This last week exams have been taking place at the primary schools. While the math teacher for the P4 class has been away I have filled in as his substitute. I didn’t realize that he wouldn’t be back in time to give the end of the year exam, so last Wednesday I gave my first official exam here in s. Sudan. Here in Mundri there are no copy machines and for most people, limited access to computers. This means that all tests are hand written by both teachers and students. Teachers prepare their exams in advance and then copy them by hand onto a chalkboard. Then time is included during testing for students to copy all the questions onto their own paper and then respond. What could be an hour exam turns into 3 hours. I hand wrote my exam on big chart paper because the P4 black board is significantly smaller than some of the others. During the exam 88 P4 students crowded to the front of the room so they could see the problems. At different times students would call out and say they don’t understand a question and sometimes just a minute or so later the same question would be asked again. The most challenging part of giving this exam was testing these students on material I hadn’t actually taught them. It was hard not to just want to give them the answers.I continue to be thankful for these opportunities to teach in new and different environments. The Lord is using these experiences to show me how I can best encourage the staff and students her in Mundri.
Giving an exam to 88 students means correcting 88 papers. Took awhile and I was happy today to hand it off to another staff member to hand back next week.
As students handed me their completed exams I noticed that students who had more than one paper found some sort of plant stem or some other creative something to tie their papers together. No staplers here.
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