What a day
at school. Yesterday seems like an eternity ago. Today we started by going to
the 6th grade and handing back tests. There are four girls in this
class. Two are very good at English. One insisted that she couldn’t write the
test but then got a perfect score. The second quietly worked through it and got
an almost perfect score. My co-teacher and I actually had a bit of an argument
about her test, because my co-teacher wanted to give her a perfect score
despite her two wrong answers. I understand that grading is relaxed here and
I’ve learned to overlook spelling and punctuation errors (when grading, not
when correcting…I correct thoroughly; the grades are up to the real teacher
anyway). However, answers that are missing verbs or have incorrectly gendered
pronouns are wrong. No two ways about it. My co-teacher assented and agreed to
give the girl a 9 instead of a 10. I’ll never know what actually went into the
grade book. I’m not huge on grades to begin with, but it’s a matter of
principle in this case.
Our two
other girls in this class are not as good. One tries hard enough and can
complete exercises well if given extra time. The other doesn’t try, doesn’t
care…and it’s very hard to help someone who doesn’t care. Neither of them
finished the test. I was really impressed with my co-teacher when she gave them
their tests today and offered to let them take time to fill in the incomplete sections.
I was less impressed with the girls, who both declined. I’ve never known a
student to turn down extra credit. Then again, if all grades are subjective and
teacher-dependant than I guess students wouldn’t really feel motivated to
attempt re-tests or corrections for credit.
Later on in
that class, we came across a textbook exercise that discussed picnics. People
here love picnics. Food is usually a popular discussion topic. One of the new
vocabulary words in the book was sandwich,
so I asked what kinds of sandwiches our students like. I know perfectly well
that sandwiches aren’t popular here, but I was curious about how the kids would
answer. They answered that they don’t eat sandwiches. Fair enough. Then my
co-teacher suggested that people in Oni don’t eat sandwiches because sandwiches
aren’t Georgian food. Sandwiches, she said, are what one finds at McDonalds…and
they all love McDonalds but it isn’t Georgian. I protested that some McDonalds
dishes are sandwiches but not all sandwiches are from McDonalds, and moreover
fast food isn’t really food. There’s a world of difference between a cucumber
sandwich, a BLT or a grilled cheese with tomato and a Whopper or Big Mac or
whatever. She insisted that McDonalds has wonderful and delicious food. For a
whole minute I tried in vain to explain about cholesterol and sodium and
free-range chickens and naturally-grazed cows. Then I realized what a fool I must sound like to children who have no concept of factory farms, so I laughed out loud and went back to our textbook exercises. No room for pride when learning through experience!
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