On Saturday night, about 10 hours before we would start teaching on Sunday, we got an email from the teacher who was coordinating the assessments. She let us know that we would be giving the grammar portion of the assessment test first thing in the morning. She let us all know we would need to put the chairs in rows (or have students without chairs sit far enough apart not to cheat) and that we should give them an hour to finish the test. She would give us the tests and some acetate sheets to use for checking the answers when we arrived at school. Later in the week we would give the listening test if we could round up enough speakers. Since it was really important that we get these tests graded and entered, she wanted us all to stay an extra hour after school to finish grading the tests. She had asked the bus to pick us up later.
I was upset for a few reasons. One, this was not enough notice, how would I get in touch with the family I tutored to tell the driver not to pick me up until later? Two, who was she, just another teacher, to extend our work hours? I know she really wanted this done, but why did we have to stay late? Couldn't we use our admittedly short planning time to grade them? And even if we didn't finish in one day, we wouldn't do the listening test until later that week. We needed all the scores to make any adjustments to classes, so having one set of scores without all of them wouldn't really help. So actually, so long as they were all graded by the time we did the listening test, it would be fine.
My roommates and I discussed it at length. We were all pretty upset by it, and Princess said she wanted to do something about it. I suggested that we bring it up on the bus tomorrow and decide what to do as a group. At my old company, we often had bus meetings to discuss time changes in bus coming and going times, and other work issues. Princess said she had sent the woman and email, and also sent complaints to the vice principal and principal about it, but that it was a good idea to talk as a group. She said she didn't want to be the only one, and I told her not to worry, I would back her up.
It just so happened that on the bus the next morning, Princess was sitting next to Jude, and I was sitting right in front of both of them. I heard Princess bring up the testing to Jude, and since I didn't want Princess to feel abandoned, I turned around and started talking with her as well. I asked if she thought it was possible that we could finish grading the tests during our breaks and planning time. She said she guessed it would take about 1 minute per test to grade, and since most of us had around 40 students, that it would be possible if we used our 40 minute planning at the end of the day and our 15 minute break. Maybe some people depending on how fast they were would also need to use their lunch period, but she figured it was possible. I asked her about weather or not it was really necessary to have the scores finished today, since we still had the listening to do later that week anyway. She told me that as long as the scores were in by Tuesday, there shouldn't be a problem (this was Sunday). I asked her if we all agreed to have everything graded and turned into her by the end of the day on Monday if that would be ok? She said she didn't see why not.
So I put it to the whole group. Would you guys rather work hard today and tomorrow during your breaks to get this done, or do you want to stay after school today and finish it? It was unanimous, everyone wanted to go home today at the normal time, and agreed to have the tests scored and submitted by the end of the school day tomorrow. We told the driver to change the pick up back to the normal time, and headed off to give the test, which, it turns out, there were not enough copies of (big surprise). I was one of the first classes to get the test so luckily, I did not have to wait for copies to be made.
The test was fairly difficult. Most of the students finished early. It was multiple choice so I got the feeling most of them were just guessing. A lot of girls were finished before time was up, and I started grading those right away. A few girls were still working when time was up. I asked if the class if they thought it was hard or easy and a few said easy, some just shrugged, and the rest appeared to still be asleep. Turns out, no one got more than 60% right, so it was very hard. The grading was faster than I thought, particularly when I started marking only the ones they got right instead of the ones they got wrong. Usually there were only about 5 right per page. I managed to finish grading all the tests with about 20 minutes to spare at the end of the day. I felt pretty good about it and took them to the assessment lady who thanked me. She said only two of us had finished grading so far. I said I could help grade some more right now, since we still had some time before the end of the day, she said that would be great, except most of the teachers still had their tests. so she didn't have any extras at the moment to grade. I told her to let me know if she needed any help later.
So I went back to my room and got about halfway through a lesson plan and made my way back to sign out at the normal time. Almost everyone was already on the bus. I asked how many had finished grading. Only a few were done, but most had finished more than half of theirs. It looks like we would all make the deadline with no problem.
After work I went to tutor as usual, so I didn't get the chance to check my email until around 7:30 that night. When I did, I found the Principal had sent us all an email at 2:30pm (half an hour before the bus normally comes) saying that she approved us staying late today, and that in exchange, we could be paid overtime one hour or leave 40 minutes early on Thursday. Since there is still no email at the college, no one at the school had gotten this email until we were already home. I felt a little guilty now. It was one thing to change the time when one of the other teachers was one of the people requesting the change, but now that I knew it was "approved" by the principal, I figured we might be in trouble for changing the time back to our normal working hours. It was too late now though, the damage was done.
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testing. Show all posts
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Enrollment
Every day so far, we had been getting new students. I'm not sure if it was because the college had delayed openings so many times that the students were confused about when it actually started, and enrolled students were just now hearing from friends that is was now open, or if they were just adding new students who wondered it, or what. Initially we were told there would be no more than 25 girls in each class, but each day I took attendance, my rolls grew, and by the end of the first week I had 32 girls in one class, 38 in another, and 42 in my project based learning class.
The most obvious problem with this was chairs. I was one of the lucky ones and had 30 chairs in my room (31 if you counted my own). Most teachers had only 25. There were no extra chairs anywhere in the college because they hadn't been ordered or hadn't cleared customs, or something. So everyday, there was a scramble for any available chairs, and inevitably, students would still end up standing, sitting in each other's laps (literally) or on the floor. On the up side, students were better at being on time. The later they arrived the less likely they were to have a chair.
