Talofa! My name is Roxanne Sita Sua'ava-Salave'a. I have been teaching for two years at Faga'itua High School. I'm an alumni of this school and is very proud in giving back to my school and its community. Faga'itua High School is the only secondary school on the Eastern District of American Samoa established in 1968. It is serving six feeder (elementary) schools on the Eastern District. Faga'itua High School has an average enrollment of about 510+ students.

Throughout it's existence, Faga'itua High School continues to build on its foundation to what it is today, The American Samoa School of Year 1999-2000. We were able to accomplish what most thought we couldn't. With the dedication and great efforts of the entire Faga'itua High School Staff, Faculty, and Students, we were able to prove our "Commitment to Excellence".

Since I'm still new to the most challenging profession, I consider myself as a "rookie" teacher. As a "rookie" teacher, I'm always looking for new and innovative ways to improve on my teaching skills and abilities. As an educator, I feel a need to search for updated materials about teaching strategies or other educational issues. If I don't, I would be left in the darkness of education.

An issue that I find most interesting in the teaching field is having fa'afafines as classroom teachers. Being educated in Hawai'i most of my life, I have never seen fa'afafines as classroom teachers. Now that I'm a teacher in American Samoa, I have many colleagues who are fa'afafines classroom teachers which is something I never thought would ever happen anywhere. Fa'afafine teachers are both accepted and/or tolerated by the community and never really wondered how they were perceived as classroom teachers.

With this inquiry project, I wanted to see how my EDEF 678 class feel about this issue. The EDEF 678 class consists of 25 students (including myself) who are all teachers. Out of the twenty five, fifteen are also parents. So with that in mind, I would like to ask them about how this issue not only as teachers, but as parents as well.