Tōfā soifua SAMCO

What a wonderful, humbling experience it was, ending my time at Samoa College. I met so many students who were so grateful for the opportunity to be educated and they demonstrated it in so many ways in the classroom. I loved having the ability to teach and try things with the certainty that the students would participate and engage fully in each learning experience. At SAMCO, group work was fun. Interesting fact though. They had previously done almost none of this. Their lessons had been spent copying, memorising and being tested relentlessly. 

Small back story. In my first week here, I was shocked to see the amount of written work in almost every student’s book.  I was amazed at the sheer amount of writing splashed across countess pages of carefully kept 1B8s. However, when I had the opportunity to actually LOOK at these notes, I realised that probably 90% of these notes were directly copied notes off the board; of definitions, examples and full short stories and poems copied into books. I’m certain this has a lot to do with resourcing and technology (or lack thereof) however, from this I also realised some other things. On speaking to some students (and alumni) there was often the comment that there was a lot of copying, but no time to discuss what had been copied, no paraphrasing of complicated terms by the teacher, and no real chance to spend time really delving into the thinking around these copied notes. The students were AWESOME at memorising these notes. I was blown away by the full class chanting whenever the teacher asked about how to structure an essay, or for the definition of a particular language feature. 

So, I did an experiment. I threw away the 8 HUUUUGGGEEEE board sized pages of notes on the rules for active and passive voice. The students were horrified, but I gave them a challenge. If I could provide one page of notes, then spend time in a group game to practise and consolidate the learning, and they STILL didn’t understand, then they were welcome to the notes. The students hesitantly took on the challenge and fully participated in the group work after copying the VERY condensed version of the notes. At the end of the lesson, the students said they ALL understood, and this was reinforced by each group getting almost 100% in the quiz at the end of the lesson. This led to a carefully structured set of lessons where I implemented traditional ‘chalk and talk’ to start with, a small group discussion or game to follow and some individual application of the skills being taught to finish. The kids loved it, and I loved being able to teach without the added stress of lack of engagement, misbehaviour or negative attitudes. 

What an experience! Although the students here are resource poor, their respect for learning is something I will treasure and take home with me. There’s so much more I could say about my time here, but I’ll sign off for now and return again with some more reflections as I process all I’ve experienced. 

This is just the beginning.