If sheer numbers weren't daunting enough, the new students were added haphazardly, with no regard to level of English. In my advanced class, three of the new students couldn't answer the question "What is your name?" without a translation. As you can imagine, this presented a pretty big challenge for us teachers. Suddenly we had to teach multi-level classes in refrigerators, without enough chairs. I was one of the luckier teachers. At least I had a white board. Some teachers still didn't even have that and were using windows and flip chart paper in the meantime.
Something had to be done. Part of the problem was that no one in administration seemed to be sure of who was registered and who wasn't, or even who was in each class. I was glad I had decided from the beginning to keep track of my own attendance because each day, if we were lucky enough to get a register at all, it was almost completely different than the day before. Part of the problem was that we weren't able to take attendance online as originally planned, since the college still didn't have internet. Another problem was that none of the admin staff had been trained to use the software they chose to track attendance, or even excel for that matter.
While admin struggled with those problems, one of the teachers was put in charge of assessment. She had been hired with the idea in mind that all she would be doing was assessment and resource development and she had come prepared. She had developed a quick 5 minute assessment tool for placement and had requested permission to give this assessment during student orientation week so that students could be placed in classes based on levels from the beginning. They rejected her assessment and decided to use a standardized one from Cambridge that had four parts, listening, speaking, grammar, and writing. While the cambridge assessment would give us a better idea of where they were, and was better in the sense that the same assessment could be given at the end of the year to measure improvement, it would also require roughly 3 hours of testing from every student, and then would require a lot of time for grading, input, and then arrangement into classes. So basically, we would end up having to shuffle students around after the Eid break to get them into the correct levels. Obviously this wasn't the best case scenario, but it was what we had.
The first week we stole time during group work, or writing assignments to take the students into the hallway one by one to administer the speaking test. I managed to get through all of my homeroom students in just two class periods, but a few teachers still hadn't finished by the end of the week. We also gave a writing test on Wednesday morning. The instructions were to write between 150-200 words about your friends, family, school, the future, or anything you want. One of my girls was confused by this wording and wrote a list of words that had to do with school. She wasn't the only one, at least three girls in other classes did the same. Most managed to write some semblance of a paragraph, or at least a sentence or two. Luckily, we didn't have to grade the writing ourselves, the assessment teacher did that for us.
Each time we felt like we had finished the assessments, a new student arrived and we would have to catch them up and add them to the register. It wasn't complete chaos, but it was pretty close. Strange how quickly even ridiculous situations begin to feel normal isn't it? I got to the point where I was surprised if we didn't have new students. We were all sure that at some point it would all settle down and things would work out, it just seemed so far in the future that it wasn't worth thinking about. We all needed all our brainpower just to get through the here and now.
The most obvious problem with this was chairs. I was one of the lucky ones and had 30 chairs in my room (31 if you counted my own). Most teachers had only 25. There were no extra chairs anywhere in the college because they hadn't been ordered or hadn't cleared customs, or something. So everyday, there was a scramble for any available chairs, and inevitably, students would still end up standing, sitting in each other's laps (literally) or on the floor. On the up side, students were better at being on time. The later they arrived the less likely they were to have a chair.
If sheer numbers weren't daunting enough, the new students were added haphazardly, with no regard to level of English. In my advanced class, three of the new students couldn't answer the question "What is your name?" without a translation. As you can imagine, this presented a pretty big challenge for us teachers. Suddenly we had to teach multi-level classes in refrigerators, without enough chairs. I was one of the luckier teachers. At least I had a white board. Some teachers still didn't even have that and were using windows and flip chart paper in the meantime.
Something had to be done. Part of the problem was that no one in administration seemed to be sure of who was registered and who wasn't, or even who was in each class. I was glad I had decided from the beginning to keep track of my own attendance because each day, if we were lucky enough to get a register at all, it was almost completely different than the day before. Part of the problem was that we weren't able to take attendance online as originally planned, since the college still didn't have internet. Another problem was that none of the admin staff had been trained to use the software they chose to track attendance, or even excel for that matter.
While admin struggled with those problems, one of the teachers was put in charge of assessment. She had been hired with the idea in mind that all she would be doing was assessment and resource development and she had come prepared. She had developed a quick 5 minute assessment tool for placement and had requested permission to give this assessment during student orientation week so that students could be placed in classes based on levels from the beginning. They rejected her assessment and decided to use a standardized one from Cambridge that had four parts, listening, speaking, grammar, and writing. While the cambridge assessment would give us a better idea of where they were, and was better in the sense that the same assessment could be given at the end of the year to measure improvement, it would also require roughly 3 hours of testing from every student, and then would require a lot of time for grading, input, and then arrangement into classes. So basically, we would end up having to shuffle students around after the Eid break to get them into the correct levels. Obviously this wasn't the best case scenario, but it was what we had.
The first week we stole time during group work, or writing assignments to take the students into the hallway one by one to administer the speaking test. I managed to get through all of my homeroom students in just two class periods, but a few teachers still hadn't finished by the end of the week. We also gave a writing test on Wednesday morning. The instructions were to write between 150-200 words about your friends, family, school, the future, or anything you want. One of my girls was confused by this wording and wrote a list of words that had to do with school. She wasn't the only one, at least three girls in other classes did the same. Most managed to write some semblance of a paragraph, or at least a sentence or two. Luckily, we didn't have to grade the writing ourselves, the assessment teacher did that for us.
