High and Lows

Every week I get a check up phone call from Brandi, our lovely field director. During the chat we must answer 3 question: (1) what are your highs from the week (2) what are your lows from the week (3) how are you feeling on a scale from 1 to 5 - 5 being the highest. Each week I’m at least a 4.8 or higher :) Even though things may be rough, I live on a gorgeous island and I’m attempting to help kids. It’s what I signed up to do, and how can I complain?! Though I might have just ended a rough week, I know there is always room to improve. Hey, the next week can only go up, right!? So I thought I would share with you a few highs and lows I have relayed to Brandi over the past few weeks of teaching.

Highs:

• Getting Through: It’s magical when you finally get through to kids, and have a fantastic day of learning. It makes me so incredibly happy to be in the classroom when the kids are excited, I’m excited, and everyone is having fun while learning. I taught a class on Friday to review for the first test of the year. I made it a modified jeopardy style game complete with mini-challenges and drawing pictures on the board. They loved it and had so much fun! But the best part? They were learning! If they didn’t know the answers, they could use a life line to ask someone on their team, so it became a very collaborative environment! I was also amazed at what some of my “lower” kids knew. I was so pumped that what I was teaching them had been absorbed and retained! 
• All my highs are usually some variation of this. I get really excited when a lesson turns out perfectly or I can see the lightbulb going on over students’ heads! It’s such a reassuring feeling

Lows

• Most of my lows deal with realizing how far behind my students are. There are days when I wonder why am I teaching them design when they don’t even have basic english or math skills. But I do realize that I am teaching them valuable information- things that will be applicable in life. 
• “Tuesday:” At the beginning of class I asked if anyone could change the date on the top of the chalkboard (yes, I’m too short to reach with out a chair....you can laugh now...). So one of my students quickly jumped up and ran to the chalkboard. He erased “Monday,” and it was his job to write in “Tuesday.” The poor kid just couldn’t do it. He started by writing a “C.” When I told him to remember that Tuesday starts with a “T,” he erased the “C,” but rewrote it again. He knew it was wrong but wasn’t sure how to correct it, so he added a line through the “C” to make a cent sign. After finally getting the “T” correct, he wrote “Tuty.” The next iteration became “Tuety.” I was trying to help him through it, and even wrote it down on a sheet of paper, but next came “Tueby,” “Tuedy,” “Tueday,” and then finally “Tuesday.” It was so hard watching a high schooler struggle to write something so basic. Samoans learn to speak Samoan first, but then they are supposed to begin learning English as soon as they enter 1st grade. So they are considered “English Language Learners” (ELL). Many of them, though, never receive the proper training, and much of high school is supposed to be conducted in English. The problem is, however, that I think that their Samoan skills are lacking too. Just as in the US, there are many Americans that have poor English and grammar skills. The problem is the same here. It’s so hard to watch students try but struggle since they are so far behind. Think about when we learned to write the days of the week.....early elementary school. Even though Samoans are ELL, they are supposed to be on the same English track as kids on the mainland. 
• Missing Ethan: Not to say that I don’t miss everyone else...because I do. But I do miss Ethan a ton. It’s just so weird not getting to see him very often, and knowing I won’t see him for a few more months!