R-E-S-P-E-C-T

21:40 28 October 2008

Testing continues to be a hugely frustrating and annoying responsibility of mine. Students here don’t seem to understand the concept of individual work (they say they understand that they aren’t allowed to work together when I get worked up and ask them in an irate tone of voice, after they reply in the affirmative they then calmly proceed to continue to work together). Anyhow, I’ve decided that I can’t stop students working with their desk mates (the desks are one per two people- a set up that facilitates cheating and working together) but have remained instant that the room remains relatively quiet during a test (another unheard of concept) and confiscate any cheating materials. Today that included a piece of paper complete with the generally correct answers that was attempted to be circulated through the room. Luckily I caught this before it made much headway and noticed the progress on the guilty students test. I’ve also taken to thinking up passive-aggressive comments to make on students’ papers. The test I gave today involved a 5x5 chart I drew on the board with various categories that students were to fill in with the information provided on different characters from a story. I told the students that the exactness of their replica was unimportant, it was only the answers I cared about- students here seem to be obsessed with neatness over honesty or correctness on their tests. Regardless it took students awhile to copy down the chart with the hints I provided, and after a few minutes I inquired if everyone was ready. This one student, who had been talking rather than copying down the chart, was the only one unfinished, but I decided that it would be unfair to start without everyone prepared. Therefore, I waited for five excruciating minutes while this student made a perfect 5x5 chart with his pen, pencil, ruler, protractor, and oddly enough, compass. Later on, he was the same student attempting to fill in his otherwise blank test with the answers provided by a different student. My imaginary comment for this student: “While the rest of class and I enjoyed waiting for you and it is evident that you show impressive attention to detail when it comes to drawing straight lines, this same attention seems lacking in your answers. Perhaps a reversal of your time allotment to study these respective skills would yield more acceptable results for both of us.” I don’t think that I will write anything of the sort on his test- though the likelihood he would find someone to translate it or understand the subtlety is doubtful.

Oy, anyhow, the reason I wanted to right this entry in the first place was to talk about how awesome my English Club was this afternoon. I got an idea for a lesson plan from a friend- have students design “Spirit Animals” from a combination of two or more animals and have them talk about why they did. This was a great idea and I ran with it having my club members first have a race with two teams to see who could think up more animals and then explained the concept of the “Spirit Animal”, I also threw out the idea of coming up with a name from the sum of the parts’ names. What followed was an amazing “zoo” of our Spirit Animals, each student drew their animal on the board (hilarious) and named and talked about them- we had a fibra (fish-zebra), a chibit (chicken-rabbit combined for its smell), a germuse (tiger-mouse for the contrast), and my personal favorite, a pigeleper (pig+elephant+tiger). The club finished by discussing animals fighting and who would win and why (a lion would win because it is bigger, braver, and stronger). Most of the stress I had from my test was relieved by the enthusiasm and fun I had with this club. Yay.