Each time we felt like we had finished the assessments, a new student arrived and we would have to catch them up and add them to the register. It wasn't complete chaos, but it was pretty close. Strange how quickly even ridiculous situations begin to feel normal isn't it? I got to the point where I was surprised if we didn't have new students. We were all sure that at some point it would all settle down and things would work out, it just seemed so far in the future that it wasn't worth thinking about. We all needed all our brainpower just to get through the here and now.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Dammam Community College
One of the worst parts of my day is waking up in the mornings. It's hard because the call to prayer at around 3am always wakes me up. It usually takes me about an hour to get back to sleep, and then when I'm finally falling back into a deep sleep, my alarm clock goes off and it is time to catch the bus for the 45 minute drive to campus. Which is just enough time to fall asleep again on the bus, only to be woken up when we arrive, groggy and grumpy. It's really a terrible system.
This morning I woke up twice as usually and made my way down to the bus, but Chris stopped me before I could get on and told me that today I would be taking the bus to Dammam Community College instead because one of the teachers was out sick and they needed me to help proctor exams. Our bus left every morning at 6:30, but because their campus is closer, they never leave until 7:30. So, lucky me, I get an extra hour of sleep, and an extra annoying third wake up. At least I didn't fall asleep on the bus this time. The journey was shorter, maybe only 20 minutes, so I didn't have enough time to fall asleep, and besides, this was a new route so there were lots of new things to look at. It wasn't so much of a highway drive as a drive through neighborhoods of obviously increasing wealth, and then back again to apartments on dirty blocks like the one we live in. It was completely quiet on the bus and no one said anything to each other. It was an uncomfortable silence, and I wasn't sure if they were always like this or if it was because I was new and they didn't know me.
When we reached the campus, I was surprised to see how clean and new it was. Our campus at the university is an older collection of buildings re purposed for women. Even though we have about as many cleaning ladies as teachers, it is somehow never cleaned. Especially the stairs. The same coffee stain has been in the stairwell for going on 2 months now. Here, everything was shiny and even had that "I've been freshly mopped" smell. There were colorful modern looking couches in semicircles and snake shapes. I couldn't help but think how much more pleasant to nap on these would be than the airport gate style benches we had in our hallways.
I followed the teachers upstairs and found that at least some things were the same. There was a fingerprint scanner for punching in identical to the one at the University. I was the last to fingerprint in, but it didn't work. I wasn't surprised since when I substituted at Qatif, they had to enter my fingerprint the first time I used it. I tried twice, but gave up because I figured I would just wait the 30 minutes or so for the admin lady to come in and enter me into the system.
Across from the fingerprinting were some of the teacher's offices. They had actual offices with actual doors instead of just cubicles. I was jealous. One of the teachers hurried off to her office and quickly shut the door. Two others looked at me and then looked at another teacher and said, you still have that extra chair don't you? You take her. I haven't felt that left out since picking teams in middle school gym class. I sat down awkwardly in the little chair shoved way in the corner of this woman's office. She made a show of being busy shuffling papers. After a minute, she looked at me and said, you fingerprinted in right? I explained to her that it hadn't worked, and since I was new they would probably need to program me in first so I wasn't worried. She said I should worry, and I obviously didn't try very hard. Sometimes it took her 5 or six tries for the thing to read her fingerprint. To humor her, and just to get out of the office where I clearly wasn't wanted, I went back and tried again seven times, just to be sure. Then I went back and told her it hadn't worked, but I would just wait downstairs on those lovely couches for the admin to arrive.
I sat reading down there about thirty minutes and was on the verge of falling asleep again when the lead teacher (a local hire who doesn't ride the bus in with us) arrived and found me there. She was so friendly, she almost made up for how the others had ignored me. She was horrified that I'd been down here alone (Saudi women rarely do anything alone), and ushered me upstairs. She showed me her office and she showed me the teachers lounge, which is really just a room full of sleeping couches, and she showed me the cafeteria and the room I would be giving the exam in and a tiny door onto a small section of roof, which is the only outdoor area at the Dammam Community College. I was impressed, because the facilities seemed nicer, but I think the lack of a green outdoor area to sit and eat lunch in, sort of outweighed the benefits of having a whole office to yourself. After all, I definitely couldn't get greenery and outdoors where we lived, but I did have a private apartment alone there, which is better than an office with a door.
By now, I had proctored a number of exams, so I felt like I was pretty much an old hat at it. Granted, I was usually just the second pair of eyes in the room, and not the actual administrator, but it wasn't that difficult. Different administrators had different styles. Some went from student to student during the exam to check IDs and make them sign in, others made the students sign in and check IDs when they submitted their test at the end of the exam. I decided I liked the second version better since it didn't disturb students during the test. No one could leave until an hour and a half into the two hour test, and most students ended up using the whole time, so it was usually easier to just check them on their way out. Usually, we put a giant stopwatch on the screen from the internet, but in this classroom, the projector was broken, so I had to write the new time every 15 minutes or so, but other than that, proctoring a test is about as fun as watching water boil. Finally, it was time to allow students who were finished to leave. I made an announcement that they should come up one at a time to avoid chaos and a mass exodus, and asked my Saudi co-procterer to make sure they did.
