Wednesday 19th August 2009
OK this is it – DEPARTURE DAY!
Didn't expect to be sitting here writing yet ANOTHER entry. However, yesterday brought news which has enraged me like an exploding volcano. I suppose it was to be expected, but it is one of those types of news which you dread but PRAY you will never actually hear has become real.
The soldier boys course is all over now, tests marked, goodbyes done, relief is at hand. Having marked those Final Exams it was mostly “as you were” in terms of who got what kind of mark. OK, so results were tabulated, tallied, handed in and it was now out of my hands.
Yesterday morning it was. There was I just going down the corridor to the toilet. Coming back from the Registrar's Office was our Head of Department. “Got good news for you!', he announced. “ALL the students have been accepted into the college!”
Normally for a teacher this is good news since you know that you have succeeded in your aims and your job is done. But THESE students?
How could it be? I was dumbfounded. “ALL of them?”, I asked him. “HOW CAN THAT BE?? HOWWW CANNN THAAAAT BEEEE??????”
We are talking about the same students that I have raged and stressed and battled with these past four months. The same idiots who have been throwing keys, bringing fish gifts, playing LOUDLY with their mobile phones constantly. The same IMBECILES who have done virtually NOTHING all year. The BIRDBRAINS who couldn't care LESS about learning English. The CACKHEADS who have said things like, “I want to be a nurse but I DON'T like to study!”.
I have given A LOT to those idiots. Plus the early morning starts – up weekdays at 6am. I have been ignored, talked over, treated with contempt when trying to get them to do tests without cheating. I have been STRESSED out of my MIND in that class with a bunch of people having their loud conversations about nothing much in particular. Their disrespect for me as a teacher has been without bounds, and their lack of progress has been expected due to NO EFFORT on their part either inside OR outside the classroom. After lessons, all they do in afternoons, evenings in nights is waste time doing nothing but driving round, talking rubbish, playing even MORE with their stupid phones, inventing tales of what they'd like to do to Filipino girls, online chatting till the early hours and more and MORE stupidities. They come to class, heads full of nothing except the need to sleep and too damn TIRED to put their minds to anything intellectual as learning English.
Now, I don't mean all of them. There are maybe four or five of them who HAVE made an effort and who HAVE shown ability and motivation and some kind of a desire to learn. To them I wish well and they DESERVE to be in the college. But then we have IDIOTS like the much-quoted 'Leg Man' and 'Monitor Man' and the non-stop talking machine guy. We have 'cousin of Monitor Man' who has to be the most useless of ALL of them except when it comes to his standards in cheating in tests and exams.
Cheating ….. yes. Now they can do it all over again.
ALL OF THEM ARE THROUGH!! CAN you believe that or comprehend what that means? What message does it send them? Well, a very clear one of course. They know well that they can just bum around, faff about, make NO EFFORT at ALL, blame only the TEACHER for their lack of learning progress and DO NOTHING THAT A NORMAL STUDENT SHOULD DO!!
“Normal student”? Oh, well you know. Fundamental things really. Bringing a pen, keeping notes, listening to the teacher, doing homework (OK I never gave them any but I doubt they'd have done it anyway!), turning up to class ON TIME. Sounds obvious to you? NOTHING is obvious to THEM.
And it is such an AFFRONT to them when you step in to break up one of their loud cross-classroom conversations. How could you do it? How could you get in their way? This is IMPORTANT! He is insulting my CAR / PHONE / WATCH / etc. etc.
So back to my anger. Why am I so angry about this? And WHY am I sitting at home now writing this when, technically speaking, I should be spending this time in the office as “the contract” states we must?
Well, my goodwill has GONE, ALL gone, TOTALLY GONE!!
How would you feel? It is like the college has said to me, “Your time was worthless, your energy was pointless and everything you did was a waste of time!”.
Well, it quite clearly WAS!! ALL I tried to do with them, my efforts to make them listen, times I have shouted and yelled at them to LISTEN to me, the stresses I have felt most Saturday mornings confronted by a bunch of uniformed ASSHOLES who didn't even recognise I was in the ROOM even and carried on their cross-classroom loud talks even though I was trying to Do SOMETHING.
ALL THAT was for totally and utterly NOTHING!!!
Jeez, I may as well have gone in, sat there and drank coffee for three hours a day watching them do all this.
Ah, but here is my weak point I suppose. I LIKE my job and I LIKE to try to do my best for my students. To help them LEARN. Yeah. Well, isn't that why I do this job?
In general, yes, if this was a normal country with normal students with normal educational requirements and standards. But it is FAR FROM THAT!
