First Quiz

I gave my first quiz on Friday. My 7th graders were struggling with theirs and I could not figure out what the problem was. I have 7th grade first and second bell. The second bell had a lot of questions. It was bothering me because I thought I went over the information well enough. Then I graded their quizzes during my prep 3rd and some of them did alright, but there were a lot of them who did not do well at all.

It wasn't until I graded all the quizzes that I realized I had given them the 8th grade quiz. My first quiz and my first mistake. I did make more copies and gave the correct quiz to all the other grades. I am going to have the 7th grade take their quiz on Monday when they first come in. I'll give them about 25 minutes or so to complete it.

The rest of the classes did alright with the quiz. Some struggled quite a bit, 3 out of 15, but most of them did really well. I have been talking with Annie, the special needs teacher, quite a bit about some of the students. It seems that I either have really strong or really weak students, not much middle ground. I fear some of the students are in classes that they are not supposed to be in, similar to a situation I found in the States during student teaching.

I've also heard that we cannot fail students at this school. We can give them an "F", and they can fail the class, but they will move onto the next class the following year. Meaning, if one of my 7th graders fails my class, next year I will see them in 8th grade math. I don't really agree with that, but I'm not the policy maker.

The school has some funny qwirks about it. The no failing policy is one of them. The whole deal with the director, Miss Lakana, is another. It is her school and she started it about 25 years ago, and there is a leadership team that helps her, but it seems that the leadership team is more for show than actual use. I think the leadership team is something that came about to keep accreditation. I wonder how much say the leadership team has in school matters. I have a feeling that they can make suggestions, but the final verdict comes down to Miss Lakana.

I found out some of the other teachers bought their own printers for their rooms since the printers and paper is such a mess at the school. I will probably break down and end up doing that as well. Half the time the printers don't work, thats hoping that there is paper in the printer. Its interesting.

I feel the school is trying to find its identity. Buying smartboards and doing other things like that seem to be fronts and for show, to try and make the school look good. I almost feel that the school is trying to compete with some of the better International Schools in Bangkok, but with a much smaller budget. A small time school trying to be big time.

Aaron