Adventures in Guangzhou!

Much like last year, I spent half a class before the test doing a review of everything we had covered and everything that would be on the exam. As I was covering the material, I saw the majority of the class dutifully copying everything down into their notebooks. But what about the other section of the class? As a teacher I've never been able to figure this one out since it happened back when I was teaching at Brookline as well--do the students just not care? Are they so confident in their knowledge that they feel a review is below them? Are they just spacing out and don't realize I'm giving them answers? Whatever the reason, it's somewhat disconcerting. I even paused a few times, pointed to the board and then to their notebooks, only to get a brief nod followed by inaction.

The exams have all been given and I have to say that I'm slightly disappointed in the results. The whiz kids who always get A's got A's, the kids who skipped class got F's, and everybody else fit somewhere in between. The problem is, the medium is definitely a bit lower than last year. What I can't decide is, did I fail them or did they fail me? It's possible that I'm grading a bit tougher this year because I had higher expectations. It's possible the exam is simply more difficult. It's possible that I didn't prepare them well enough. It's even possible that the average level of English is lower this year compared to last. The frustrating thing is that there's really no way to tell.

Nick and I have also been having a few interesting discussions regarding grading. Suppose there's one student in a class with amazing English but a terrible attitude (skips every once in a while, doesn't pay attention, etc.) and another who struggles daily with ability but really tries hard (volunteers to answer questions, focuses on every word spoken, etc.). Exam time rolls around and the student with an attitude aces the exam easily while the other student fails outright. Is that fair? I'm faced with this exact situation in more than a few incarnations.

I'm also trying to figure out whether grades should be relative to the class section (some classes are always better than others), relative to the grade as a whole, relative to effort, or simply based on the numerical score each achieved. The funny part is that I'm pretty sure my final grades will either a) never be seen by the students or b) not matter even a little bit in the grand scheme of things. The marks they achieve in class are completely unimportant to the college process so maybe I'm wasting time worrying about it.

Regardless, this term's exam brought about several unintentional comedic moments which I figure I should record for posterity's sake. In one section I asked the students to identify three of the five important categories when applying to American universities (we had done a 3 class unit on the subject) and most students were spot on: grades, non-academic achievement, recommendations, personal statement, etc. One kid really hit the nail right on the head though with the response, "give lots of money to the head of the university." Right you are!

In another section where students are required to complete sentences with choices from a word bank, I gave them the sentence, "Talking about your boyfriend/girlfriend in front of the headmaster is strictly________." The answer I was anticipating was "taboo," however I had more than a few students fill in "suspect," which was listed in my mind as a noun. It sort of works, though, as an adjective and it made me laugh so I gave them credit anyway.

They also had to write an informal dialogue between me and George Bush which brought me more than a few chuckles. One of my favorite students wrote the following conversation which I think is highly realistic:
Ari- Hey dude, where are you headed?
Bush- White House. I have a lot of work to do today.
Ari- About Iraq? Yo, why did you start that war anyway?
Bush- Thing is, we need lots of oil and I didn't think it would be so rough.
Ari- But it's caused so many deaths. Don't you feel sorry??
Bush- Not really. Chill out, okay?
Ari- Do you think you're cool? Because you're absolutely not.
Bush- How about you ask my daughter out? That will make it better for you. She's hot!
Ari- Will do.
Bush- Okay, I gotta bounce. Later.

Possibly my favorite response, though, came in the section in which I asked student to briefly explain the origin of Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa (I taught a lesson on this). One of my students chose Christmas and wrote, "Christmas is a festival celebrating the burn of Jewish." Now, I can only assume he was going for "birth of Jesus" but as it stands, I thought it was pretty funny.