This is a country where no matter what LITTLE a student does, he will get through and pass along the educational road nice and easily. Effort in actual STUDYING? Not likely. And if the college makes a fuss and kicks him out then he just calls upon daddy or uncle who has connections and they make sure he is re-instated PRONTO!!
We're on a hiding to nothing.
Until a few weeks ago, I was thinking that, although this is not the worst teaching job I've ever been in it was pretty way DOWN there. But there are many factors which determine whether a job is “good” or not, and in teaching these are basically Students, Workplace, Support and Money. Well, in teaching the Money side is rarely a plus but it doesn't matter so much as the others. If those other three go wrong – one or more of – then you're in trouble.
Thinking about my worst ever teaching job now …. yep, that tipped the scale on those first three being pretty damn rubbish. But being HERE tips the scales to a new low now. I really mean the Students and Support/Workplace side of things. I wouldn't say this is a workplace I much have conflicts with – I am allowed to do my job without much interference so far. HOWEVER, thee is no SUPPORT for what values I try to encourage in students – that is, STUDYING and what happens if they don't.
Because they need to know this. They simply have to get it in their heads that you can't bum around forever. If they don't work, if they don't put in the effort then they should only expect nothing in return.
As a teacher, I don't, of course, expect my students to be the best of the best. Certainly not. But what I DO expect is that they put in EFFORT and make an EFFORT to learn. Yes, they may find it hard, but if they DO SOMETHING about that to TRY, then that is all I ask. Layabouts are NOT welcome in my language setup.
So HOW is it that the college does not share this aim??
Have I truly wasted five months of my life out here?
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
The End Game is in Sight!
Saturday 15th August 2009
OK, my followers far and wide, this is very likely going to be IT for this leg of my Saudi Experience. It's holiday time FINALLY and in four days from now I'll be sitting in Bahrain airport waiting for the plane to England. And no doubt I'll be enjoying …. well, some of the things that are prohibited here in this country.
Yes I'm sure of that. And just for the sake of defiance, I'll sample as many of those as possible. But before you raise too many eyebrows, I must say that I'm talking about food and drink related things ONLY!
As said before, these last few weeks have been much more laid back than before. I have been glad the end of this soldier boy course is coming. And, by now, we know well who is going through and who is going BACK. Too late for those no-hopers now. And good riddance to them!
However, I'm sure they'll slip through the net somehow and I'll STILL see some of those ugly faces on my return to the college in late September. That's the way it works here – it's who you know.
And that ANGERS me! WHY should these toe-rags, these lazy good-for-nothings who make NO ATTEMPT to do ANYTHING AT ALL these past 18 weeks be allowed to go on and get their 'reward' of entry to the college and their medical course??
Ahh there are many answers to THAT and it's just the way that things work in this ridiculous country and in its so-called education system. But you have to wonder WHY we were put on this course in the first place if this IS to happen.
This makes me very angry thinking about the students and what they are allowed to get away with. And I have seen it in action in that exam I sat in recently as invigilator. The way that the Saudi teacher came in and went around at the start of that exam HELPING the students who had problems with the questions. And the guy who does the computer teaching over where we work who was even chatting with them throughout rather than doing his job and keeping them quiet. YES! I had gone up there with the intention of being the “hard man” and not letting anyone talk. But seeing this I thought “What's the POINT?”
Anyway, back to present time. So how do I feel now? Well obviously I'm extremely HAPPY that FINALLY I have reached this point and that I will not see those ugly mugs again (well, until September I guess anyway). There are exceptions and there are some of them that I do wish well. Those that were prepared to put in some effort even when they found the going tough always get my respect. Nobody asks for miracles, but if a student is prepared to “have a go” and get to grips with this language, then THAT is what it's all about, isn't it? This is what we try to encourage our students to do – to gain confidence in learning English and to go on from the point they finish the course on.
Have I done that with them? Sadly no, I cannot claim much success. I think that those whose ability was good at the start have CONTINUED to do well and those who were struggling at the start are in much the same boat. If I compare test scores throughout the course then these show this too. Those scores are pretty consistent for most people with one or two random or chance variations or successes.
Speaking of successes, I doubt that any OF those were gained with any real effort and were more likely the result of cheating and, let's say, “pooling” of certain knowledge at test time. Ohh, COME ON! Of COURSE I tried to stop them and deducted marks from those who overstepped the mark. But I feel I was too lenient …. and conversely the students probably feel I was too harsh. Well, if I had cracked down on EVERY single occurrence of communication and other kinds of cheating at test time, then it would have made it almost an impossible task and both they and I would have only got frustrated, distracted and annoyed, and in THEIR cases it would have made tests an impossible thing to finish without tears.
It was hard enough doing the tests with them as I have written about plenty. WHY would I have wanted to make Test Days even more UNBEARABLE?
