Exam Season

Exams have always been my favorite time in the school year. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t enjoy taking exams, but I love all the extra free time to actually get the things done that you need to do. It turns out that exams are just as enjoyable as a teacher!

Exam season in Namibia has been an administrative adventure. Most schools do not set exam schedules until a few days before they begin and you often don’t know what you’re supposed to do for exams until the last minute. With all the confusion and disorganization, you’d think this was the first year anyone had taken exams. But no – Namibia just seems to reinvent the wheel every time they do something.

Thankfully, my school planned exams relatively well and thanks to my ability to plan in advance (also a skill that’s seemingly lacking in Nam), I’ve been very relaxed since exams began.

Here are some American/British English differences that will help you in this blog post:

write an exam = set/prepare an exam

take an exam = write an exam

grade an exam = mark an exam

proctor = invigilate

points = marks

test = exam

quiz = test

grade = symbol

Technically, schools are allowed to write exams within three weeks of the last day of school, so we began exams on April 5. The learners and teachers are still required to be at school from 7:30 am until the end of the last exam. The learners usually write one exam each day. If they only have one paper, they often don’t begin until 11am. Since teachers are not required or encouraged to teach during exam time (although they can if they really want to), the learners are left unattended during that time. Although invigilators are told to sit with their classes all day, no one does, so the school grounds are a ruckus all morning.

Many subjects write more than one “paper” during their exam. For example, during November exams – which are set by the Ministry – Grade 8 English writes three papers. These papers are like individual exams. Each paper has a different focus – reading and directed writing, continuous writing, listening, etc. All of our English classes only wrote one paper this term – reading and directed writing – because teachers feared we wouldn’t have enough time to mark our exams otherwise. Each grade’s paper was 13-19 pages and lasted 1.5-2.5 hours.

In addition to setting and marking exams, each teacher invigilates an exam almost every day. There is a detailed invigilation schedule for all 35 teachers – another sign of organization at my school. You do not invigilate any of the classes you teach, partially to avoid teachers favoring or helping their learners and partially for learners to get to know different teachers and vice versa. The first day this proved to be terrible. I invigilated a Grade 12 class that treated me like American students treat substitute teachers – they tried to push every button they could to get away with the stupidest things. They were rude, inconsiderate, and disrespectful. Thankfully I put my “good teacher shoes” on and stood up to them every time by calling them out when they lied to me or were disrespectful. By the end of the day, they understood I was a force to be reckoned with and shaped up a little, but I sure was grateful I wouldn’t have to invigilate them again. My ability to be confrontational has improved exponentially in this job, which is a big deal since most of these Grade 12 boys are bigger and older than me.

The rest of invigilating has been great. I’ve gotten to know some new learners and most of them have been really great at writing exams – no cheating so far! Invigilating has also allowed me to get a lot of work and “work” done – some days, marking exams; some days, reading for fun.

All of the learners wrote their English exams last Wednesday – the second day of exams. I have worked tirelessly since then to mark all of my exams. 190 exams = 2,864 pages of WRITING. This is by far my least favorite part of being an English teacher – marking writing. Not because it isn’t interesting. Just because it takes forever.

Good news – I finished by 1pm on Sunday! I know several English teachers who haven’t even begun marking yet. Once I enter their grades into their report cards on Monday, I will be FINISHED with my work, leaving me with ten more days at school to read for fun (or database for fun, which is what I did all afternoon – call me a dork, but there’s nothing better than making a database that does what you need...and making it look beautiful)! I’ve already finished four books since exams began.

As I said, exam season is the best. Holiday in T-12 days!