block scheduling

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.

April 30th (part 2)

Block scheduling was pretty horrible. The fact of the matter was that I was tired of no prep period. The hour and a half long classes were not bad for my smaller classes, but my larger classes proved to be more restless during the time. Losing prep period makes the day go on at an excruciatingly slow speed. In our old schedule we had one class for fifty minutes after lunch but the new schedule gave us a class for an hour and a half which was awful. The students were miserable and didn’t want to pay attention. We started each of these days with tutorials in which I received another tutorial group. Now, I had SAT Prep and the sophomore class. The first day Trish had to chase down four of the students for me and half the class didn’t bring a pen or pencil. I put my foot down from the moment they all entered my room and since then we have been doing well.

For the first two days of this new schedule our principal went on a trip to Ofu and Olosega for a church gathering. Once he came back, he spoke with each teacher about the new schedule. At the end of the week, we reverted back to our old schedule. The only difference in schedule is that we have tutorials every morning and the rest of the classes rotate each day.

When Friday came on the week of the 18th I was very happy. I worked on some art throughout the morning and in the afternoon Josh, Leafa, Crystal, Doug, and I had a Good Friday barbeque. The barbeque lasted a long time because the grill was slow going. Eventually the flame became rained out and Josh and Doug had to start it all up again. I went home early that night waiting for the long day Saturday was sure to bring.

Last Saturday was the last day for the Praxis tutorial. For the last tutorial, Trish and I decided to administer a practice test. I left my house at 6:30 AM, we started the test at 9 AM, at 1:30 PM I started walking home with Crystal. While at school I planned on getting my laundry done so that I could go home and make some more bracelets. The school’s water was turned off when we arrived. The day didn’t end when I walked home with Crystal. I went to pick up my laundry from Trish and Tautua’s. I grabbed the bag and turned to go. I started itching and looked down to find thousands of ants crawling all over me. I screamed and threw the bag down. Trish and Tautua told me I could do some of my laundry over there which I was thankful for after seeing all those ants. I went into the back of their house and started throwing stuff out of my bag. I was washing all the rugs and kitchen towels from the house and one of the rugs must have had food or some dead crab or lizard on it. Ants were covered all over my clothes now. There were even ant eggs everywhere. I was so disgusted and just wanted my things cleaned so went over pitifully to Leafa’s and asked if I could do some loads there as well. Back and forth for the next three hours I took laundry out, put laundry in, hung laundry up, and did it all over again. At 6 PM I finally managed to go home for the first time all day and was relieved. Twenty minutes later I left to grab my final load from Leafa’s. The day seemed never ending.

Easter morning there was a service at 5:30 AM so I went to bed early Saturday night to rest up. I felt half asleep for the 45 minute service. After the service there was some food and drink given out to the village. Josh and I received some Samoan pancakes, sandwiches, and coconut drinks. When we finally got a moment to escape we went home and napped. I eventually woke up a few hours later and just rested around the house all day. Josh decided to go up to school to do some work. I made some cookies throughout the afternoon and then Crystal and I decided to do the forbidden and walk along the beach on a Sunday. The entire village ventured off to Fitiuta for a combined service but I didn’t have it in me to go to a four hour service.

This past week has been pretty uneventful. We had a division gathering Thursday night in which I was given enough food to feed a small village and then the same thing happened at lunch yesterday. I gave a lot of food away to the students and then the rest is sitting in my refrigerator for the weekend. This coming week is teacher appreciation week so I will probably gain another ten pounds.

Have a great week.

Love,

Gretchen