Then there is the relationship between the students and myself. And here we must look at something of Saudi student mentality a little. There is one student (the one I refer to as “Leg Man”) who says that, “You are TEACHER in the classroom and FRIEND outside it!”. However, I think that the FRIEND side is too much present in their minds INSIDE the classroom as well. For them, we are all good friends and buddies together in the class and none of us want anyone else to come to any 'harm'. They do all they can to help each other out and there should be a sense of 'comradeship' all round.
On one hand, I really do appreciate how they do come together. They do seem to look out for each other, and I see this especially when I am taking the Attendance Register and one or more of them is not present in class. “Five minutes please!”, they always say hoping that either the absent person WILL arrive or that I will forget to mark this person absent. Some of them even try to STOP ME marking an absent person as so. And no matter how often I have explained the rules that absent means just THAT, they never understand WHY I AM marking this person as absent. They even think that if a person has an EXCUSE for being absent, I should not put the 'X' because in THEIR eyes an Excused Absence is not the same thing.
Some places I have worked do differentiate between Excused and Unexcused Absence and there is a way to mark the register to show which one of these is correct. But here there is no such thing. In fact, there is only PRESENT or ABSENT – no mark if a person is LATE as many places would do. So LATE is the same as ABSENT here, which in a way is fair enough because latecomers are annoying.
So THAT is another annoyance for me – the fact that no matter how many times I explained this, they STILL kept on at me NOT to mark this person as absent because in Five Minutes he will be here or that he is with the commanding officer or even, as we have had recently, the student is in hospital.
Ahh – now THIS is something I haven't mentioned before. Yes, at the start of the course there was Leg Man in plaster and on crutches for many weeks and there was the other guy who had his appendix out. But a couple of weeks ago there was something new. And it really sounded very frightening.
The story was this: three of my students and one from the other class were driving back one Saturday morning. Maybe they were in a hurry as time was short and so maybe they were going a bit too fast. But somewhere up the road towards the college the car had a blowout of one of its tyres. I don't know which one but I suppose it was a front tyre because of what they say happened next. Basically the driver lost control and the car turned over and rolled and rolled over a few times. The driver and front seat passenger were flung out to the road quite badly and the two back street passengers were also bashed about quite a bit resulting in leg fractures. One said he had been sleeping and on waking up wondered why he was in the middle of the road. Or so he said anyway. He was the luckiest of the four and was back at school only a few days later.
The other back seat passenger was back earlier this week after about a week with a similar leg fracture. But the two front seat guys remained. At the start, the driver was unconscious in hospital and the other guy had amnesia and was rather cut up on his face. As I write today, the word is that they ARE both now out of hospital but since tomorrow is the last day and it is Final Exam day, I am unlikely to see them again.
UPDATE: both of the two hospital cases DID turn up – quite bravely I thought – to take their Final Exams. One of them had his face still cut up pretty bad and was very swollen and teeth were missing. The other guy, quite heroically, was here still in his hospital nightgown and with crutches. He, unfortunately, had a bad exam though the cut-face man did quite well.
UPDATE to the Update (1st February 2010) - The guy who had had the worst of the injuries was not present at all his semester. On asking about him, I was told that his leg (and maybe other) injuries had been too bad and that he, quite simply, could not continue as a student. This is sad for me because the man in question WAS actually a good student and DID know English pretty well. I mean, WHY did it have to be HIM and not one of these other morons?? Sometimes life is so unfair to those who deserve better!
Yes, better say something about the Final Exam day. Well, it was brought back to the Sunday quite unexpectedly. This meant no Speaking Exam and, as we understood it, no Military college entrance exam. Ah, or so we thought.
We had it all nicely organised. Exam Day as here, we set up the room well with labels on desks to ensure that cheaters did not sit together. It was nearing 8 o'clock. SUDDENLY the students were all gone!
Where were they? Oh, they had been taken out to the Mess Hall! Why? Well, it's a better place for the exam, the men in uniform said.
IDIOTS!! The time was two minutes to eight. NOTHING had been said to use, the teachers. They just took them out without any warning to us at all. TOTAL lack of communication and even MORE TOTAL CONTEMPT.
But that is the way these military types work. They do as they please and they don't consult.
OK, I'm finishing this off some days after having started it. Which means there will be holes. However …. see the next entry for The Last Straw!!
OK, my followers far and wide, this is very likely going to be IT for this leg of my Saudi Experience. It's holiday time FINALLY and in four days from now I'll be sitting in Bahrain airport waiting for the plane to England. And no doubt I'll be enjoying …. well, some of the things that are prohibited here in this country.
Yes I'm sure of that. And just for the sake of defiance, I'll sample as many of those as possible. But before you raise too many eyebrows, I must say that I'm talking about food and drink related things ONLY!
