There was only one topic of conversation at the lunch table today and that was examination marking.
I was frankly astonished as I had thought that examinations were the life blood of this institution. Such regular testing takes place that one would have expected such frequent occasions to slip by without a second word, but not so, quite wrong.
I now realize that simply because examinations are so intrinsic to the whole ethos of the place it is essential that their existence is celebrated by a series of woeful faces bemoaning the piles of marking which threaten the placidish life of our school. I further realize that the protestations of overwork in the marking department are actually a form of celebration. Bemoaning the burden is part of the exaltation of the process.
These examinations are not wordy affairs. There are usually far more words in the questions than there ever are in the answers. They are a ‘fill in the gap’ type questions with some ‘fit the word in a sentence’ type puzzlers to take the place of the essays!
You would think that such papers are easy to mark with many of the responses limited to a single permissible word. Alas! You woefully underestimate the insane genius which motivates most children when it comes to answering examination papers. They eschew the simple, direct answer and plump instead for some obsolete and Heath-Robinson like circumlocution or choose a verb formation so Byzantine and obscure that it makes Miltonic prose look like Enid Blyton. Whatever answers we think they might provide, the first few answer papers show areas of delirium that we have not even considered.
And giving the papers back is a horrendous operation as eleven year olds snap into Rottweiler divorce lawyer mode and question every mark you have deducted while using state of the art calculators to check your addition all the while questioning your qualifications to mark anything they have written wrong!
The most bizarre conversation I had was with a child who stoutly maintained that a squiggle he had drawn was actually the letter ‘h’. As what he produced resembled one of those open v’s that kids draw when they show flying birds I felt that he was pushing his luck. The fact that his ‘bird’ had a broken wing was universally accepted as making the squiggle unequivocally an aitch! Such are the customers that I have to satisfy on a daily basis! Pity me!
Or not. Lunch, in spite of the examinational conversation, was delicious with a salad of couscous and savory rice followed by merluza with pasta. Sweet was flan with chocolate cake which was all façade and no real content.
I understand that my classes are going to change as in the lower school we change our groups each term so that all teachers get to know all children. Eventually.
With my legendary inability to differentiate children by name after years of knowing them I fear that the present educational institution is a little optimistic if it expects me to achieve this in a couple of weeks!
Still nothing has been said about my continued employment in the place though my colleagues are blithely talking about what I will be doing next year there. I hope something is clarified before the Easter holiday otherwise I will have to start the via dolorosa of the Barcelona private schools hawking my CV about and hoping for the best.
My next opera is a work of which I have never heard so I will have to do some homework before I start pontificating about it!
And there is yet more marking to do!
I was frankly astonished as I had thought that examinations were the life blood of this institution. Such regular testing takes place that one would have expected such frequent occasions to slip by without a second word, but not so, quite wrong.
I now realize that simply because examinations are so intrinsic to the whole ethos of the place it is essential that their existence is celebrated by a series of woeful faces bemoaning the piles of marking which threaten the placidish life of our school. I further realize that the protestations of overwork in the marking department are actually a form of celebration. Bemoaning the burden is part of the exaltation of the process.
These examinations are not wordy affairs. There are usually far more words in the questions than there ever are in the answers. They are a ‘fill in the gap’ type questions with some ‘fit the word in a sentence’ type puzzlers to take the place of the essays!
You would think that such papers are easy to mark with many of the responses limited to a single permissible word. Alas! You woefully underestimate the insane genius which motivates most children when it comes to answering examination papers. They eschew the simple, direct answer and plump instead for some obsolete and Heath-Robinson like circumlocution or choose a verb formation so Byzantine and obscure that it makes Miltonic prose look like Enid Blyton. Whatever answers we think they might provide, the first few answer papers show areas of delirium that we have not even considered.
And giving the papers back is a horrendous operation as eleven year olds snap into Rottweiler divorce lawyer mode and question every mark you have deducted while using state of the art calculators to check your addition all the while questioning your qualifications to mark anything they have written wrong!
The most bizarre conversation I had was with a child who stoutly maintained that a squiggle he had drawn was actually the letter ‘h’. As what he produced resembled one of those open v’s that kids draw when they show flying birds I felt that he was pushing his luck. The fact that his ‘bird’ had a broken wing was universally accepted as making the squiggle unequivocally an aitch! Such are the customers that I have to satisfy on a daily basis! Pity me!
Or not. Lunch, in spite of the examinational conversation, was delicious with a salad of couscous and savory rice followed by merluza with pasta. Sweet was flan with chocolate cake which was all façade and no real content.
I understand that my classes are going to change as in the lower school we change our groups each term so that all teachers get to know all children. Eventually.
With my legendary inability to differentiate children by name after years of knowing them I fear that the present educational institution is a little optimistic if it expects me to achieve this in a couple of weeks!
Still nothing has been said about my continued employment in the place though my colleagues are blithely talking about what I will be doing next year there. I hope something is clarified before the Easter holiday otherwise I will have to start the via dolorosa of the Barcelona private schools hawking my CV about and hoping for the best.
My next opera is a work of which I have never heard so I will have to do some homework before I start pontificating about it!
And there is yet more marking to do!
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