Another week, another victory.

Flicking an ant off you and watching it fly through the air to oblivion might be one of the best feelings on earth...

And it is a good thing that good feelings are so easy to come by. The second week of teaching is now complete... the first with actual subject matter and it brought with it some good, some bad, and a lot of the unexpected. I will start with the unexpected first- I am now an English teacher in addition to Science- I was informed of this addition on Wednesday morning- the day I would be assuming these new responsibilities. I knew it might be coming- I actually suggested it to the principal as a solution to the overcrowding that was happening in the English classes, but I had assumed (silly me) that I might hear more discussion about it/be forewarned in order to prepare. The reason for the overcrowding, for those who want to know, is because of an English teacher who is currently on leave for bereavement (for lack of a better term). Her husband, Lt. Brown, was a police officer on island, who was shot about a week after all of us WorldTeachers arrived... it might be searchable in the news. If not, it definitely is on samoanews.com. It made a huge shock wave on the island- murders themselves are very uncommon, and the last time a police officer was killed was over 50 years ago. Anyway, she is still deciding whether or not she feels up to coming back to school, so until she does, I have her students for Sophomore English.
That particular day went alright with my new class. I think they were disoriented enough about the change that they sort of obeyed just because it was easier. On Thursday however, when I had them again, it was a different story. Not only were they awful in terms of behavior, they stunned me with their lack of knowledge. When we corrected sentences on the board, none of the students could give me the past tense of the verb "to say." My class, by the way, is called Sophomore English because of the level; my class right now is about half filled with seniors. How unprepared they are for life after high school worries me. It is a common statistic here that many students try at college in the states, but get too overwhelmed, and having read their writing and observed their critical thinking skills (or lack thereof) I see why. I am going to try and do the best I can to improve their English in all areas (listening, speaking, reading, writing), but I am at a true loss on where to start.
My science classes reveal a lot of the same challenges. The kids have never been taught how to think. They are excellent at memorizing, but they cannot for the life of them apply that knowledge, which is my theory as to why they all do so poorly on the American standardized tests. My theme for this year is definitely going to be "why?" I have already started doing this in the classroom. It is a lot more tedious teaching-wise, because it drags everything out, but I think it is important that at least in my classroom, the answers are not always given to them, but rather are puzzled out. This week, by the way, I taught the Scientific Method, and Experimental Design. The kids had not heard of either one, nor the elements (like a hypothesis, independent and dependent variables, etc.), but at least seemed willing to learn it all. I know I was in gifted programs throughout most of my life, but I was taught IV and DV stuff in 4th and 5th grade. The biggest bright spot was performing the experiment at the end of the week- I decided to run the "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?" experiment, of course making them run through how the experiment was laid out, the components, etc., etc., so that it wasn't just silly. I think it worked- and they definitely enjoyed the experience... licking is just a hilarious thing in general, and especially to ninth graders.
Saturday was football again! I really am enjoying watching the games, even if we do keep losing. I will however, be perfectly happy if we do not have any more 8 AM ones- too early for a Saturday! We also almost won- the final score was 22 to 26, which gives me hope. Maybe our new coach will get the first win in the history of the school :-).
Saturday night (last night) was also memorable, as all of us went to a fa'afafine pageant. In case you missed the blog post in which I explained what that is, it is considered a third gender here- genetic males (who do not get altering surgery) dress and live their lives as women. In the U.S. the nearest thing is transgender or drag. Last night certainly leaned towards the drag side of things- the program consisted of a talent category, a couture puletasi (the Samoan women's style of clothing) category, swimsuit competition (yes, there were bikinis... worn over control top pantyhose) and evening gown competition. The final winner was a woman named Pearl, who, at 39 was the oldest contestant by far. It was a fun evening, including such memorable moments as an incredible rendition of Etta James' "At Last," a Samoan fire dancer, many many many siva Samoa (Samoan dances), lipsyncing galore (to a Grease/Grease 2 medley, Whitney Houston, Beyonce, show tunes and more), lots of feathers, lots of rhinestones, and a few shirtless Samoan men who carried a few of the fa'afafines on and off stage for effect.
By the way- to any and all reading the blog: where is a good place to petition for free supplies? All of my school's science supplies burnt down last year with about 4 classrooms, and I have no idea who to e-mail and pester. Also, any teaching tips are welcome. My e-mail is rosammutchnick@gmail.com, so let me know!
A couple pictures tonight-
Adorable little girl at the football game.
Some of the players....
2 students of mine... also Cheerleaders!
Cheerleaders in action! (we won't have uniforms until we fundraise)

In the stands of a football game...
This truck is always around campus... I have not yet figured out who it belongs to, but the paint job is literally silver glitter in some sort of clear enamel, and yes, the sticker on the windshield says "bling, bling!"
My classroom, mostly finished.