As said before, these last few weeks have been much more laid back than before. I have been glad the end of this soldier boy course is coming. And, by now, we know well who is going through and who is going BACK. Too late for those no-hopers now. And good riddance to them!
However, I'm sure they'll slip through the net somehow and I'll STILL see some of those ugly faces on my return to the college in late September. That's the way it works here – it's who you know.
And that ANGERS me! WHY should these toe-rags, these lazy good-for-nothings who make NO ATTEMPT to do ANYTHING AT ALL these past 18 weeks be allowed to go on and get their 'reward' of entry to the college and their medical course??
Ahh there are many answers to THAT and it's just the way that things work in this ridiculous country and in its so-called education system. But you have to wonder WHY we were put on this course in the first place if this IS to happen.
This makes me very angry thinking about the students and what they are allowed to get away with. And I have seen it in action in that exam I sat in recently as invigilator. The way that the Saudi teacher came in and went around at the start of that exam HELPING the students who had problems with the questions. And the guy who does the computer teaching over where we work who was even chatting with them throughout rather than doing his job and keeping them quiet. YES! I had gone up there with the intention of being the “hard man” and not letting anyone talk. But seeing this I thought “What's the POINT?”
Anyway, back to present time. So how do I feel now? Well obviously I'm extremely HAPPY that FINALLY I have reached this point and that I will not see those ugly mugs again (well, until September I guess anyway). There are exceptions and there are some of them that I do wish well. Those that were prepared to put in some effort even when they found the going tough always get my respect. Nobody asks for miracles, but if a student is prepared to “have a go” and get to grips with this language, then THAT is what it's all about, isn't it? This is what we try to encourage our students to do – to gain confidence in learning English and to go on from the point they finish the course on.
Have I done that with them? Sadly no, I cannot claim much success. I think that those whose ability was good at the start have CONTINUED to do well and those who were struggling at the start are in much the same boat. If I compare test scores throughout the course then these show this too. Those scores are pretty consistent for most people with one or two random or chance variations or successes.
Speaking of successes, I doubt that any OF those were gained with any real effort and were more likely the result of cheating and, let's say, “pooling” of certain knowledge at test time. Ohh, COME ON! Of COURSE I tried to stop them and deducted marks from those who overstepped the mark. But I feel I was too lenient …. and conversely the students probably feel I was too harsh. Well, if I had cracked down on EVERY single occurrence of communication and other kinds of cheating at test time, then it would have made it almost an impossible task and both they and I would have only got frustrated, distracted and annoyed, and in THEIR cases it would have made tests an impossible thing to finish without tears.
It was hard enough doing the tests with them as I have written about plenty. WHY would I have wanted to make Test Days even more UNBEARABLE?
Then there is the relationship between the students and myself. And here we must look at something of Saudi student mentality a little. There is one student (the one I refer to as “Leg Man”) who says that, “You are TEACHER in the classroom and FRIEND outside it!”. However, I think that the FRIEND side is too much present in their minds INSIDE the classroom as well. For them, we are all good friends and buddies together in the class and none of us want anyone else to come to any 'harm'. They do all they can to help each other out and there should be a sense of 'comradeship' all round.
On one hand, I really do appreciate how they do come together. They do seem to look out for each other, and I see this especially when I am taking the Attendance Register and one or more of them is not present in class. “Five minutes please!”, they always say hoping that either the absent person WILL arrive or that I will forget to mark this person absent. Some of them even try to STOP ME marking an absent person as so. And no matter how often I have explained the rules that absent means just THAT, they never understand WHY I AM marking this person as absent. They even think that if a person has an EXCUSE for being absent, I should not put the 'X' because in THEIR eyes an Excused Absence is not the same thing.
Some places I have worked do differentiate between Excused and Unexcused Absence and there is a way to mark the register to show which one of these is correct. But here there is no such thing. In fact, there is only PRESENT or ABSENT – no mark if a person is LATE as many places would do. So LATE is the same as ABSENT here, which in a way is fair enough because latecomers are annoying.
So THAT is another annoyance for me – the fact that no matter how many times I explained this, they STILL kept on at me NOT to mark this person as absent because in Five Minutes he will be here or that he is with the commanding officer or even, as we have had recently, the student is in hospital.
Ahh – now THIS is something I haven't mentioned before. Yes, at the start of the course there was Leg Man in plaster and on crutches for many weeks and there was the other guy who had his appendix out. But a couple of weeks ago there was something new. And it really sounded very frightening.
