And the surprises keep coming…

During week 11 of the 13 week trimester.  I (and almost every other volunteer I’ve talked to) assumed final exams would be the last week of the trimester, meaning we still had that week and next week to give lessons.  But, once again, a test of flexibility was presented….

Last Tuesday, a fellow volunteer informed me that he had just found out that this was not the case and that exams were in fact just next week!  I went to verify this with my school director who confirmed, yes of course exams are next week, you didn’t know?  Um, no because no one told me…So I returned home to adjust my lesson plans and start writing up my tests.

Then Wednesday brought another surprise.  You will probably all be happy to know that Wednesday Peace Corps came and built bars on my doors, so now my home is a little more secure :).  Anyways, I was talking with my PC director Gelane about the surprise I received about final exams next week, and I soon realized that these exams were not even going to be exams the professors wrote, but were rather exams written by the Mozambican Ministry of Education and were provincial wide exams!  So, these exams will have quite a bit of information that I have not yet covered in my classes because the curriculum asks for a ridiculous amount of material to be covered in just thirteen (well now just eleven) weeks. 

So on Monday, I proctored my first national exam.  Imagine this: 50+ students, a classroom with about 20 desks, one American teacher giving a test for Portuguese and Philosophy in a language she learned only 6 months ago.  The government gives just one copy of each test, 25 multiple choice questions each with choices A-D.  I guess they expect the schools to make copies of the tests, but my school (and I believe almost every other school) does not have enough money to make 3000 copies of every test for every subject, in addition, my school doesn’t even have electricity!  So what does one do?  Why write each question on the chalkboard, of course!  That’s right, 25 multiple choice questions on a chalkboard big enough to write maybe 3-5, sometimes 1-2 questions at a time.  Needless to say, I had a very sore hand and arm after the two tests Monday and was frustrated because it is impossible to control the students who are essentially sitting on top of each other doing a multiple choice exam with a lot of material they haven’t learned….fun times.

Now the rest of the week will consist of a couple more tests to proctor then figuring out how I will grade my students, who to turn grades in to and how to turn them in.  Flexibility and patience are certainly virtues….Eventually things get done!