First Week of School and Other Disasters

Hey Everyone!

I am alive- and for me, that is good enough at the moment. The first week of school is over, and while it was certainly an experience, I am grateful that it is out of the way. Before the week even started, all the teachers were instructed by the administration not to instruct- they informed all of us that since many kids who were expected to register had yet to, everything would be shifting around to the point where teaching would be useless. I doubted this a little: silly me. It seems that even when it comes to school Samoan procrastination exists. Kids were being registered all throughout the week, and did not appear to think that this was either unusual or perhaps detrimental. Still, administrative instructions aside, it was an interesting week.
I am currently teaching 5 periods out of the six- my second period is designated as my prep period, although the administration has already warned that most likely, that period will actually be when I substitute for other teachers who are absent. Of the five classes I am teaching, 4 are General science (and are mostly freshmen) and one is Physical Science (which contains freshmen, sophomores, and seniors).
My smallest class at the moment has one student-there apparently was a scheduling mishap which supposedly will be fixed this week. Not including that, my smallest class has about 16 kids- my largest, 26 (which is two more than I have chairs for). These could all get bigger- over the next week, all the kids' schedules will change as they place in or out of certain subjects. It is not uncommon for there not to be enough desks or chairs- students are very accustomed to sitting on the floor.
An interesting aspect of NVTHS is that because the majority of the vocations it offers training for are geared towards males, there is a large disproportion of males to females. In most of my classes, there are a maximum of 4 or 5 girls. In my first period, there is one poor lone quiet girl, who I think I am going to have to work on in terms of bringing her out of her shell.
The boy/girl ration definitely creates an atmosphere conducive to rowdiness, but so far, discipline has, for the most part, been maintained. I have had to send a few kids out of my class for various reasons, and I had to lecture another, but overall manageable.
Part of it, I believe, is also not the kids' fault. This week was full of pep-rallies. We had seven in five days-SEVEN. There was an opening, welcome to school pep rally. Every day there were "class meetings" in which each class worked on cheers for a competition during the planned Friday pep rally. On Friday, there was an extra pep rally in the morning, because the Troy Palumalu foundation/Nike showed up to give football equipment to us (they are giving it to all the public high schools), plus the planned, 3 hour pep rally in the afternoon. With all this going on, its not a huge surprise that the kids did not want to get in the classroom mindset, even for introductory activities or games.
Speaking of pep- Every day at our school, the principal creates a bulletin with announcements for teachers. Tuesday's contained this gem: "All those who wish to join the elite cheerleading team, please see one of the advisers, April Kirby or Rosa Mutchnick, today at lunch or directly after school." Without warning (or agreement), my housemate and I became the cheer coaches. Keep in mind- I might be loud, and April might have been in a sorority in college, but neither of us has ANY cheer or dance team experience. Oh well. So far, the girls (and one boy) have been really fun though- and they have worked really hard. They already have a notebook full of chants, so making routines shouldn't be that hard... right?
We had a trial run at our football game Friday, and I have to say, I was proud- they only cheered for a quarter (everyone had lost their voices from the plethora of pep rallies) but they all tried hard.
(side note: I am sitting on my bed writing this, and without any thought, I reached out and flicked one ant off my sheets and one off my arm... without even thinking how strange/annoying/gross that is. I'm acclimating!)
Friday night, everyone hung out and celebrating getting through the first week of school. After comparing stories I realized I have it pretty good- I have textbooks and workbooks, chairs and tables. I may not have a lab or lab equipment, but I don't have rats in the classroom, or exposed wiring either.

Blog post tomorrow: Nuuuli waterfalls!

and.... pics as promised (more are coming... these are older)
Felicia sleeping on the table after a centipede crawled on her face during the night... she stayed with us until she left for Olosenga, one of the outer islands.
Milana and Bralin- this is the host mom of one of the other volunteers and her grandson.
Another one of her grandkids- all Samoan kids are cute btw, its amazing.
A coconut crab! Thusly named because they can crack a coconut- its one of the main things they eat. You can't tell in this pic, but claw to claw, this thing was about a foot, foot and a half wide/long... and its a small one. Fully grown coconut crabs can get up to 3-4 feet.
One of the many, many, many, many churches around AmSam.
In the back of a pickup truck (an extremely common method of transportation) on the way to the West end of the island for a barbeque, hosted by a member of the AmSam DoE.
A hermit crab hiding in a tree at Fagatele Bay... this thing was as big as my hand!

Catch-up

Sorry for all the blogging delays. Getting internet installed has been… interesting to say the least. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have heard the word “tomorrow.” The Samoan tomorrow, by the way, is a special term, used to indicate a future event with no actual definable timeframe. It feels reassuring, but is deviously ambiguous, and the Samoans use it for everything. Anyway. I know there is a lot to catch up on, and I may miss some things, so I am sorry for that. Let’s see. I think I left off with the new house.