The story was this: three of my students and one from the other class were driving back one Saturday morning. Maybe they were in a hurry as time was short and so maybe they were going a bit too fast. But somewhere up the road towards the college the car had a blowout of one of its tyres. I don't know which one but I suppose it was a front tyre because of what they say happened next. Basically the driver lost control and the car turned over and rolled and rolled over a few times. The driver and front seat passenger were flung out to the road quite badly and the two back street passengers were also bashed about quite a bit resulting in leg fractures. One said he had been sleeping and on waking up wondered why he was in the middle of the road. Or so he said anyway. He was the luckiest of the four and was back at school only a few days later.
The other back seat passenger was back earlier this week after about a week with a similar leg fracture. But the two front seat guys remained. At the start, the driver was unconscious in hospital and the other guy had amnesia and was rather cut up on his face. As I write today, the word is that they ARE both now out of hospital but since tomorrow is the last day and it is Final Exam day, I am unlikely to see them again.
UPDATE: both of the two hospital cases DID turn up – quite bravely I thought – to take their Final Exams. One of them had his face still cut up pretty bad and was very swollen and teeth were missing. The other guy, quite heroically, was here still in his hospital nightgown and with crutches. He, unfortunately, had a bad exam though the cut-face man did quite well.
UPDATE to the Update (1st February 2010) - The guy who had had the worst of the injuries was not present at all his semester. On asking about him, I was told that his leg (and maybe other) injuries had been too bad and that he, quite simply, could not continue as a student. This is sad for me because the man in question WAS actually a good student and DID know English pretty well. I mean, WHY did it have to be HIM and not one of these other morons?? Sometimes life is so unfair to those who deserve better!
Yes, better say something about the Final Exam day. Well, it was brought back to the Sunday quite unexpectedly. This meant no Speaking Exam and, as we understood it, no Military college entrance exam. Ah, or so we thought.
We had it all nicely organised. Exam Day as here, we set up the room well with labels on desks to ensure that cheaters did not sit together. It was nearing 8 o'clock. SUDDENLY the students were all gone!
Where were they? Oh, they had been taken out to the Mess Hall! Why? Well, it's a better place for the exam, the men in uniform said.
IDIOTS!! The time was two minutes to eight. NOTHING had been said to use, the teachers. They just took them out without any warning to us at all. TOTAL lack of communication and even MORE TOTAL CONTEMPT.
But that is the way these military types work. They do as they please and they don't consult.
OK, I'm finishing this off some days after having started it. Which means there will be holes. However …. see the next entry for The Last Straw!!
Friday, 7 August 2009
Testing Times and Cheating Minds
Friday 7th August 2009
Basically now things are winding down to the 'end game'. Those students who are doing well know that and also the students who have had enough are also showing this.
Actually now there is one important week of revision to go plus, in the week after that (the last one) there will be the Final Exams and Speaking Exam for them. So in fact it is NOT the end of the trail just yet either for them or for me.
However, as much as I should still be pushing them through this ….. I don't WANT TO. Oh, all I want to do just now is get on that plane bound for London and leave those good-for-nothings behind. I'll be shedding tears of course …... tears of JOY that is!
The last progress test a few weeks ago produced its share of drama. It is the ONLY time that I can get some work out of them. BUT, in their eyes it is ME who has to do the work in revision and they can just do whatever they feel like doing (or not doing).
The last test then. They'd been away for their week of holidays (and I'd had a nice break from them too!) and now they were back. The test was set for the last day of the week (Wednesday) and revision was being done.
Did it mainly on the board. However, like all things here, those boys make it very hard. There's me standing at the front doing board work, three or four of them are sitting around taking notice of what I'm doing while most of the others are locked into their own conversations ….. which invariably are about nothing much at all. Certainly nothing that can't wait, but then this is the time of the day when they all get together and they do what they can. For sure, the LEAST part of that is learning anything like English.
It just annoys me, but now I let it go. It is too late to worry much about those time-wasters and lazy toe-rags who just can't be bothered any more. Because I TOO can't be bothered about THEM! Yes, I know I know – a sinful thing to say as a respectable teacher of English. But it is August now, I have less than two weeks till my summer holiday and THAT is the only thing I care about now!
So I got through the revision part of the week. There was some debate, as always on WHEN we should have the test. First I'd said Wednesday. But I'd heard a rumour that it was going to be their Student Day this Wednesday coming and therefore the test couldn't take place. This rumour continued in my mind until, I think, Monday and then I went to ask and was told that it was NOT to be the Student Day.
By then, three of the class had gone. There was some reason why they were being allowed to go to their homes early. Also, one other student had said that he was going to be away in the next week because he was getting married. Well, before I was able to make the decision on when to do the test, those three had already gone.
Anyway test day came. Period 1 of Wednesday is always last-minute revision time, then it came to the test. Before the students came back in, I reorganised the chairs so they were spaced out sufficiently. Normal procedure for any test. You don't want them sitting too close together as they cheat like crazy and I want to try to stop it. Not always successfully.
