A Crush of Midterms.

The last few days have been a blur of paper and red ink, and the ink still runs. After slaying so many egos on the altar of standardized testing, one begins to wonder: is this really necessary?

The school that I work at has a system for testing, as follows: every teacher creates an exam for every class that they have. Then, the academix team takes all these tests, selects the questions they like best, correct formatting, and publish the standardized exam. Essentially, if you write the best questions, it's better for your class because they will be tested on material that they have studied. There is, as yet, no coordination between teachers of the same level. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous, and many of my students have been unnecessarily, and unfairly failed. Still, I don't know much about exam construction or academic management, so I couldn't really give them suggestions from experience or study. Just seems like a poopy situation for the kids.

Either way, I made it up to them by playing movies in all my classes on Thursday, and playing language games on Friday. So, even after brutalizing their collective self-confidence, we still remain friends. I showed them the movie "Bolt" which is quite a fun little movie. Unfortunately, the subtitles read like they were written by a student in my class, so rather than confuse them, I made them watch without the subtitles.

My quality control officer suggested I tell you a little more about cambodia - so here's a little tidbit fro mthe students: I had them write an opinion essay on school uniforms, and they came up with some interesting and convincing arguments.

For:
Students should wear uniforms because they look good.
Students should wear uniforms so that people can know that they are students (and know that they are skipping school if they are out during school hours).
Students should wear school uniforms so that, if they get into an accident, people can contact their school, and get their information.
Students should wear uniforms because uniforms help them concentrate and remind them to study.
students should wear uniforms so that poor students don't feel bad about their clothes.
students should wear uniforms because they look good and tidy when everyone wears them.
Students should wear uniforms so that, if they are good, it will reflect on their school, and people can find out that the school is good.

Against:
Students shouldn't wear uniforms because they look bad.
Students shouldn't wear uniforms because they're boring.
Students should be able to wear what they want, so that they can look sexy.
Students shouldn't have uniforms, because it becomes difficult to go to work after school, or to go to another school.

Overwhelmingly in favor of uniforms.

Also, I've had my evevening class (6:50-8:10) given to another teacher because they didn't want to overload me on the first semester. Unfortunately, that was my favorite, and most advanced class...sigh. The bonus of course is more free time - the first instance of which I used to great effect - attending an african/khmer fusion drum and dance session at a club called gasolina!

There's an exciting conference coming up in Battambang, and I get to help out by organizing some of the media coverage! I get to do a little bit of interviewing and such. Should be awesome. The conference is part of a series of 41 conferences happening around the world.

more to come, more to come.