There are no longer five people living here, which is somewhat of a relief, although it was fun for the time it lasted… I am just glad, now that school is starting, that there is a sense of personal space again. Drew and Bret moved in to their house, which is approximately two feet away, after a long ordeal of flooding and cleaning and Kaleo (the landlord) promising they would move in “tomorrow.” Once it was cleaned from the flood waters, it turned out (I think) to be pretty nice, and they seem happy. It is also great that they are so close- nightly spades games have become a tradition, and we are all constantly in and out of each other’s houses. Felicia, the fifth roommate who was staying at our house, left yesterday for Manu’a ( the outer islands) where she will be teaching elementary school. It is especially quiet around here without her. Even more, her departure is yet another sign that the real reason we are all here is upon us…. Tomorrow, August 16^th, school starts.

So backing up a bit, and going back to last week. We finished orientation on Wednesday, and for the first time actually had some free days in which to explore. Thursday, a group of us (Mark, Eric, April, Felicia, Brenden, and I) decided to try to find the elusive Fagatele Bay (pronounced Fahng-ah-tell-eh). It is a small bay, protected by Park Services under federal law as a marine sanctuary… it is, in fact, the only marine sanctuary possessed by the U.S. below the equator. We all had heard about the Bay from a number of people- at the NOAA event we went to, it was constantly talked about, and the National Park Services guys had mentioned it as well. Oddly enough though, none of the local seemed to have any idea about it. When we got on the standard mode of transport, an aiga (pronounced ai-IN-ga) bus, the driver looked very confused at our request to be dropped off there- Optimistically, I announced that there was a sign- and he nodded. He had no idea. Luckily, I had remembered passing it a couple times on the way to visit friends in the Leone house, and so was able to pull the cord in time. I can’t really blame the driver though- for something so lauded, it was only marked by a sign about 4’x5’ on the side of the road- and only directions from someone who actually knew where it was could have led us to go down the street which was across the road from where the sign actually was. From there it didn’t get any easier to find. We walked down a street, which eventually turned from cement to dirt, and passed a landfill, a rock quarry, and a very nice Samoan lady, hanging her laundry out to dry, who gave us wrong directions. Instead of going to the right, where we could see an orange gate with a homemade sign saying [sic] PRIVAT, we took the left path, which as we would find out twenty minutes later, would lead us on a trek through the jungle on iffy paths to….. right behind the orange gate. As we later found out, the owners of the land and the orange gate are used to people coming to see the Bay, and will always unlock the gate for you if asked. Lesson learned. Once past the gate however, it was about twenty minutes more hiking, 15 of which were on wide grassy paths. The last five were on a very steep, stony paths which had some crudely hewn steps, and finally to a very… interesting set of wooden stairs (which luckily did in fact turn out to be very stable) leading down to the beach.

It was completely worth it when we got there. Though the sand area of the beach was small, it overlooked a ridiculous view of blue water, steep black cliffs and dense jungle. It was also completely secluded. With the exception of one random Samoan spear-fisher (who we later found out was not allowed to be spear fishing there) we were completely alone the entire day. As soon as the girls realized this, we all stripped down to our… swimsuits! Not a victory anywhere else, but in AmSam, girls are supposed to wear non-short shorts (like basketball shorts) and either a t shirt or a wide strap tank top to swim in. Compared to that, swimsuits felt both scandalous and amazing.

To the left of the “Small Beach” which is its official name, was another 20 foot beach, this one of coral. I renamed it the Hermit Crab beach, which, though not imaginative, was apt. There were literally hundreds of them, ranging in size from a fingernail to a baseball. There were also a range of shells, among which I found a gorgeous conch shell about the size of my palm. On the right side of Small Beach, there was a mini freshwater waterfall, as well as some climbable areas of lava rock leading up into the jungle. All this was great, but the best part was yet to come. As it turns out, Fagatele Bay contains more types of corals than any other reef in American Samoa, as well as the healthiest. This of course, leads to an incredible array of tropical fishes. At one point, at about 4 o clock, as we were making our last snorkel run, we ran into the middle of a school of over 400 iridescent yellow, black striped fish. Over the course of the day we probably saw over 50 or more different kinds of reef fish, including Picasso fish, angel fish, needlefish and many many more that I am not versed enough to know the names of yet. Even though the hike back was all uphill and pretty brutal on us (we had probably done too much snorkeling) it was one of the best days of the trip so far, and probably one of the coolest days I have had, period.

Side note- in an effort to get this blog back to real-time posting, I am skipping some stuff, none of which is hugely enlightening or interesting, don’t worry.

