The Other Shoe (Written 4/18/07)

Well the past few days have held quite a bit of interesting news for me. One at home and one here in Samoa. Of course everyone knows about the shootings that occurred in Virginia which made the news over here, and that has really been on my mind for the past couple of days – but I won't talk about it here. It's just kind of strange to hear something tragic like that when you're out of the country. But today (Wednesday) I learned that I will be losing my main Computer Studies counterpart to a private school in about 2 weeks time. He's an Australian and, other then me, is the only person here qualified to teach computer studies to the senior level students (Years 12 and 13). He's leaving for better money, which is understandable but definitely sucks because the main problem with the longevity of this computer studies program at Chanel is that at some point they are going to actually have to hire someone (probably a Samoan) to teach computers here – but once they gain a little computer knowledge, they will probably leave for better pastures leaving the school high and dry. The only good thing about this situation is the fact that he gave us 2 weeks warning and we're only about 3 weeks away from the end of the first term. So the next 2 weeks are going to be kind of tense.

The main reason this is a problem is because this year, Kevin (my principal) and I made a concentrated effort to get Adam (the counterpart) involved in the underworkings of the computer studies program so that he would be capable of taking over once I left. We even went so far as to expand the amount of senior classes that we had so that he could learn how to work with both year 12 and year 13 (before he was only working with year 13) with the hope that at least there would be one person who was semi-trained in how to handle the School C and PSSC side of computer studies. Now all that time and effort has come to bite us in the butt because we not only lose a good teacher, but unless Kevin hires someone who's actually qualified to teach computers, we're going to have to put in a teacher who doesn't know a lot about computers and I have to start over from scratch. Adam had the benefit of learning from 2 Peace Corps volunteers (almost 4 years of teaching) which really helped with his understand of the various aspects of the computers. Now we're going to be left with 2 year 12 classes and a year 13 class that won't have a well qualified teacher – and these are kids who still have major assignments to do and have a major test at the end of the year. Ack!

So in the year and a half that I have been here, I've lost all 3 of the computer teachers that were here before I arrived. And before you say "Well maybe that says something about working with you, Marques!" let me remind you that one never showed up at school again, one became a priest and one is leaving for a higher paying job. So we went from having 3 decent qualified teachers and one HOD to having one HOD and no qualified teachers. You know the beauty of going through year one of Peace Corps – stuff like this doesn't bother me as much as it would have last year. I don't know if it's a change in my personality or what but while I am worried about the quality of teaching Adam's students will get once he's gone, I'm not going stark raving mad with worry. Must be growing up or I'm just tired and waiting for the school year to end. Only 3 more weeks left and next week is ANZAC Day on Wednesday and the Chanel Feast Day on Friday – the first term is packed full of holiday goodness. Who knows, maybe at the beginning of term 2 Kevin will find a teacher for computer studies who's even better then Adam – that would truly be a blessing from God. L8r.