It all went very smoothly at first, they actually did come up one at a time, and I checked their name and ID number on their student ID's and while they were signing out, I made sure they had correctly filled in the bubbles on the scan tron, and double checked they had written their name and ID number on the actual test for cross checking in case there was a dispute about the scan tron grade. One girl had forgotten her ID in her purse, which was left in the hallway by regulation, so I let her go out and get it. When she returned, I was also checking another student, and because they are always in such a hurry to leave once the test was over, and there were so many things to check, I must have forgotten to make one of them sign the attendance sheet. With about 15 minutes to go, I got bored and decided to count up the tests and the signatures so far, more for something to do than anything else. It's a good thing I did because that is when I noticed I was one signature short. I looked through the tests that had already been submitted, and figured out which girl hadn't signed, and I asked the next student who turned in her paper if she knew her, and could she please send her back in to sign the attendance sheet. The girl left and returned a few minutes later saying the girl had already gone home for the day.
I had been trying to keep this mistake of mine quiet, but by now the Saudi teacher had gotten wise to the fact that there was some problem. She asked what was wrong and I told her that one girl forgot to sign out. Now, in my mind, this isn't that big of a deal, but obviously I was mistaken. Her eyes went wide and she began shaking her head. She was clearly very concerned. As the number of students still in the room dwindled, her worry seemed to increase. She asked me what I was going to do and I told her I would just tell the Dean that I had made a mistake. No big deal. She shook her head again and asked if I wanted to loose my job. I laughed. They won't fire me for this, I said, and if they did, well, it wouldn't be the worst thing. She just shook her head some more. A few minutes later, she said, you can have one of the other students sign for her, she said. I told her I wouldn't want that student to get in trouble, and since it was my fault, I would take the responsibility for it. I told her not to worry. She would not be in trouble. She told me I should sign it myself then. I told her I would rather admit I made a mistake than lie about it. She told me I didn't understand how serious it was. I told her I was beginning to get that impression, but that I really doubted they would fire me over a signature even if I did work here, and since I was only a substitute, It was really unlikely since I would probably not even be back here anytime soon. This didn't satisfy her.
She went out of the room (there was only one student still taking the test at this point) and I can only assume she was going somewhere to either proclaim her innocence, or find someone to sign the attendance. To be honest, any student could have come back and signed it, and I would never know if it was the right girl or not because I didn't remember what she looked like anyway. But she came back a few minutes later and didn't say anything more. Finally the test was over, and we counted all the exams, sealed them up, and put both our signatures over the seal to be turned in to the dean. She pleaded with me one more time to just sign the attendance sheet, and I told her that if it mattered that much to her, she could sign it. Of course she declined and insisted it wouldn't affect her, she was just worried about me.
By this time, I'd gotten a little worried myself. She made it seem like such a huge deal, I started thinking perhaps it was. But I had resolved to tell the truth, and couldn't imagine that a student forgetting to sign the attendance sheet could result in being fired. So I stood in line to turn in my tests and awaited my fate. Almost all the teachers were ahead of me in line so I watched with trepidation as each one presented stacks of tests which were recounted and double checked. Each time another teacher signed the final sheet of paper verifying all the tests and signatures were received, my stomach got a little tighter. I was starting to wonder if principle was worth sticking to in a case like this where something I know isn't such a big, is made into a big deal unnecessarily by regulations. Would everyone be better off if I just signed it? I would hate to make that girl come back and retake the test, and I might be getting my co-proctor in trouble, or the Dean in trouble also. As I was weighing these concerns, a woman came in and asked to see my attendance sheet. Here we go, I thought, and handed it over. She left the room with it, and I stood there waiting, not sure if I should follow her or stay in line, but she made no motion for me to follow so I stayed put. A few minutes later she returned the attendance sheet. Where the missing signature had been was now a fancy Arabic scribble. I felt relieved that the decision had been taken out of my hands, but also a little disappointed that everyone was so afraid of the consequences of something I saw as minor, that they were willing to break the rules. Of course it is possible that the student had returned to school in time to sign the paper, after all, I don't know what happened to it after the woman took it. I choose to believe that that is, in fact, what happened.
I don't know what would have happened to me if the signature hadn't appeared, but I will tell you one thing, I will be extra careful from now on to be sure I never have to find out.
This morning I woke up twice as usually and made my way down to the bus, but Chris stopped me before I could get on and told me that today I would be taking the bus to Dammam Community College instead because one of the teachers was out sick and they needed me to help proctor exams. Our bus left every morning at 6:30, but because their campus is closer, they never leave until 7:30. So, lucky me, I get an extra hour of sleep, and an extra annoying third wake up. At least I didn't fall asleep on the bus this time. The journey was shorter, maybe only 20 minutes, so I didn't have enough time to fall asleep, and besides, this was a new route so there were lots of new things to look at. It wasn't so much of a highway drive as a drive through neighborhoods of obviously increasing wealth, and then back again to apartments on dirty blocks like the one we live in. It was completely quiet on the bus and no one said anything to each other. It was an uncomfortable silence, and I wasn't sure if they were always like this or if it was because I was new and they didn't know me.
When we reached the campus, I was surprised to see how clean and new it was. Our campus at the university is an older collection of buildings re purposed for women. Even though we have about as many cleaning ladies as teachers, it is somehow never cleaned. Especially the stairs. The same coffee stain has been in the stairwell for going on 2 months now. Here, everything was shiny and even had that "I've been freshly mopped" smell. There were colorful modern looking couches in semicircles and snake shapes. I couldn't help but think how much more pleasant to nap on these would be than the airport gate style benches we had in our hallways.
I followed the teachers upstairs and found that at least some things were the same. There was a fingerprint scanner for punching in identical to the one at the University. I was the last to fingerprint in, but it didn't work. I wasn't surprised since when I substituted at Qatif, they had to enter my fingerprint the first time I used it. I tried twice, but gave up because I figured I would just wait the 30 minutes or so for the admin lady to come in and enter me into the system.
