The Exam Week

This past week we had our state-mandated exam week for all students in grades 1 - 9. I, along with many of the volunteers, was a bit confused at the prospect of an exam week, for a few reasons. First of all, because the idea of final exams for elementary school students just wasn't something I'd encountered before. But more importantly, I had never written or given an exam to children. I had no idea what to expect or prepare for my second graders, nor did I know the point of this exercise. The entire week ended up being quite an experience.

I ended up writing easy exams and hoping against hope that my second graders would be able to pass them, despite their lacking ability to read or learn English. During the previous week, review week,  I spent each class period doing practice exams with second grade, practice exams that were literally copies of the real exam. I had to give them six exams: speaking, listening, writing, reading, grammar, and Physical Education. I prepared a study guide for my students with the exact questions that would appear on their written tests and everything they would need to know for these tests. I corrected each practice test I gave them and returned it to them with the correct answers. I literally handed out the answers to their tests.

Nonetheless, several students didn't pass each exam. Which appears to be the norm across all the grades. With a failing mark being anything under 70% in Honduras, failing English exams is not uncommon. Even when I read the reading exam to certain kids, students failed.

Some of my boys after finishing their last English exam.

Oh well. A new second grade teacher will be arriving at the beginning of November. I'm truly going to miss these kids, especially because I'm finally getting through to them. They actually respond to me now and seem to respect me, which is something I'm proud of. I'm really going to miss them.

Make-up week is next week. So I will retest each kid who failed an exam and I'll work through it individually with them. But in Honduras a student can't fail a grade due to a failing English mark, meaning that there aren't school repercussions except for on the transcript. So these exams don't mean much more than a progress report and accountability to the state.

Friday afternoon, a second grade student's parents came to talk to me. He is the smartest student in the class, but also has really rough behavioral issues. He doesn't like to ever listen to anyone, will frequently up and leave the classroom, or he'll build forts or set up massage stations in a corner of the room. He just really isn't into the whole authority thing. We don't ever address these issues with his family, however, because we know that he gets beaten at home.

When his parents came in, they wanted to know how he had done on his exams in my class. His practice exams from the week before had been returned with low marks - he had gotten distracted and stopped completing these halfway through, despite my best efforts to engage and reason with him. I know that he really likes me, and I'm the teacher with the most success getting through to him, I just can't always make it work. Anyway, his parents were concerned about the practice exams he'd brought home. Fortunately for both my student and I, he had absolutely killed his actual exams. On four exams he got 100%, and on the other two he only missed one point. I showed his exams to his parents, smiled really big, and explained how smart and wonderful their son is in my class, as well as how proud of him I am. I can't even express how relieved I was to only have good news to share.

On a completely different note, another major factor of the week was illness. I'm pretty sure that everyone in Cofradia is sick. I've spent the last week with a really bad cold, which my roommate caught a day after me. Another volunteer has been in bed with a bacterial illness all week, while two others have medical stuff going on right now. Both my aides, Isis and Dulce, were sick at school this week. In Prepa, several students were missing each day or all week, so my class of 30 kids became a much more manageable 22 bodies. Even Liz's brother, who arrived on Saturday to film CBS for a documentary, got pretty sick by Monday night.

On Friday Isis and Dulce were both too sick to be at school. It ended up a good thing, though, because I had decided I was going to teach the kids about Halloween, since we learned letter 'H' this week. Because of religion and conservative culture here, I knew the only things I could teach my kids about would be costumes, candy, and pumpkins. Friday morning Liz and I decided we'd do some third grade - Prepa bonding. Thank goodness Isis wasn't around to disapprove of the endeavor.

I explained to my kids that we had a very special activity planned for the day. We would be going to third grade. My kids had to be on their best behavior. I would be treating them like third graders, and so they had to show me that they could act the part. I explained it all in Spanish. Liz was simultaneously telling her third graders that there was to be no pushing or fighting or bad behavior in front of the Prepa kids. When it was time for us to go over to third grade, I told my kids to all stand up next to their chairs. I bent down for a second, and when I looked up, all my kids were standing, excitedly holding their chairs above their heads. We did have to carry our chairs over to third grade, but I had to explain to the kids that it wasn't safe to carry chairs that way. It was too late, though, because one girl was already sobbing after having been whacked in the face.

We left Prepa and slowly made our way to third grade, basically like a struggling, lopsided line of ants. It was one of the cutest things I've seen at school. We paired Prepa kids with third graders, explained Halloween, and then gave each kid pumpkin print-outs to turn into jack o'lanterns. Instructions were for third graders to help Prepa. All the kids had a wonderful time.

Upon return to Prepa at the end of the day, another volunteer asked one of my students how he was doing. He responded, "HALLOWEEN!"