Settling Down (Written 1/25/07)

This past week has definitely been one filled with a lot of action. For the past few days I have been finishing up formatting the computers for use in our internet room – we're possibly going to use a normal phone line for the service, but SamoaTel has supposedly come out with broadband in Samoa (but I have read nor heard anything about this service) which would be SOOOO much better (albeit a tad more expensive then dial up). But getting that done was a big deal because I was not allowing students into the first lab (where I was working on these computers) until I was done – don't want any "accidents" to happen. At the same time I have been getting all the documentation ready to hand to my computer teachers who will be teaching the junior classes (Years 9-11) and the one teacher who will be co-teaching Year 12 and 13 with me. Funny story, our principal has decided to allow some of the Year 13 students choose not to take Maths and instead pick up another subject. Now at first he only expect maybe 5 students to take this offer – instead over half the seniors ditched maths and came over to computer. I think the same offer was made in Year 12 and it has caused a few problems in terms of space – with the Year 12 kids we're approaching about 35-40 kids in a room and that's a bit much with only 20-26 computers and 2 senior computer teachers. So hopefully Kevin will have them split up into smaller classes sometime next week.

 

One thing I must say is that it's not been an overwhelming week like it was this time last year – I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that things are a lot more organized this year. From day one classes have been running, instead of like last year when the first week was dedicated to cleaning up the classes and having students do odd jobs around the place. Glad I got all the leg work out of the way last year and now all I have to do is print stuff out and we're good to go.

 

Today I had my first meeting with the computer teachers for this year, laying down the ground rules for them and giving them their teaching guides to use in the classroom. One of the bad things about not having dedicated computer teachers is that you end up using folks who are not enthused about teaching computers and that can come across in how they present the material to the students. Now teaching computers isn't exactly the most thrilling job in the world, but if you act like it's not then you'll lose the students real fast. This was another situation where I felt different from last year: when I held my first meeting with the computer teachers last year, I was just a bundle of nerves – asking myself "Do I really know how to lead and organize this?" but this year I'm a lot more confident in myself and my leadership skills so the meeting went smoothly and hopefully I got my point across to them. It was the first time this year I really felt like the Head of the Department – better late then never, right? Now hopefully since we are starting our 'each class gets computers a day' program from the very beginning things will go a lot smoother then they did last year – we'll see.

 

But I'll see on Monday because tomorrow I head over to Savaii for our Mid-Service Conference at the Satuituta (sp?) Beach Fales, which is one of the beach fales that John, Candice and I stopped at during our Big Island Adventure last year. It will be the first time I've been back to that side of the island since that bike trip (John and Candice have biked Savaii twice or three times since then – they're crazy like that). It'll be good to have another vacation – I'm dead tired after this week! Not looking forward to that boat ride though – hopefully it's a nice calm day tomorrow and we won't have to worry about it. Talk to you on Sunday! L8r.

 

BTW, GO BEARS!