Exam Time!
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2009
1
61
75
Trip End
Dec 04, 2010
Musanze, RW.10, Rwanda
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Exams started today. Yesterday was the last day of classes and I taught Senior 6 in the morning as usual. I had a an audio VOA Special English report about an NGO that has many programs fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. I downloaded the audio clip a long time ago and made photocopies of the transcript in town on Monday. I remember thinking on Monday night "I haven’t synched my iPod in a while. I better remember to do that tonight so I can play it for class tomorrow."
Naturally, it went out of my head the next second so I stood in front of the class yesterday morning with my iPod and speakers, asking if they were ready to listen, and….no audio clip. This is when living at school comes in handy! I told them to wait 5 minutes, I ran to my room, turned on my laptop, synched my iPod and was back in the classroom less than 5 minutes later.
They understood quite a lot of the clip the first time, and their understanding deepened with the second playing. I asked comprehension questions and they did well with them. Finally I gave them the transcript so they could follow along during the third time around. The morning class is full of students who want to become nurses. I told them that if they continue in school, they can easily get jobs with NGOs like the one highlighted in the program….and there are many other NGOs out there too. I said “If you go to University and study healthcare there will be MANY job opportunities for you. You have the advantage of knowing Africa!”
After class I walked to the teachers’ lounge for tea break. En route I noticed students moving their big wooden desks out of the classrooms and carrying them towards the large auditorium near the entrance to campus. I asked the teachers how we will teach our afternoon lessons if the students have no desks in their classrooms. The answer: No more lessons! As of that moment, teaching for the term was over.
The Discipline staff had already asked to cancel class that afternoon because they were overwhelmed with making seating assignments for exams. I readily agreed to cancel class and they promised to inform the Sisters. Suddenly I was completely free for the rest of the day, with no lesson plans to do! I went to my room and relaxed, talked on the phone with my Field Director, watched some DVDs and tried to take a nap (without success – I’m just not a napper).
At dinnertime I took my Lonely Planet East Africa book and went to Fatima for some dinner. I can’t seem to decide where to go on my break…distances are far and bus trips are long. I want to see a lot and meet up with my fellow volunteers somewhere, but I also want to be realistic about what I can do in two weeks.
The first exam for students was held this morning at 8:00 a.m., and it happened to be English. I knew that all students would be taking their exams in the big auditorium, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around the set-up until I showed up at 7:55. Indeed, all 400 students were sitting at desks lined up in rows from front to back in the massive room. I thought, “Why move them from their classrooms? They’re sitting on top of each other as usual!” Then the Director of Studies handed me photocopies of the Senior 6 exam and told me to ask those students to raise their hands. I called out “Senior 6!” and almost 100 hands went up all over the room. I dashed around distributing the exams and I realized that no Senior 6 student was seated next to, across from or diagonally to any other Senior 6 student. The same was true of Senior 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 students. The students’ names and form (class) were typed and taped onto each desk especially for exams. Aha! Now I understood the reasoning behind the mass set-up. It’s nearly impossible to cheat. As an extra bonus, fewer teachers are required to proctor one big room as opposed to 10 individual classrooms. Ingenious!
The downside to having all the desks in one room is that the students can’t hang out in their classrooms during their free time or evening study time, so they hang out anywhere and everywhere else on campus…including my front step! This afternoon I could hear them murmuring, talking and laughing as they studied their notes and generally socialized. One time I opened my door and actually almost stepped on a student who was leaning against it. Ah well, I still like exam time.
It may sound ridiculous, but I had the best time proctoring the English exam this morning. I handed out the tests with a big smile and a “good luck!” to each student. The next three hours were spent roaming the aisles, answering their questions about format, giving out extra paper and sneaking peeks to see how they were doing. Jenn had plenty of questions from her Senior 1 and Senior 2 classes. I had plenty of questions from Senior 6 and a few from Senior 4. Based on those, I’ve already learned a lot about how to format the next exam so it’s even clearer. Also, the Senior 6 exam included a section of matching two sentences to make one complete sentence, using a clause of reason to connect them. I noticed that some of them didn’t realize it was *matching* so they were just joining two random sentences that didn’t make any sense. When I was seeing the sentence “It was such a funny joke that all the tickets to the match were sold out” on most papers I realized we had a problem! I went around explaining individually that the section was *matching* -- choose the best completion of the sentence, not necessarily the one across from it. Some of them panicked and begged for extra paper to rewrite them. Others thought what they wrote was just fine. Still others didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Hey, if they can’t understand why the above sentence doesn’t make sense, they don’t deserve the points.
The afternoon exam was much less interesting. It was Geography, which is only taught to Senior 1, 2, and 3 students…about 1/3 of the school. Of course I don’t know the first thing about geography and the exam was in French, but we are required to proctor both the morning and afternoon exams of whatever days to which we’re assigned. My next and last day is Monday.
So, I now have a stack of 131 exams to correct, grade and calculate. It’s going to be a bear…on the other hand, I believe grades aren’t due until the start of next term. I have no intention of waiting that long, but it’s good to know they’re not due this weekend or something!
Speaking of which, I’ve decided to take advantage of all this down time and spend a long weekend in Kigali. There’s no class for the Sisters or Discipline staff tomorrow, so I’ll only spend an hour tutoring Headmistress in the morning, then I’ll head to the capital tomorrow afternoon for a change of scenery and to chill out for a few days. I’ve got my room at St. Paul’s reserved, hopefully sans cockroaches. More from Kigali!
