The One With All The Grading (10/23/2012)

The form 2 students are currently taking a practice national exam as preparation for the actual exam which will begin November 5^th. They took the math section on Friday so midway through the day I received a stack of 120 exams on my desk to be graded.  Yesterday afternoon I finally finished and turned the grades in to Kivega, our academic master.  There was 2 B’s and the rest were C’s, D’s and F’s (keep in mind that in Tanzania 0-20% is an F, 21-40% is a D, and so on).  The 2 B’s were actually 60.5 which I chose to round up to 61 in order to give the students the B.  The grades were mostly what I was expecting considering that before last year the school didn’t have a math teacher.  But I was talking to Kivega today and he was thrilled with the grades.  Apparently this is the first time any of the students from this grade had scored a B and there was a huge increase in the number of C’s.  I know that most of this is thanks to the hard work of the volunteer who was here teaching math before me but I am so excited for the students! One of the challenges that I face is that some students see math as a lost cause; they feel that they are too far behind and so it is not worth trying.  But I think the exams have boosted their confidence.  I am really excited to continue working with them as their motivation rises!  And hopefully their exams next month will reflect this improvement!