In they came and all seemed to head for that same corner. Most were seated fine, but two were not and were too close to others. I asked them nicely to move and pointed out where I would like them to move to. I was not going to start until they were seated properly of course.
Now, one of them moved quite willingly but the other one refused. “No!”, he said. I asked him again politely to move and again he refused. AGAIN I asked him more firmly but STILL he would NOT move his place and seemed to think that I was unfairly asking ONLY him to move. Not true as he was one of TWO I had asked. ONE more time I asked him to move and pointed out that I was waiting for him and only HIM before I could start. But still nothing.
OK, I thought. I then gave out test papers to everyone else but did NOT give him one. If he was not going to do a simple thing then he would simply be excluded from the whole thing. And there is NO WAY he would have refused if I had been a teacher in uniform or another Saudi teacher. It was because it was ME that he thought he could be rude and defiant in this way. Or was it that if he moved then he would be further away from those he could communicate with for cheating purposes?
This particular student was one who started as not a bad guy but has progressively grown worse and worse. He will not stop talking and is VERY much one of those people who is hot-headed in nature and, when provoked, tends to go off. He is also one of those at the bottom of the class as far as test marks so far goes. Therefore he should be looking to better himself …. but they don't think that way and students like him and the so-called 'Leg Man' do very little in lessons except chatting loudly, playing with their phones and wasting time.
All the other students had their papers and started writing. This one did NOT. So back I went to the front. He was sitting there with a face that was about to explode like the H-bomb.
Then he got up angrily and stormed out of the classroom slamming the door behind him.
HOW PATHETIC IS THAT??
Well, I thought, one less to mark. I stood there and said loudly to them, “Anybody ELSE want to JOIN HIM??”. Nobody said anything and got on with their tests.
He reappeared some time later but already had lost about 20-25 minutes. When he came back, he DID finally sit where I had asked him to move to. I gave him his paper and he started on it.
WHAT KIND of attitude WAS THAT?? Tell you what – he is VERY lucky I didn't choose to go and report his unreasonable behaviour as I had done with Leg Man and his key throwing 'antics' earlier in the term. Really I think it is what I SHOULD have done because it was blatantly undisciplined behaviour and total disrespect for a teacher. They wouldn't do it for their superiors so WHY should I have to put up with it?
Of course, because of this disruption, things didn't go well. Mutterings went on despite attempts to keep them quiet. Now, I had already decided today to be more lenient with them than normal since many of them NEEDED these marks. But STILL there were some of them who insisted, despite my warnings, to go on their obvious communications and they got deducted marks.
WHY do these people never learn? OOOHHH I REALLY hate doing tests with these people!!
It is something of a love-hate thing. “Love” because I like to see them squirm and sweat and because for many it is the ONLY time I can get work out of them. “Hate”, on the other hand, because they JUST don't get the idea that they should shut up, bring pens and that I WILL not have them cheating in their tests in this way. When I tell them to NOT talk, then I MEAN IT! And when I come to deduction of marks, they react in such a way like I am wrong to do so and that I should LET them.
Some time ago I was one of the invigilators of the college end of year tests. It was a one-off afternoon occasion. But it was memorable for several reasons. First, the fact the students STILL cheated. Secondly, the Saudi teachers sitting with us as invigilators actually went around and HELPED THEM when they didn't understand. Thirdly, that soon after the exam began, in came a man (probably the professor or something similar) whose job it was to explain any questions or parts of questions they did not understand.
Why is this unusual or strange, you ask me. Well, come ON!! This is an EXAM, a test of THEIR KNOWLEDGE. If they don't understand the questions then it is their OWN fault as students. OK, one thing I would say is that there are times when a question is badly worded and that IS then the teacher's fault. I personally try to keep instructions simple though there are times they may not be. But I ALWAYS give an example to show them what to do (but even THAT confuses some of them at times!)
Explaining the question as as good as telling students HOW to answer the question. NOT the role of the teacher! I HATE IT when, during a test, a student asks me if “this” is the answer or what a word means or something similar.
It is the STUDENT'S job, during an exam, to answer the question. NOT the teacher's!!
And yet they constantly try it on!!
I rather feel that if people are allowed to get away with cheating, they will continue to do it and it will become acceptable practice. ALSO I think this: in this country the teachers want their students to do well as it reflects well on them as teachers. That's obvious for us all as teachers of course. But if a teacher gives his students answers and help then WHOSE brain is being used during the exam?
In this country too, the teacher is always the man at fault. If his students do badly then it is the TEACHER who is at fault. Not the poor, helpless, innocent student – oh no, no, NO! But ALWAYS the teacher.