Across from the fingerprinting were some of the teacher's offices. They had actual offices with actual doors instead of just cubicles. I was jealous. One of the teachers hurried off to her office and quickly shut the door. Two others looked at me and then looked at another teacher and said, you still have that extra chair don't you? You take her. I haven't felt that left out since picking teams in middle school gym class. I sat down awkwardly in the little chair shoved way in the corner of this woman's office. She made a show of being busy shuffling papers. After a minute, she looked at me and said, you fingerprinted in right? I explained to her that it hadn't worked, and since I was new they would probably need to program me in first so I wasn't worried. She said I should worry, and I obviously didn't try very hard. Sometimes it took her 5 or six tries for the thing to read her fingerprint. To humor her, and just to get out of the office where I clearly wasn't wanted, I went back and tried again seven times, just to be sure. Then I went back and told her it hadn't worked, but I would just wait downstairs on those lovely couches for the admin to arrive.
I sat reading down there about thirty minutes and was on the verge of falling asleep again when the lead teacher (a local hire who doesn't ride the bus in with us) arrived and found me there. She was so friendly, she almost made up for how the others had ignored me. She was horrified that I'd been down here alone (Saudi women rarely do anything alone), and ushered me upstairs. She showed me her office and she showed me the teachers lounge, which is really just a room full of sleeping couches, and she showed me the cafeteria and the room I would be giving the exam in and a tiny door onto a small section of roof, which is the only outdoor area at the Dammam Community College. I was impressed, because the facilities seemed nicer, but I think the lack of a green outdoor area to sit and eat lunch in, sort of outweighed the benefits of having a whole office to yourself. After all, I definitely couldn't get greenery and outdoors where we lived, but I did have a private apartment alone there, which is better than an office with a door.
By now, I had proctored a number of exams, so I felt like I was pretty much an old hat at it. Granted, I was usually just the second pair of eyes in the room, and not the actual administrator, but it wasn't that difficult. Different administrators had different styles. Some went from student to student during the exam to check IDs and make them sign in, others made the students sign in and check IDs when they submitted their test at the end of the exam. I decided I liked the second version better since it didn't disturb students during the test. No one could leave until an hour and a half into the two hour test, and most students ended up using the whole time, so it was usually easier to just check them on their way out. Usually, we put a giant stopwatch on the screen from the internet, but in this classroom, the projector was broken, so I had to write the new time every 15 minutes or so, but other than that, proctoring a test is about as fun as watching water boil. Finally, it was time to allow students who were finished to leave. I made an announcement that they should come up one at a time to avoid chaos and a mass exodus, and asked my Saudi co-procterer to make sure they did.
It all went very smoothly at first, they actually did come up one at a time, and I checked their name and ID number on their student ID's and while they were signing out, I made sure they had correctly filled in the bubbles on the scan tron, and double checked they had written their name and ID number on the actual test for cross checking in case there was a dispute about the scan tron grade. One girl had forgotten her ID in her purse, which was left in the hallway by regulation, so I let her go out and get it. When she returned, I was also checking another student, and because they are always in such a hurry to leave once the test was over, and there were so many things to check, I must have forgotten to make one of them sign the attendance sheet. With about 15 minutes to go, I got bored and decided to count up the tests and the signatures so far, more for something to do than anything else. It's a good thing I did because that is when I noticed I was one signature short. I looked through the tests that had already been submitted, and figured out which girl hadn't signed, and I asked the next student who turned in her paper if she knew her, and could she please send her back in to sign the attendance sheet. The girl left and returned a few minutes later saying the girl had already gone home for the day.
I had been trying to keep this mistake of mine quiet, but by now the Saudi teacher had gotten wise to the fact that there was some problem. She asked what was wrong and I told her that one girl forgot to sign out. Now, in my mind, this isn't that big of a deal, but obviously I was mistaken. Her eyes went wide and she began shaking her head. She was clearly very concerned. As the number of students still in the room dwindled, her worry seemed to increase. She asked me what I was going to do and I told her I would just tell the Dean that I had made a mistake. No big deal. She shook her head again and asked if I wanted to loose my job. I laughed. They won't fire me for this, I said, and if they did, well, it wouldn't be the worst thing. She just shook her head some more. A few minutes later, she said, you can have one of the other students sign for her, she said. I told her I wouldn't want that student to get in trouble, and since it was my fault, I would take the responsibility for it. I told her not to worry. She would not be in trouble. She told me I should sign it myself then. I told her I would rather admit I made a mistake than lie about it. She told me I didn't understand how serious it was. I told her I was beginning to get that impression, but that I really doubted they would fire me over a signature even if I did work here, and since I was only a substitute, It was really unlikely since I would probably not even be back here anytime soon. This didn't satisfy her.
She went out of the room (there was only one student still taking the test at this point) and I can only assume she was going somewhere to either proclaim her innocence, or find someone to sign the attendance. To be honest, any student could have come back and signed it, and I would never know if it was the right girl or not because I didn't remember what she looked like anyway. But she came back a few minutes later and didn't say anything more. Finally the test was over, and we counted all the exams, sealed them up, and put both our signatures over the seal to be turned in to the dean. She pleaded with me one more time to just sign the attendance sheet, and I told her that if it mattered that much to her, she could sign it. Of course she declined and insisted it wouldn't affect her, she was just worried about me.
