Trimester One: Check!

Well, I've survived my first trimester in Mozambique. That means I'm already 1/6 done with my teaching here -- hard to believe, because it's gone by so fast! A few weeks ago, I wrote about how frustrating the end-of-trimester process is -- canceled classes, changed schedules, surprise days off... very hard to plan your life. However, somehow I managed to get it all together and do indeed have grades for all my students.

Provincial exams were a mess. The English exam was full of mistakes, the reading comprehension made absolutely no sense (I don't think I would have passed...) and there was material on there that my kids were sorely unprepared for.  Though logically I know it's irrational, since I'm not psychic and can't predict what's on the test, I felt very guilty that so many of my kids failed. While they were taking the English test, they all looked up at me with these big sad eyes and I just wanted to go home, curl up into a ball and cry.

And yet, as soon as the test was over, the kids left the room and started smiling again, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. That's when it struck me that nothing was out of the ordinary. These kids are forced to take tests they are unprepared for all the time. If they felt as crappy as I did about every test they failed, they'd never get out of bed! It also helped me to understand why the kids are so reluctant to study and do their homework. It's not that they're incurable zombies, it's that they're just so used to letdowns that they don't even try. Hopefully I can change that, at least a little bit.

In any case, I got all my grades calculated out and turned them in. So far, it looks like my school administration hasn't changed any of my grades, which is quite excellent. Many, many volunteers have problems with their school administration going in and changing their grades after the fact. I did, however, get called into the director's office to explain why half of my 8C class is failing... apparently "They don't do the homework, they don't study for the test, and they don't show up" is not a good enough explanation. I'm supposed to get the pass rate up by next semester, or.... well, they can't actually do anything to me as I'm an volunteer, but I need to try to get more students to pass. I am thinking of having mandatory extra credit tutoring sessions for students who fail to boost their grades and get them to practice.

To conclude, here are some of the gems on this trimester's exam:

"Reading comprehension: Julliet is now lost to a place only known by Real god."
"Change the following adjective into an adverb: Strongly"
"True or false: Farmers use new tachnology to cultvate their fields."
"True or false:  Leave dirty in our surrounding is good for the health."
"Use in a sentence: playstation"

Yeah. Like a Mozambican 8th grader from the middle of nowhere is going to have the slightest idea what a playstation is...

Anyway, that's all over now and we're starting the next trimester this week. I did a whole bunch of cool stuff during the week-long break in between trimesters (went to a conference, saw my friends, went to the beach, got robbed... yeah, maybe that last one's not so cool.). I'll be blogging about that stuff this coming week, as I get photos and whatnot sorted out. Hopefully that'll make up for my complete April blogging failure.