Students here do very little study outside classes. I am convinced of that. And yet they feel they have some RIGHT to behave like that because the blame for bad marks and grades will rarely lie at THEIR doors. Well, if YOU knew that the teacher would get the blame instead of you then of course YOU would do the same, wouldn't you?
Looking at it, for one moment, from a student's point of view. There are situations where the student has too many exams at one time and where it is not always possible to study as much as you would like for everything. Times when it is UNREASONABLE for a school to give so many exams at one time or where giving exams has no real value. In such situations, YES, it might be justified for a student to find ways to get through such a “landslide period” of so many exams by giving himself an “advantage”. I've seen the cheat sheets before!
But THAT is rather the exception, NOT the rule. Students should not be thinking that the way through ALL exams is by cheating the system.
I was never much good at exams. But they DO have an important use – they test that we have in our heads the things we NEED TO KNOW in order to progress further whether in life or career or other times. IF somebody gets through such times by cheating then in the end they only cheat themselves because they go will go further they then are able to.
So …. revision week (of a sort) is coming up. Then it's Final Exam week which will include their Speaking Exam (to be devised). And if they think they're in for an easy ride in THAT week then they'd better think TWICE!
Basically now things are winding down to the 'end game'. Those students who are doing well know that and also the students who have had enough are also showing this.
Actually now there is one important week of revision to go plus, in the week after that (the last one) there will be the Final Exams and Speaking Exam for them. So in fact it is NOT the end of the trail just yet either for them or for me.
However, as much as I should still be pushing them through this ….. I don't WANT TO. Oh, all I want to do just now is get on that plane bound for London and leave those good-for-nothings behind. I'll be shedding tears of course …... tears of JOY that is!
The last progress test a few weeks ago produced its share of drama. It is the ONLY time that I can get some work out of them. BUT, in their eyes it is ME who has to do the work in revision and they can just do whatever they feel like doing (or not doing).
The last test then. They'd been away for their week of holidays (and I'd had a nice break from them too!) and now they were back. The test was set for the last day of the week (Wednesday) and revision was being done.
Did it mainly on the board. However, like all things here, those boys make it very hard. There's me standing at the front doing board work, three or four of them are sitting around taking notice of what I'm doing while most of the others are locked into their own conversations ….. which invariably are about nothing much at all. Certainly nothing that can't wait, but then this is the time of the day when they all get together and they do what they can. For sure, the LEAST part of that is learning anything like English.
It just annoys me, but now I let it go. It is too late to worry much about those time-wasters and lazy toe-rags who just can't be bothered any more. Because I TOO can't be bothered about THEM! Yes, I know I know – a sinful thing to say as a respectable teacher of English. But it is August now, I have less than two weeks till my summer holiday and THAT is the only thing I care about now!
So I got through the revision part of the week. There was some debate, as always on WHEN we should have the test. First I'd said Wednesday. But I'd heard a rumour that it was going to be their Student Day this Wednesday coming and therefore the test couldn't take place. This rumour continued in my mind until, I think, Monday and then I went to ask and was told that it was NOT to be the Student Day.
By then, three of the class had gone. There was some reason why they were being allowed to go to their homes early. Also, one other student had said that he was going to be away in the next week because he was getting married. Well, before I was able to make the decision on when to do the test, those three had already gone.
Anyway test day came. Period 1 of Wednesday is always last-minute revision time, then it came to the test. Before the students came back in, I reorganised the chairs so they were spaced out sufficiently. Normal procedure for any test. You don't want them sitting too close together as they cheat like crazy and I want to try to stop it. Not always successfully.
In they came and all seemed to head for that same corner. Most were seated fine, but two were not and were too close to others. I asked them nicely to move and pointed out where I would like them to move to. I was not going to start until they were seated properly of course.
Now, one of them moved quite willingly but the other one refused. “No!”, he said. I asked him again politely to move and again he refused. AGAIN I asked him more firmly but STILL he would NOT move his place and seemed to think that I was unfairly asking ONLY him to move. Not true as he was one of TWO I had asked. ONE more time I asked him to move and pointed out that I was waiting for him and only HIM before I could start. But still nothing.
OK, I thought. I then gave out test papers to everyone else but did NOT give him one. If he was not going to do a simple thing then he would simply be excluded from the whole thing. And there is NO WAY he would have refused if I had been a teacher in uniform or another Saudi teacher. It was because it was ME that he thought he could be rude and defiant in this way. Or was it that if he moved then he would be further away from those he could communicate with for cheating purposes?