By this time, I'd gotten a little worried myself. She made it seem like such a huge deal, I started thinking perhaps it was. But I had resolved to tell the truth, and couldn't imagine that a student forgetting to sign the attendance sheet could result in being fired. So I stood in line to turn in my tests and awaited my fate. Almost all the teachers were ahead of me in line so I watched with trepidation as each one presented stacks of tests which were recounted and double checked. Each time another teacher signed the final sheet of paper verifying all the tests and signatures were received, my stomach got a little tighter. I was starting to wonder if principle was worth sticking to in a case like this where something I know isn't such a big, is made into a big deal unnecessarily by regulations. Would everyone be better off if I just signed it? I would hate to make that girl come back and retake the test, and I might be getting my co-proctor in trouble, or the Dean in trouble also. As I was weighing these concerns, a woman came in and asked to see my attendance sheet. Here we go, I thought, and handed it over. She left the room with it, and I stood there waiting, not sure if I should follow her or stay in line, but she made no motion for me to follow so I stayed put. A few minutes later she returned the attendance sheet. Where the missing signature had been was now a fancy Arabic scribble. I felt relieved that the decision had been taken out of my hands, but also a little disappointed that everyone was so afraid of the consequences of something I saw as minor, that they were willing to break the rules. Of course it is possible that the student had returned to school in time to sign the paper, after all, I don't know what happened to it after the woman took it. I choose to believe that that is, in fact, what happened.
I don't know what would have happened to me if the signature hadn't appeared, but I will tell you one thing, I will be extra careful from now on to be sure I never have to find out.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
The Test
On my third day at work, Leila mysteriously appeared. She also arrived by train on Saturday, on the final evening train after mine. So I guess if worst had come to worst, I would have been picked up from the train station eventually later that evening. Anyway, no one had told her when the bus left for the University, or that the work week starts on Sunday here, and no one had told any of the staff that she was coming, so no one expected her. She just hung out in her room for a few days waiting for someone to tell her something. Add communication to the list of things Saudi's aren't particularly good at. In any case, I was glad to see her again.
Also on my third day at work, the students had an English test. Which I didn't think was a big deal, but soon found out that it was, in fact, a very big deal. They have two tests and an exam each quarter. The tests and exams are written by the male teachers on the men's side, and delivered in secrecy the morning of the test in large white envelopes. These envelopes are then signed out by each teacher, who is assigned to a classroom of students they do not normally teach, along with someone from the administration (or an extra teacher) to monitor the exam. After the tests, students return the test booklets, which are counted, returned to the envelope and signed. This is a process that happens three times each quarter, or a dozen times each year. This is the 10th test this year, so I expected the process to go somewhat smoothly. As I have been told before, and am sure will be told again, I need to learn to let go of my expectations.
For once, all the students had arrived on time, early even, and were tracking down any teacher they could find to beg them to tell them what was going to be on the exam. Others were frantically skimming the pages of their books. The teacher's were no less disturbed. Everyone paced up and down the narrow corridors between the cubicles waiting for the tests to arrive. There was a schedule of what teacher was being sent to which room, that had been changed or updated at least 6 times since our arrival that morning. When the tests finally did arrive, there was pandamonium. Suddenly people were being handed packets, then packets were taken away and reassigned. Room assignments were being changed, again. Scantron score sheets were passed out, then some went missing, and runners were sent from teacher to teacher to collect any spares. I hunkered down on the couch with Leila and Sara, the other two new teachers, just trying to stay out of the way of this chaos. Eventually, I was told to go to room 309 to help proctor an exam. I waded out into the hallway, which was swarming with students trying to figure out what room they were supposed to be in and teachers looking for students that were supposed to be in their testing group.
I finally found room 309, but when I opened the door, I found nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, there were two chairs and a broken desk, but otherwise, there was no one. I began looking for the teacher I was supposed to be proctoring with instead. I tried three rooms in various stages of test preparation before I saw her herding a group of girls in the hallway toward an available room, hopefully with desks. Halfway down the hall, an administrator caught up with us and told us to go to room 318 instead, to switch with another teacher who had accidentally been assigned her own class. Abandoning our group of lost girls, we swam upstream through the hallway to the other classroom. This one had both students and desks, but now we needed to wait for a different set of test booklets, since these girls were at a different level then our original group. In the meantime, we had to convince the girls to bring their bags to the front of the room. The girls acted as if we were separating them from their first born child. "No Miss please, just let us put them under our desks, please Miss?" Ten or fifteen minutes later, we had finally got all the bags to the front (a university policy that has been in place for all 9 of their previous exams). It was now almost 9:10, and the test was supposed to start at 8:30. As I was handing out scantron sheets, an administrator came in and asked me to go to room 327 instead, so once more I shifted rooms.
I looked on every door and found 300 to 335, but no 327. I was so confused. Finally, I asked one of the Filipino janitors, who by now was the only one left in the hallway. She told me it was downstairs. Downstairs? Why on earth would 327 be downstairs when 326, 328, and all the other 300 numbers were upstairs? I wondered if maybe she hadn't understood the room number I had asked for, or that I had misunderstood her. But I went downstairs anyway, and sure enough, nestled between 225 and 257 was 327. Bizarre. The testing in this room was already in full swing. One of the other teachers was pacing the room, reading an extra test. When she saw me she came over and whispered that I should just walk around and keep my eyes open for any cheating or anything. I put my own bag at the front and started toward the back of the room when she called me back to look at a question. The test wasn't particularly well written, and she was pointing out a particularly tricky question in which the question reversed the wording of the original passage. I nodded my agreement that it wasn't a good question, and started walking back through the rows of desks. I didn't get very far before she called me back to look at another question, in which every one of the multiple choice answers could have been correct, if not for the word "recent" which tipped the scales to the answer referenced in the passage as "now". Again I commiserated that it was a very tricky tactic, and started back toward the rows. This time she waited until I got all the way to the back before calling me forward to look at an "odd one out" question. It's kind of like that segment of sesame street, where they show you four things and sing that song "one of these things is not like the other....". Anyway, none of them seemed related in any way at all, and every connection I could think of, left two out. I'm still not sure what they intended the answer to be for that one. She and I whispered our outrage conspiratorially, while the students bubbled away at their scantrons. There was nothing we could do.
