Well, technically, the national holiday isn’t exactly Halloween, but everyone has off from school and work today in honor of the king’s birthday. I’ve just been calling it Halloween Break since I have instant respect for any country that gives Halloween off, whether on purpose or not. (The US could take a lesson from Cambodia on this one). This week has been full of more “days off” than expected, though, because I seem to have come down with Dengue Fever in the last little bit and have therefore just been sleeping and resting since returning to Phnom Penh from Siem Reap on Monday. Since I’m just taking it easy in my room right now anyway, I felt that I could take a few minutes to update the blog a little bit.
Last week, I gave and corrected quizzes in both of my classes, and I realized how quickly I’ve gotten used to being the teacher and not the student. I had been talking with the other teachers about the quizzes for about a week by the time I gave them. We talked about when we were going to give them, what was going to be covered, and how much each section would be worth, but I didn’t really stress about any of these details. In both cases, though, I showed up to class completely forgetting that all of my students would be extremely nervous, waiting to see what their first quiz of the semester would be like and wondering how they’d do. I didn’t realize how quickly I had gotten out of student mode until I saw them fidgeting in their seats as I handed out the paper and realized that I had completely disassociated quizzes and my own studying or nervousness.
Throughout last week, there were other moments when I came to realize that, at least in this context, I’m used to being the teacher and not the student already. A common problem in my classes is absences, and it becomes especially problematic in my essay writing class, where we’ve been doing peer editing or group brainstorming in class. When students are absent, it throws off their whole schedule and also usually means that they simply miss one component of the assignment (since it’s hard for them to match up with another classmate who happened to be absent on the same day and missed the same particular peer review activity) or that it takes a few days to make up during time outside of class. I’ve been pretty lenient about giving my students an extra day or two to finish up if they were absent, but with more and more papers piling up and more and more people having missed a day here and there, it’s becoming overly confusing. More importantly, essays are starting to be handed in significantly later. When I first realized that students were taking advantage of my relaxed lateness policy, I was a little offended that they were abusing the leeway that I was giving them, but after thinking it over, I transported myself to a mere five months ago and realized that, with two theses, I certainly knew which professors I could and couldn’t get away with handing in things late to and took advantage of the extra time, even if I wasn’t doing it on purpose. Anyway, I realized that it wasn’t anything personal, but I’m also about to institute a strict lateness policy in class.
In grading the quizzes, I’ve struggled a bit with my new role as a teacher, trying to determine what grades to give. All of a sudden, I’m in the position of determining one of the grades on about 60 students’ transcripts, and I haven’t been out of school quite long enough not to think very hard about that impact. Should I be generous? Should I be harsh but accurate? I obviously feel bad marking someone low but also don’t want to be known as the easy grader that you don’t have to do anything for. I have to admit that I actually gave a few students F’s on the quizzes, but I feel like it’s never a bad thing to start off as a difficult grader and ease up rather than the other way around. I also figured it wasn’t so bad considering that when I graded the first set of essays, I was probably overly generous since I initially felt bad about giving anyone a bad grade. Plus, that was even before I realized the shifted grading scale here. Instead of the letter/number grades that we’re used to, here, an A is from an 85-100, a B+ from 80-85, etc. Let’s just say that I didn’t realize this more generous scale when I made up my first set of essay grades. The only thing that bummed me a little bit with my grading was that some of my best students in class, the ones who talk a lot and who contribute positively in class, didn’t necessarily do as well as I would have liked them to have done, and I found that I was constantly trying to give them the benefit of the doubt in many of their answers. The much more satisfying scenario was when the students who try hard in class did well and when those who don’t didn’t, but unfortunately, it didn’t always work out that way.
Finally, I had my first experience of someone answering a cell phone during a quiz last Wednesday. The room was mostly silent when I all of a sudden heard someone speaking very softly and noticed one of the girls in my class hunched over against her desk. She wasn’t even cheating. Her pen was down on her desk. She just happened to get a call and wasn’t going to miss it. I’m convinced that if there were voicemails here, maybe people wouldn’t always answer their phones. Maybe I would be paranoid about missing a call too. Who could it have been? What did they want to tell me?
In other news, I had my first Cambodian dream. Whenever motos are making turns here, they stick out their arm in the direction of their turn. It’s a kind of a too-cool-for-school casual hand out, not a firm and pointed arm out. The hand is held flat, the arm is angled down at a 45-degree angle, and everyone is supposed to see it. Anyway, I had a dream that I had moved back to the US and was driving around in a car. Instead of using the turn signal, however, I casually stuck my arm out by my side. But I didn’t even put it out the window, and since I was in a car, no one could see it, and I ended up causing a huge traffic mess.
Anyway, happy Halloween, and happy trick-or-treating everyone!