Inspiration board

Tropical weather, relaxed lifestyle, sunny days, fresh as fresh food, good friends, weekends in paradise aside, sometimes working in Fiji isn't all its cracked up to be.  Contributing factors can be varied and numerous. A few examples that have dominated my workplace recently and accumulated into desperate measures being taken include:

• the principal misses our weekly meeting for the 5th consecutive week (its only week 5 of term)
• the teachers sit down to eat their lunch at 12:40 (lunch is from 12-12:45) leaving their classes running amok completely unsupervised
• rescheduling my professional development presentation for the 4th time this term because <50% of teachers stuck out the whole school day, the rest Houdinied out of there AFAP
• Afternoon classes are cancelled for "item" practice (a dance that about 20% of the students are involved in), for the 4th time this week
• Thursday has become the new Friday so now not one but 2 days a week involve zero class time and are instead a mix of sport, recesses that extend into lunch time, video watching and a bit of dance.
• the head teacher still has not taught her class once this term, let alone set foot in her classroom despite  >3hrs in meetings discussing the urgency of this and brainstorming a kazillion ideas...

* (perhaps the reasons aren't as varied as i supposed)

• having a 1hr meeting to decide whether to cook palau or curry for staff social night (curry), then another 1hr meeting to decide what ingredinets need to be bought, where, and for how much, but instead re-discussing what to cook (now palau), then having a 3rd 1hr meeting to decide when to cook the palau, and instead un-re-deciding to cook curry, then deciding to postpone the whole event, then deciding to instead go ahead with it, then reverting back to palau. Then spending the whole day on Friday cooking instead of teaching, or supervising (including taking a machete to whole frozen chickens on a table set up in the playground - mmm boooones!)
• Seeing someone die
• children hitting each other with 1m rulers (or shoes, or books, or anything else they can get their hands on)
• a fave little student not showing for 4 weeks, and when we finally asked "why?" "oh didnt you know! he's not coming to school any more, the family has moved and he's going to a normal school" (no goodbyes :c)
• of the 4+ sporting tournaments that were supposed to dominate this term 0 have eventuated (including a 3 day massive annual event being cancelled)
• the teachers wrote off term three at the beginning of term 2 as being a busy term where there is no time for class work - and despite it no longer being busy the class work remains written off
• most people seem to believe that rain = no school
• etc etc etc 

Sometimes these things accumulate and you feel like you will never make any headway, nothing is getting achieved and every thing is doomed. In addition to developing a killer headache from banging you head against a brick wall.


So..... Yesterday a prominent wall at home was converted into "inspiration board/ achievement wall". A space for us to turn to in times of despair.  It features notes of things that we have already achieved, reminders of moments at school when we found ourselves in tears from laughing so hard, and photos of our beautiful students.  So on a bad day it only takes a glance a the inspiration board to remember that we have achieved things, we are having a good time and we love the kids to death.




- the Pingu post it is because one of our students talks (or trumpets) just like pingu and she makes me smile - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTWv63RyLP8
- Oni has us in fits of laughter from the moment he arrives at school and walks past our room giggling, then walks back again laughing even harder, then back the other way bending double, until we are all aching from laughing too much - love this kid (he also told us that God delivers the sermons at his church- will be visiting there before I leave)


so...
not such a bad gig after all :D

Enjoy work today!

love love.