About three quarters of the way through the test, my fellow proctor finally got so frustrated with one of the questions that she made an announcement to the class to "clarify the instructions" in a section of the test. Not long after that, hands began to shoot up. "Miss, what's this word?" "Miss, I don't understand this question?" "Miss is this right?" There was a barrage of questions. She answered a few of the more obscure vocabulary questions, even going so far as to translate a few words in Arabic on the board before swiftly erasing it. "They will kill me," she said, "if they find out I helped them." Before saying sternly, no more. So they moved on to me, trying to get me to crack and help them out. There were times I wanted to, but I saw what had happened when she helped just one. I relied on the clock to get me out of it. There was only five minutes left in the test. My fellow proctor added 5 minutes to the clock - ostensibly so they could bubble in their names and ID numbers on the scantron. When those five minutes were over, there were suddenly two minutes left in the test. Finally, those two minutes came and went, and there was one minute left, and then "Miss Jennie is going to take your papers." I like how she threw me under the bus to be the mean one to take their papers away. Most had already turned theirs in and gone, but about four students still clung to their papers. This was no small job. Those ladies used there whole upper bodies to cover the paper while they wrote one last thing so I couldn't take them away. One girl was so intent, I had to enlist her friend in a small skirmish to get the test and her answer sheet back.
When all the students were gone, we counted the tests, and luckily, had the correct amount. She put them in the envelope, sealed it, signed it, had me sign it, and then we were on our way back upstairs. I asked her how long it usually took for the students to get their results. "Oh, this one is scantron," she said, "So it should go pretty quick. I would think in a month or two." I looked at her to see if she was being sarcastic, but it was frustration I saw in her eyes, not humor. "You see, the scantron machine is at the men's campus, and they are the one's who record all the grades. But they always do the men's tests first, and just get around to the women's whenever they get around to it. Last time, the men had their results within two weeks, and the women waited six months." She just shook her head and shrugged. It is what it is.
The English classes for the rest of the day were cancelled, as they are after every test, just to give students and teachers a break after the big event. But we aren't allowed to leave, even though there are no classes. We have to sit and wait for 4:00pm to roll around. Since the test was only an hour, we had a lot of time to kill. Most of the teachers crowded around the couches and talked. Some took naps, others were watching youtube videos or surfing the web. A few were grading papers. I did a little of all four. Then around 2:30, someone announced; "A male is coming! Quick everyone put on your abayas!" Everyone scrambled to throw on their abayas and head scarves. It was the vice dean from the men's side coming to collect the tests. We all stood around in our abayas for about 30 or 40 minutes before someone finally asked if he had gone. "Oh, yeah, he's been gone for ages. He wasn't here more than five minutes. He just came in, got the tests and left." I had been in the back with most of the other teachers and hadn't even seen him. A sigh of relief spread through the group of teachers who shrugged off their abayas the instant they got the all clear. Strange how sometimes you forget where you are when you're sitting around in what seems like a very normal office setting with all the outward appearances of any developed country. Then suddenly, you get an unsettling reminder of where you are, and just how different it really is.
Also on my third day at work, the students had an English test. Which I didn't think was a big deal, but soon found out that it was, in fact, a very big deal. They have two tests and an exam each quarter. The tests and exams are written by the male teachers on the men's side, and delivered in secrecy the morning of the test in large white envelopes. These envelopes are then signed out by each teacher, who is assigned to a classroom of students they do not normally teach, along with someone from the administration (or an extra teacher) to monitor the exam. After the tests, students return the test booklets, which are counted, returned to the envelope and signed. This is a process that happens three times each quarter, or a dozen times each year. This is the 10th test this year, so I expected the process to go somewhat smoothly. As I have been told before, and am sure will be told again, I need to learn to let go of my expectations.
For once, all the students had arrived on time, early even, and were tracking down any teacher they could find to beg them to tell them what was going to be on the exam. Others were frantically skimming the pages of their books. The teacher's were no less disturbed. Everyone paced up and down the narrow corridors between the cubicles waiting for the tests to arrive. There was a schedule of what teacher was being sent to which room, that had been changed or updated at least 6 times since our arrival that morning. When the tests finally did arrive, there was pandamonium. Suddenly people were being handed packets, then packets were taken away and reassigned. Room assignments were being changed, again. Scantron score sheets were passed out, then some went missing, and runners were sent from teacher to teacher to collect any spares. I hunkered down on the couch with Leila and Sara, the other two new teachers, just trying to stay out of the way of this chaos. Eventually, I was told to go to room 309 to help proctor an exam. I waded out into the hallway, which was swarming with students trying to figure out what room they were supposed to be in and teachers looking for students that were supposed to be in their testing group.
