really far behind in their English skills and I don’t know Samoan enough to be able to translate what I am teaching to them. So I am really trying to figure out ways to teach them. I even have one student who does not know the numbers in English. Teaching math is real struggle but today we figured out a system that I can explain it to them and they understand what is going on. So it is a win win for us. Learning everyday.

Eleven pages later and I have finally finished my first online class for my Master’s program. One of ten done. Slowly but surely we will make our way to the end. I have accepted that I will never be finished with school.

Social Studies is one of the hardest subjects for me to teach. One reason is because when I was in high school my teacher did not help me at all. I literally learned nothing. So now the tables have turned and I have to teach it. I spend a long time studying the topic so I know what to say. Currently we are learning about the colonies and the other countries who tried to take over the United States. Right now we are talking Hernado DeSoto. I can usually only give my student about five sentences a day about the topic.  We first break down the sentence and discuss what it means. Then we try to relate to our island. Then we locate where they are and what they are doing on the map in my classroom. The first day they thought the people who owned the slaves were coming to Aunu’u and taking their families. OOPS. One girl was so terrified they were going to take her sister because its not that far away on the map she kept telling me. I then talked about how all of these people are dead and no longer around and cannot hurt us and we are safe. But once they understand what is going on they are very interesting in what is happening.

With Love,

Abby

Post White Sunday

White Sunday came and went by so quickly! Unfortunately, I did not get a video off it because everyone I would ask to video for me was up on stage with me. There were only like the older population in the crowd. All the kids were with me. The service lasted about three hours and went very well. The only not so fun part about it is I think I got overheated. No fans and no air conditioning and pilling forty to fifty people on the stage while singing and dancing is hot. We also had our Samoan clothing, which is fairly warm.  I got home and sat in front of the fan for like a half hour before I could eat. The never happens and I am usually the last one to complain of being hot. After cooling of and finally stopping the sweat we ate. Now before moving here I was not a fan of shrimp never really ate it. They made shrimp in coconut milk. Its really hard to explain how they get the milk but Lusi went out really early in the morning to pick the cocnut, husk it and then get the milk out of it. Let me tell you it was worth it I have never ate so much shrimp. Lusi’s mom gave me a bowl to take home and Lusi was taking a nap and I kinda ate it all. He woke up and couldn’t believe I had finished it! Oops!

This week I am calling it my recuperating week from last week. I was so very busy last week. I am finally getting caught up on my homework and my housework this week. My house really took the hit. My kitchen table was nowhere to be found. I also had a mountain of dishes to wash. Happy to say that you can see my sink and kitchen table now.. Sadly I am turning into my mother in that aspect.

School update! School is going well. My class is learning lots at least I hope they are. I feel like my workload doubled with taking on the after school kids. I got double the papers to correct and double the lesson plans to create. Luckily we only have it for an hour after school. But have you ever tried to get your kids to sit down learn in ninety-degree weather after sitting for six hours. Yeah, not the most fun job in the world. I have to say my kids are really improving on writing this year. I make an effort everyday to get them writing. They may hate me for it but they do get lots of praise from me when they do well. Which keeps them very motivated. They love when you compliment them.

Cookie sales! We are still busy selling our cookies. This week has actually been somewhat of a slow week for sales. We made sixty bags of cookies and only four were not sold! But of course after I ate them I had people coming up to me asking if I had any left. It all depends on the kids because they are the one who really love them! I am thinking people were tired from White Sunday and did not feel like coming out.

With Love,

Abby