Samoan Day

First of all, I know it’s been a while since my last post. Sorry! Sometimes I’d rather just take a nap or watch the newest episode of Glee that Amber has downloaded than write a blog. But here’s the long-awaited, and, I’m sure, much anticipated newest blog:

Part of the curriculum at Leone High School is to teach the students about their Samoan culture. In order to do this they clump all of the learning into a period of about 3 weeks, during which the students practice singing, dancing, dramatic performances, and cooking traditional food. All of this practice culminates during one big Samoan Day performance. All of the classes (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) compete in a variety of categories and win points for their class, as well as money from friends and relatives who are invited to watch the performance.

Samoan Day itself was pretty awesome, but I’ll get there. The weeks leading up to Samoan Day were chaos.

Me and Amber in our puletasis

The schedule was entirely rearranged to allow for Samoan Day practice time for all of the students. During the first 2 weeks, we had practice every day for 1 hour, so instead of having 6 class periods per day, we had 5. Each day we started with the period that we missed the day before and the schedule rotated like so. Each day we had two periods of classes, then Samoan practice, then another class, lunch, and finally the last 2 periods of the day. There were several problems with this schedule. First, students were always confused about which class they were supposed to go to, which is not surprising since even now, three quarters of the way through the year, they can’t remember what class they have next during a normal schedule. Second, pretty much any class after Samoan class was a waste of time. The first 2 periods of the day usually went smoothly, but then they got all riled up and sweaty after an hour of clapping, chanting, dancing, and singing in the hot sun. The class after practice would come in to class smelly and dripping with sweat and either collapse under my one fan or continue to dance and sing wildly around the room. So what are you supposed to do when half your class is dying of heat exhaustion and the other half is performing out of control traditional dances? I never came up with an effective solution. Then we had the class after lunch which is always full of students on a sugar high and then they crash during the last period. But the good thing about all this was that I only had to teach 3^rd period 4 times a week instead of 5! This happened to all the classes of course, but I always struggle with period 3, my large class of crazy freshmen. During the 3^rd and final week of practice we went to 2 hours of practice every day which meant that we only had 4 periods of classes (only 3 if the prep period was one of them!). Crunch time!

So you may find yourself wondering what I, a palagi with comparatively very little knowledge of Samoan culture, was doing during these long practice periods. Well every teacher is an advisor for one of the four classes (I am a sophomore advisor) and was supposed to be helping during practice time. But with my lack of expertise on Samoan song and dance, as well as, let’s face it, lack of authority over 100+ crazy kids, I was neither helpful in teaching the students nor in keeping them in line. After a couple days of this I just started staying in my classroom and getting stuff done during practice which was really nice for me. But as soon as students got wind of this I had requests to stay (hide, really) in my room during practice. This was forbidden by the office, but of course I have a soft spot for my favorite students, and I felt bad for students who had just moved here from Hawaii or the States  and felt out of place and behind at practice. So I let a few students stay in my room during practice. This someone got to the office and there was a special announcement in the daily bulletin: “Attendance at Samoan Day practice is mandatory. Advisors should be helping their classes during practice. No one should be hiding in their classrooms.” After that I made sure to make an initial appearance at practice every day and then spent the rest of the time in my classroom.

Also as part of Samoan Day every class had to get outfits sewn from the same fabric. Advisors were also encouraged to get outfits made with the fabric that had been picked out, but the style could be different. So as sophomore advisors, Amber and I picked up some of the bright red fabric that had been chosen for the sophomores and got new puletasis made (see the photos above). We also got the matching seis (decorative flowers that women put in their hair) that went with the outfit. Needless to say, we got many compliments on our outfits on Samoan Day.

Sophomore girls

The day before Samoan Day we had first period and then there was a rehearsal at the gym with all of the classes. This was the time for each class to figure out the logistics of where everyone would sit and get used to the space in the gym. They also gave a little preview of what they would be doing for the actual performance. Then rehearsal finally ended and everyone was dismissed for lunch. After lunch there was mass confusion about whether or not there were more classes. All during lunch I had watched a steady stream of kids slip through the fence behind Amber’s room, presumably to go home. But the bell rang for the next period so I went back to my classroom. There were a few kids milling about outside my class but none of my students showed up. Apparently the kids had just all decided it was time to go. After about 20 minutes of sitting in my class, someone at the office rang the bell about 20 times in a row. I guess this was the official signal that school was over.

Junior girls

 The next day was the big day! All the students were excitedly doing last minute preparations when we arrived.