I finally found room 309, but when I opened the door, I found nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, there were two chairs and a broken desk, but otherwise, there was no one. I began looking for the teacher I was supposed to be proctoring with instead. I tried three rooms in various stages of test preparation before I saw her herding a group of girls in the hallway toward an available room, hopefully with desks. Halfway down the hall, an administrator caught up with us and told us to go to room 318 instead, to switch with another teacher who had accidentally been assigned her own class. Abandoning our group of lost girls, we swam upstream through the hallway to the other classroom. This one had both students and desks, but now we needed to wait for a different set of test booklets, since these girls were at a different level then our original group. In the meantime, we had to convince the girls to bring their bags to the front of the room. The girls acted as if we were separating them from their first born child. "No Miss please, just let us put them under our desks, please Miss?" Ten or fifteen minutes later, we had finally got all the bags to the front (a university policy that has been in place for all 9 of their previous exams). It was now almost 9:10, and the test was supposed to start at 8:30. As I was handing out scantron sheets, an administrator came in and asked me to go to room 327 instead, so once more I shifted rooms.
I looked on every door and found 300 to 335, but no 327. I was so confused. Finally, I asked one of the Filipino janitors, who by now was the only one left in the hallway. She told me it was downstairs. Downstairs? Why on earth would 327 be downstairs when 326, 328, and all the other 300 numbers were upstairs? I wondered if maybe she hadn't understood the room number I had asked for, or that I had misunderstood her. But I went downstairs anyway, and sure enough, nestled between 225 and 257 was 327. Bizarre. The testing in this room was already in full swing. One of the other teachers was pacing the room, reading an extra test. When she saw me she came over and whispered that I should just walk around and keep my eyes open for any cheating or anything. I put my own bag at the front and started toward the back of the room when she called me back to look at a question. The test wasn't particularly well written, and she was pointing out a particularly tricky question in which the question reversed the wording of the original passage. I nodded my agreement that it wasn't a good question, and started walking back through the rows of desks. I didn't get very far before she called me back to look at another question, in which every one of the multiple choice answers could have been correct, if not for the word "recent" which tipped the scales to the answer referenced in the passage as "now". Again I commiserated that it was a very tricky tactic, and started back toward the rows. This time she waited until I got all the way to the back before calling me forward to look at an "odd one out" question. It's kind of like that segment of sesame street, where they show you four things and sing that song "one of these things is not like the other....". Anyway, none of them seemed related in any way at all, and every connection I could think of, left two out. I'm still not sure what they intended the answer to be for that one. She and I whispered our outrage conspiratorially, while the students bubbled away at their scantrons. There was nothing we could do.
About three quarters of the way through the test, my fellow proctor finally got so frustrated with one of the questions that she made an announcement to the class to "clarify the instructions" in a section of the test. Not long after that, hands began to shoot up. "Miss, what's this word?" "Miss, I don't understand this question?" "Miss is this right?" There was a barrage of questions. She answered a few of the more obscure vocabulary questions, even going so far as to translate a few words in Arabic on the board before swiftly erasing it. "They will kill me," she said, "if they find out I helped them." Before saying sternly, no more. So they moved on to me, trying to get me to crack and help them out. There were times I wanted to, but I saw what had happened when she helped just one. I relied on the clock to get me out of it. There was only five minutes left in the test. My fellow proctor added 5 minutes to the clock - ostensibly so they could bubble in their names and ID numbers on the scantron. When those five minutes were over, there were suddenly two minutes left in the test. Finally, those two minutes came and went, and there was one minute left, and then "Miss Jennie is going to take your papers." I like how she threw me under the bus to be the mean one to take their papers away. Most had already turned theirs in and gone, but about four students still clung to their papers. This was no small job. Those ladies used there whole upper bodies to cover the paper while they wrote one last thing so I couldn't take them away. One girl was so intent, I had to enlist her friend in a small skirmish to get the test and her answer sheet back.
When all the students were gone, we counted the tests, and luckily, had the correct amount. She put them in the envelope, sealed it, signed it, had me sign it, and then we were on our way back upstairs. I asked her how long it usually took for the students to get their results. "Oh, this one is scantron," she said, "So it should go pretty quick. I would think in a month or two." I looked at her to see if she was being sarcastic, but it was frustration I saw in her eyes, not humor. "You see, the scantron machine is at the men's campus, and they are the one's who record all the grades. But they always do the men's tests first, and just get around to the women's whenever they get around to it. Last time, the men had their results within two weeks, and the women waited six months." She just shook her head and shrugged. It is what it is.
The English classes for the rest of the day were cancelled, as they are after every test, just to give students and teachers a break after the big event. But we aren't allowed to leave, even though there are no classes. We have to sit and wait for 4:00pm to roll around. Since the test was only an hour, we had a lot of time to kill. Most of the teachers crowded around the couches and talked. Some took naps, others were watching youtube videos or surfing the web. A few were grading papers. I did a little of all four. Then around 2:30, someone announced; "A male is coming! Quick everyone put on your abayas!" Everyone scrambled to throw on their abayas and head scarves. It was the vice dean from the men's side coming to collect the tests. We all stood around in our abayas for about 30 or 40 minutes before someone finally asked if he had gone. "Oh, yeah, he's been gone for ages. He wasn't here more than five minutes. He just came in, got the tests and left." I had been in the back with most of the other teachers and hadn't even seen him. A sigh of relief spread through the group of teachers who shrugged off their abayas the instant they got the all clear. Strange how sometimes you forget where you are when you're sitting around in what seems like a very normal office setting with all the outward appearances of any developed country. Then suddenly, you get an unsettling reminder of where you are, and just how different it really is.
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