It's midterm season here, so for the past two days I've done nothing but stare at students taking midterms, and grade said midterms. The students still have midterms tomorrow morning, and then normal classes in the afternoon. All of the students seem dead and a little stressed out. I'm a little stressed out as well--I'm worried about how my students will do. It is nice to not have to write any lesson plans, teach normal classes, or do the normal tutoring sessions that I do, so in that sense it's a nice break for us teachers.
This coming weekend Teach for China has a PD (professional development) conference, that most of us in Heqing refer to as a PDA conference because of the tendency of reunited TFC fellows to greet each other with extra exuberance. I didn't go to the last one because it wasn't required for people in my county (we're far away) but this one is required, so I'll be going. I am excited to see people that I haven't seen in months, but at the same time I've heard that the actual workshops at the PD conference are not very useful, so I feel like I'm being forced to give up a weekend that I could use for home-visits and preparing materials for my class.
Did you ever, in your wildest imaginings, realize that your teachers in grade school, high school and college actually were concerned about how the students did on tests?
ReplyDeleteAs for the conference - welcome to the real world. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the workshops are more useful than they have been reported to be!
Joann, I had to laugh. You're right, I thought the teachers were going 'heh,heh,heh, you little monsters, let's see you pass this one."
ReplyDeleteIt's so much easier to grade an exam where the answers are mostly correct too. When everything is wrong you have to use so much more red pen.
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