On Monday, all the public high school teachers and administrators gathered at Tafuna high school, for a morning of long speeches and random music intervals. The idea (I think) was to get the teachers together and united for the school year. Since everything was in Samoan, however, that didn’t really happen for me. That afternoon all the teacher went back to their assigned schools- I of course, went to Nu’uuli VocTech, where I was given a promise of an eventual class schedule, and a room key. I was super excited- finally, to see my room! Well, that crashed as soon as I opened my door. Apparently, my room, which is room 103 was the Electrical Repair classroom last year. Translation: It was amazingly dirty and full of junk. I don’t have pictures of the actual starting point, but to give you an idea, there was a garish red and yellow table taking up half the room (I, or rather my clothes, later found out that this paint rubs off), topped with a broken industrial sized A/C unit, a broken microwave, and a broken computer, as well as a bunch of mysterious wires and bits of metal. There were more random metal parts scattered around the room, as well as some table tops that apparently had been converted to big painted billboard-like things with space to screw in lightbulbs. The walls were a gross industrial and very dirty taupe…. All in all, not incredibly uplifting. I couldn’t do anything about it Monday though- that work would come on Tuesday.

Tuesday, for lack of a better word, was hell. Luckily, the electrician teacher this year, Lou, helped me out, but all morning was basically spent on heavy lifting. The afternoon arrived with a bucket of white paint, a roller, and a paintbrush. The roller was only useful on one wall- the others are cinderblock, so the next four hours were spent painting my entire room white with one four inch paintbrush.

Wednesday was another teacher conference at Tafuna. We were split by subject, so I went with all the science teachers. The morning was fine- not incredibly interesting or enlightening, but fine. The afternoon however…. Well, the DOE apparently invited a Creationist to come and talk to all of us- problem was, he wasn’t really a proponent of Creationism. He made such fun statements throughout his 3 hour lecture as… “Evolution takes the God out of our children,” “according to Science, if you didn’t see it happen, you can’t prove it exists,” “Dinosaurs could have just as easily been made extinct from heroin overdoses and smoking…. We weren’t there!” (he was completely serious about that one, unfortunately). After his lecture ended, a bunch of teachers discussed his presentation, away from campus. All of us basically had the same thoughts- it’s not the idea of teaching Creationism as an alternate theory that truly bothers us. It is that his presentation a) deliberately presented data in a false or misleading way to support his points and b) he didn’t really argue for Creationism, only against Evolution. Furthermore, many of the arguments which he stated against evolution also could be turned against Creationism, a fact which he conveniently ignored. Overall, if the DOE had wanted us to introduce creationism as part of the curriculum, they might have been better served by asking.

Thursday was devoted to room preparation again- Mostly lots of cleaning, making decorations, cleaning more, arranging tables, etc. I did spend a truly enjoyable two hours coloring the Sun and eight planets (I am still very depressed that Pluto is no longer a planet), with crayons, a medium I haven’t really touched since middle school at the latest. I couldn’t put any of the decorations up however, because the adhesive things I had bought to everything up around the classroom proved no match for the humidity.

Friday was VocTech’s first staff meeting- and it proved to be quite an experience. It started with one of the teachers having a jam session on his ukulele, which went from traditional Samoan songs to “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music. Then we had the traditional prayer and song, and then breakfast was available. The “continental breakfast” (their words) was actually a pretty impressive spread of food; there was fresh fruit, two different traditional Samoan foods, koko rice, and something made with the jelly from young coconuts and tapioca, as well as boiled eggs, and….. cooked Vienna sausages and Fried Spam. There was also, for an extra element of weirdness, an assortment of Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. I tried everything, although in hindsight, that might have been a mistake… I think either the SPAM or sausages were full of MSG and I got an incredible stomach ache and headache. After breakfast, the staff went around and introduced themselves, and if they wanted to, a talent which they possessed- James, who lives next door to us, sang “Imagine,” by John Lennon. Another woman sang a religious song. After all the introductions were done, Ms. Kava (our principal) gave a speech, then decided we were all too low energy for her liking… her solution? Making a room full of thirty adults full of SPAM and eggs to do the Hokey Pokey! No lie though, it was both fun and hilarious. There were more speeches by the administrators, then a minor verbal spat between one of the teachers and the head of Administration- for a second I thought that someone was going to get fired… but luckily that didn’t happen. There was some more administrative stuff, then we were done… I went on a mission to buy tape, which was successful, and I was finally able to finish my classroom…. And begin to prepare myself for the much maligned and anticipated first week of school.

Pictures tomorrow!

Hey guys- this will be quick unfortunately. This past weekend was crazy, what with moving in to the permanent house on Saturday and my birthday on Sunday. Full descriptions of both will be coming, but for now I am on borrowed wireless... we are getting internet installed in the house this week though so that will be EXCELLENT. Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, and I will properly blog later!