on my way to paradise: Day 8: High School Visits: Tafuna and Samoana

(The bell at Tafuna High School--made of a used WWII-era shell casing--hangs in the school courtyard.)

I had the good fortune of visiting two American Samoa high schools today. Because of some arrangements made by the Chief's wife, I was able to participate in four English classes and two music classes. It was all very interesting. The students seemed to be thrilled by our presence, not like it would have been had I visited a large high school in the States. They each would try to catch my eye at some point during the class time, loved it when I played vocabulary charades with the Samoana students and when I gave a little thank-you speech to the Tafuna choir, each wanted to shake our hands before they left class. The teachers were all good, every one with her/his own style, each one working with clear objectives and enjoying mutual respect with their students.

I especially connected with Carmel (pictured below), who was teaching her students to use "Carmel" notes and had an interesting "talking stick" system with kids for participation grades. Nanikim was a 2nd-year teacher, who was obviously dedicated to her kids and working hard to help them connect with the material. She also came across a bit overwhelmed by the task, and she asked and asked for any strategies the we might have to help her. Another class (teacher's name is not here remembered; sorry) played 50 minutes of charade/pictionary jeopardy to learn the essence of SAT words. I got in on that and successfully acted out the word "fabricate."

There is a teacher shortage here on the island, not surprising, considering the starting salary here of about $8k/year. Classes are about the size of our classes back at HHS, but behavior management in the classroom is an almost nonexistent problem. A tightly woven community makes it nearly impossible for a student to keep bad behavior at school secret from his family or village. If a family does not succeed in correcting the behavior over a period of time, the village elders can exact fines of money or service from the family, or worse. The threat of this shame and the potential severity of punishment seems to reinforce for most students the importance of behaving respectfully and honorably.

Here are some pix from the day.

Tafuna's school-wide learning goals are posted in multiple places in the school and in every classroom. They seemed pretty good to me.

Carmel teaches advanced and mainstream English II. She was a creative teacher with great student rapport. I especially liked her "talking stick" idea for assessing student participation. Seriously, the kids seemed to love her. Incidentally, Carmel is heading to Texas next week to see her husband deployed from Ft. Hood for his 2nd tour in Iraq.