From final exams to Easter week

28.2.07
My kids had their final exams last week. I was worried at first, but now that I've graded them I'm OK with how my exams went (my first time writing tests!). Which is to say I think they were reasonably fair, you may not guess that if you were to look at the scores.

Grading was this week and was a pain. I think next time I may include more multiple choice and also make them a bit shorter just for the grading work. I curved them a bit, I think they both ended up with around 120 possible points, though I treated the final scores as if they were percents. A few (very few) kids did quite well, but the averages, especially on math which these kids treat as a necessary evil (they all focus on Chemistry/Biology/Physics or Chemistry/Biology/Geography, so math is required but not seen as very important) were pretty bad. A few kids didn't even take the math test, and a couple didn't even get 8 points, which is especially sad because I told them that I would test them on the Unit Circle, all they had to do was memorize it, I gave them the question almost verbatim 3 days before the test, and that alone was worth 8 points. Most everybody got most of those points.

I also got some diagrams of pendulums for my mass-on-a-spring physics problem, and several other mistakes that suggest that language difficulties are still very much there. Since the national exams are in English, I'll have to see what I can do to work on understanding question skills.

One little gem from a math test though
x = cos(y)
x/cos = cos(y) / cos
x cos^(-1) = y
cos^(-1)(x) = y

Several misunderstandings result in a true statement, but it's still nothing like implicit differentiation so no credit.

1.3.07
Grading has made me more frustrated with the computer situation here. After all the grading was done, the three other A-level teachers and I sat down together to compute averages and rank the students. It took about a day and a half to copy our scores onto report cards, 1 copy for the kids and 1 copy for the school records (thank god for carbon paper), and then to calculate the average score for each kid, and then rank them. Worst was writing by hand the 5 announcements on each report card regarding the school fees for next term.

I would have thought that, having experience doing stuff like this sans computer, the other teachers would be pretty good and doing it. I would have been wrong. I tried to keep things sorted for most of the procedure, which I was told didn't matter at all. When I realized that we would have to rank the kids ("What's this "nafasi" thing still left blank?") I put myself at the end of the average grade line and sorted the papers as we went into rank order, which saved a ton of time, except that I had to explain 3 times to the chemistry teacher what I had done to stop her, after they were sorted, from trying to organize them. Also, whether from perseverance and not putting down papers to talk every 5 minutes in the case of the chemistry teacher, speed of finding names on an unorganized class list in the case of the geography teacher, or I don't know what in the case of the biology teacher, I was definitely the fastest worker. Noticeably.

And this is at a school where we have a working computer lab. But I'm very aware that, although it would be much faster for me to do the work on a computer, it would probably slow down the other teachers even more initially, and it just seems impractical when there's only 3 hours of electricity everyday, and it's in the evening when we mostly want to relax some.

2.3.07
The last of the kids left today. Even yesterday, I think about half of them had gone home, if not more. I cleaned up my office a bit and started taping together the textbooks that are falling apart.

4.4.07
Yesterday was a day of presents! In the course of the day I was given 10 eggs, a sack of potatoes, chicken soup (pretty expensive for just a snack during tea time), a soda, a bag of green tomatoes, and another rooster! And that was just Tuesday, I can't wait for my birthday.

I feel pretty bad accepting the stuff, but there really is no other choice. I tried to turn down the rooster--by far the biggest gift--but with no luck. So why all the presents? Over a month ago I was working on my Peace Corps community entry writing assignment, so I was talking to one of my friends in the village and we started talking to the village chairman about some of the problems in the community. I explained that part of the assignment was to identify problems in the community that I could possibly help out with. In retrospect I think they might have taken that the wrong way and now assume that I've got a fair bit of money to throw at projects. Anyway, they invited me to come visit the elementary school to see its problems, but I was grading exams and then on vacation and just got around to doing it yesterday.

The school does have problems. They have 1 classroom for each class, which means that most classrooms have 70 to 80 kids in them, but a couple of the bigger classes have over 100. Only 2 of the classrooms are completed all the way, with, say, glass in the windows and enough desks. The principal (who used to teach at my school) kept pointing out the absence of ceiling board, which doesn't seem like such a big issue (only the dining area of my house has celing board, and they have some really nice plastic roof pieces mixed in with the corrugated metal that works as a skylight). But the numbers of kids in the classes was astounding. Now I'll try to explain to the village government that the help I can start soon is to maybe help teach the kids some English, but as far as finishing their buildings maybe I can write a grant to get some money, but it's gonna take a lot of work on their part too and also take a fair bit of time.

Anyway, apparently the school keeps chickens and they gave me 10 eggs and a bag of potatoes as a thank you present for the visit. Eggs aren't supercheap, so I was really surprised to get 10. Later that day, I went to the village chairman's house/office, and he gave me the chicken, which I tried in vain to turn down.

The most interesting part of the day was walking and talking with the two guys from the village. Mzee Protasi is probably my best friend, and we've talked a lot, but I haven't talked much with David, the village chairman. It turns out he really likes to keep animals; he's got a cow, a few pigs, chickens, and a few milking goats, which are rare in this region. He was asking a lot of questions about America, and it was hard for him to get that very few people in America are farmers. Here, everyone farms on the side: it's the main job for most of the villagers, but even those with shops have farms, same with the teachers at the school. Even my homestay mama in Morogoro--which is the 4th biggest city in the country--had a good-sized patch of land and a couple cows. Walking with David, we'd pass a patch of potatoes and he'd ask if we grow those in America. I'd tell just say yes, but then he'd ask if we keep pigs in America, and I'd explain that very few people keep pigs, but that those people keep lots of pigs. Then he'd ask if we keep chickens, same answer. Cows? Same thing. Corn? Sunflowers? Beans? Yes, all these things are in America, but most people aren't raising/tending/farming them for money. I thought he had the idea, but at the end of the day, but then he asked about one more thing: bananas. So I finally got to use a different answer. No, we don't have banana trees in America.