Bell Schedule?

Oh Samoana. As a teacher in Samoa, you deal with lots of unexpected events and circumstances. Flexibility and spur of them moment thinking is crucial to survival and a go-with-the-flow attitude is necessary to remain sane. I have developed a level of patience I never thought I had. In most frustrating circumstances you are forced to “just deal.” But I thought I would let you in on a little piece of my morning insanity (and something that would never happen in State-side schools). 

The first period of the day is supposed to run from 8:30am - 9:50am. I always add in a 5-10 minute grace period to the times for when the people in the office forget to ring the bell or accidentally ring it early. This morning it was 9:57am, and the bell still had not rang when a student carrying a bulletin came it. It had a revised schedule. We needed to have an emergency staff meeting so all classes would be cut 15 minutes short, the students would be dismissed at 2 pm, and the teachers would have a very important staff meeting for the last hour of the day. 

Do you noticed the problems?

First, we were just being informed of this at the end of the 1st period. Second, the notice had come at the end of 1st period at (9:57) when the message declared that 1st period would end early at 9:35am......Hmmm 22 minute miscalculation? Because someone had decided to snooze on their bell duties or didn’t get the memo, 1st period went 10 minutes longer than usual. This meant that our 2nd period of the day would now be reduced by 25 minutes. (All without prior warning). 

And so you have the silliness of Samoa schedules.