I Teach

Yesterday I finally got a phone today! Yay! (If you are willing to pay for a international call just let me know and I will get you my number ;) I also discovered the island's teaching supply store. It's small and doesn't have too much, but the woman who runs it is great and willing to order stuff for us! 

After running errands, Kate, Max, and I trekked over to airport beach for some snorkeling. We have to hike around the airport runway between the water and the fence line. If you ignore all the trash and bushes, it's not too bad. Once you hike 30-40 minutes, the coast opens up to a little bay with a dead coral beach. It wasn't a perfect snorkeling day since it had been rainy and the visibility wasn't the best, but it was good to get in none the less. I don't have my fins yet, so it was a major work out. The current was strong so I would swim as hard as I could for about ten minutes, then drift back with the current. Kate and Max had a little bit easier of a time since they came prepared with fins.

The rest of the night was pretty mellow. After out tea time evening session, Kate and I listened to Dan and Max play their guitars. I was surprised at how many of the WT boys brought their guitars to Samoa, so it's fun to sit around and here them play/sing. 

Today we went through a teaching/lesson planning practical. Our job was to create a 10 minute lesson on our subject to teach to a classroom of high schoolers. For the sake of comprehension, I decided to present a lesson and activity on city planning. All the high school teachers (half the WT group) were able to watch each other and observe. Though we were initially a little stressed about being able to fully teach a lesson in 10 minutes, each person's class went pretty well. It was a really helpful way to feel out Samoan students. Since the culture is so community oriented, students don't like being singled out. It's often difficult to get kids to volunteer, and they aren't usually comfortable with shouting out answers since they don't want to be wrong. Standing out as an individual, whether in a good or bad way, is usually discourage. Rather than completely changing this mentality, my goal is to work with it. Who says that the American way is correct, anyway? While I want to inspire kids to be self confident and proud of themselves, I don't want to detract from the sense of community. Group work, partnering, and team answers are all common ways of getting around putting one student on the spot. Samoan children are also very artistic and love performing. Their intelligence is best tested in creative ways rather than just an pen and paper test. They often know the subject but have a hard time conveying it in typical tests. Checking for true comprehension is another necessity. The children have unbelievable memories and have impressive mimicry memorization skills. They tend to just repeat and memorize the answers with out actually comprehending the intending meaning. This can trick teachers into believing the kids have mastering the subject when, really, they are just regurgitating the facts and ideas presented to them. This first classroom experience gave us experience with all of these factors and know we can think about how we want to address them with our own students.

After our morning with the kids I picked up the outfits I had left at the sew shop. Most people get many of their clothes handmade, and the island is dotted with hundreds of little sewing shops. I went to a store and picked out all my fabrics, then took them back to the seamstress. After taking all my measurements, I told her what I wanted and she sketched out my vision. I had 2 lava lavas (the traditional wrap around skirt worn by both men and women), one dress, and one puletasi (the conservative formal wear for women that consists of a fitted top and longer straight skirt) made. The fabrics are all bright and tropical, and fitting for island life. The puletasi is worn by many teachers and, when worn, usually gains more respect from the students. I wasn't sure how the outfits would come out since it was my first time getting something made from scratch, but I was impressed. I was fully prepared to hate the clothes, but they turned out really cute. I've already gotten tons of compliments on my dress. 

After a day of teaching and class, our WT group decided to through ourselves a toga party to commemorate our orientation together. We stole our flowery bed sheets and rigged some stylish togas. We also wore our woven headbands that we made with the kids at the museum the week before. Brigit read tarot cards (scarily accurate), we danced, chatted, and even through in our favorite game, Catch Phrase. It was definitely a memorable night!