Junior boys plus one sophomore

The girls were all fixing their hair and the boys were busy drawing elaborate Sharpie tattoos on one another and coating themselves in baby oil. The 3 of us walked around taking pictures of all our students which they loved. The gym was set up with big open space in the center, seating for parents, and tents for the classes to sit under so they wouldn’t have to be in the sun (the gym has no walls to block the hot sun shining in). All of the classes lined up in the hallway in order from freshman to seniors and separated boys and girls. In the gym there were judges who sat in the front and watched as each class did all their performances. There were a lot of different types of performances and I can’t describe them all that well because they were in Samoan, of course. There were individuals, small groups, dances, lots of cheering, singing and clapping, the judges received food that the students had cooked, and ceremonies were performed. It was all very elaborate and exciting to watch. Each performance culminated with a dance performed by the entire class. Samoan dancing is very fluid and

Sharpie tats

graceful, especially for the women. Some students tried to teach me some basic moves but my wrists are apparently just not loose enough and I can’t get my feet and hands to do two different things at the same time. The way the men dance is supposed to complement the women and their movements are a little bit faster and harder. There is also a lot of elaborate clapping involved which is really cool to hear when 200 kids are doing the same thing at exactly the same time. I am proud to say that the sophomores won the group dance category (although I can take no credit); however, somehow we ended up in last place overall when all things were said and done. There were many different categories for which the students were judged and I didn’t really understand them all. But I thought all the classes did a great job and it was a really cool experience to get to watch them all perform.

One of my sophomore students

We got to go home at around 1pm when everything was finished. As Amber commented, it was a little like

the day after Christmas in that this huge event that we had been anticipating and practicing for for weeks was over and now there was nothing. So we celebrated getting out of school early by taking the bus into town to get the best ice cream on the island. On Monday we would return to our normal schedule and it would be back to teaching 5 classes instead of 3 or 4 every day. But you never really know what the day will bring at Leone High School and that’s what keeps it interesting!

Murder in E-6

So I came up with a great idea last week which involved disguising a lot of thinking and learning as a fun activity. These are the kinds things I am always racking my brain to try to come up with for lessons. The idea was to stage a fake murder and then the kids would have to identify the killer based on the DNA extracted from a hair sample left at the scene. They needed to use techniques called DNA fingerprinting and gel electrophoresis which, in actuality, would be impossible to do here, but I made adjustments. Just briefly the way DNA fingerprinting works is that DNA samples are cut up into pieces but since every individual's DNA is unique, the number and size of the pieces are different for each person. Then gel electrophoresis separates these pieces by size and creates kind of a graph and unknown DNA samples can be matched with known individuals.

 I wrote out a scenario in which a student got murdered in my room late at night and there was a list of suspects, each without adequate alibis who had already been investigated and interviewed. A summary (written by me with some help from Amber) of backgrounds of all the suspects was also provided. I also created a murder victim out of construction paper and blocked off a corner of my room with orange tape on which I wrote "CAUTION Crime Scene."

Here's the intro: It started out as a normal day on February 1, 2012. Ms. Abby arrived at school at 7:55 am, signed in at the office, picked up a bulletin, and then headed to her classroom, E-6. The usual Vailoa students were sitting outside her classroom. Then she got out her classroom key. But wait…something was wrong. The door was slightly open. Weird. She pushed open the door the rest of the way and stood in shock as the door banged against the cabinets. One of her students lay in a pool of blood in the back corner of the room. She slammed the door and ran to the office to report the incident. But oh no! All the police were off island. Wait! The biology and chemistry students can use DNA fingerprinting to solve the murder! After some initial investigations and interviews there were 6 suspects:

I continued with a detail description of the suspects which included Amber, Quinn, our principal, another science teacher, and two students. Here are descriptions from Amber and Quinn:

Ms. Amber:

Unbeknownst to most teachers and students at LHS, Ms. Amber has a history of violent behavior. She’s spent time in jail for grand theft auto and assault with a deadly weapon. On the night of the murder she stayed at school late supposedly helping students study for the SAT. However, there were anonymous tips that she was seen lurking around classroom E-6 around 8pm. When questioned she denied any connection to or knowledge about the murder, but the interviewer noticed her unwillingness to meet his gaze and her shifty eyeballs.

Ms. Quinn:

We all know Ms. Quinn as the happy-go-lucky, yet slightly aloof, English teacher who enjoys running and baking cookies. But could it be under her innocent exterior lurks the devious mind of a killer? No one smiles that much unless they’re hiding something. She claimed to be at the basketball game at FMS but was conspicuously absent during the fourth quarter, sources say. Her whereabouts are unaccounted for between the time of 7:30-8:30 pm. As a runner she could have easily made it to LHS and back in a short amount of time. How well do you really know Ms. Quinn?


I'm pretty sure some of the vocabulary was lost on them, but I found it amusing and interesting when I was writing it so that counts for something. Their favorite part was the paragraph I wrote about the principal but I decide not to post that on the internet...


I then made up the DNA sequence for each of the 6 suspects and wrote it on the blackboard. They had to collect a "hair" (piece of black construction paper) that the murderer left at the crime scene and turn it in to me to "run through my lab." I then provided them with the gel electrophoresis results from the hair. Then they had to figure out which of the suspects' DNA matched the hair DNA they got at the crime scene. That's were all the work and thinking came in, but luckily most of them were so wrapped up in the whole thing that they didn't notice. Some even stayed after the bell to finish figuring out who the killer was! All in all it was an excellent activity.