This particular student was one who started as not a bad guy but has progressively grown worse and worse. He will not stop talking and is VERY much one of those people who is hot-headed in nature and, when provoked, tends to go off. He is also one of those at the bottom of the class as far as test marks so far goes. Therefore he should be looking to better himself …. but they don't think that way and students like him and the so-called 'Leg Man' do very little in lessons except chatting loudly, playing with their phones and wasting time.
All the other students had their papers and started writing. This one did NOT. So back I went to the front. He was sitting there with a face that was about to explode like the H-bomb.
Then he got up angrily and stormed out of the classroom slamming the door behind him.
HOW PATHETIC IS THAT??
Well, I thought, one less to mark. I stood there and said loudly to them, “Anybody ELSE want to JOIN HIM??”. Nobody said anything and got on with their tests.
He reappeared some time later but already had lost about 20-25 minutes. When he came back, he DID finally sit where I had asked him to move to. I gave him his paper and he started on it.
WHAT KIND of attitude WAS THAT?? Tell you what – he is VERY lucky I didn't choose to go and report his unreasonable behaviour as I had done with Leg Man and his key throwing 'antics' earlier in the term. Really I think it is what I SHOULD have done because it was blatantly undisciplined behaviour and total disrespect for a teacher. They wouldn't do it for their superiors so WHY should I have to put up with it?
Of course, because of this disruption, things didn't go well. Mutterings went on despite attempts to keep them quiet. Now, I had already decided today to be more lenient with them than normal since many of them NEEDED these marks. But STILL there were some of them who insisted, despite my warnings, to go on their obvious communications and they got deducted marks.
WHY do these people never learn? OOOHHH I REALLY hate doing tests with these people!!
It is something of a love-hate thing. “Love” because I like to see them squirm and sweat and because for many it is the ONLY time I can get work out of them. “Hate”, on the other hand, because they JUST don't get the idea that they should shut up, bring pens and that I WILL not have them cheating in their tests in this way. When I tell them to NOT talk, then I MEAN IT! And when I come to deduction of marks, they react in such a way like I am wrong to do so and that I should LET them.
Some time ago I was one of the invigilators of the college end of year tests. It was a one-off afternoon occasion. But it was memorable for several reasons. First, the fact the students STILL cheated. Secondly, the Saudi teachers sitting with us as invigilators actually went around and HELPED THEM when they didn't understand. Thirdly, that soon after the exam began, in came a man (probably the professor or something similar) whose job it was to explain any questions or parts of questions they did not understand.
Why is this unusual or strange, you ask me. Well, come ON!! This is an EXAM, a test of THEIR KNOWLEDGE. If they don't understand the questions then it is their OWN fault as students. OK, one thing I would say is that there are times when a question is badly worded and that IS then the teacher's fault. I personally try to keep instructions simple though there are times they may not be. But I ALWAYS give an example to show them what to do (but even THAT confuses some of them at times!)
Explaining the question as as good as telling students HOW to answer the question. NOT the role of the teacher! I HATE IT when, during a test, a student asks me if “this” is the answer or what a word means or something similar.
It is the STUDENT'S job, during an exam, to answer the question. NOT the teacher's!!
And yet they constantly try it on!!
I rather feel that if people are allowed to get away with cheating, they will continue to do it and it will become acceptable practice. ALSO I think this: in this country the teachers want their students to do well as it reflects well on them as teachers. That's obvious for us all as teachers of course. But if a teacher gives his students answers and help then WHOSE brain is being used during the exam?
In this country too, the teacher is always the man at fault. If his students do badly then it is the TEACHER who is at fault. Not the poor, helpless, innocent student – oh no, no, NO! But ALWAYS the teacher.
Students here do very little study outside classes. I am convinced of that. And yet they feel they have some RIGHT to behave like that because the blame for bad marks and grades will rarely lie at THEIR doors. Well, if YOU knew that the teacher would get the blame instead of you then of course YOU would do the same, wouldn't you?
Looking at it, for one moment, from a student's point of view. There are situations where the student has too many exams at one time and where it is not always possible to study as much as you would like for everything. Times when it is UNREASONABLE for a school to give so many exams at one time or where giving exams has no real value. In such situations, YES, it might be justified for a student to find ways to get through such a “landslide period” of so many exams by giving himself an “advantage”. I've seen the cheat sheets before!
But THAT is rather the exception, NOT the rule. Students should not be thinking that the way through ALL exams is by cheating the system.
I was never much good at exams. But they DO have an important use – they test that we have in our heads the things we NEED TO KNOW in order to progress further whether in life or career or other times. IF somebody gets through such times by cheating then in the end they only cheat themselves because they go will go further they then are able to.
So …. revision week (of a sort) is coming up. Then it's Final Exam week which will include their Speaking Exam (to be devised). And if they think they're in for an easy ride in THAT week then they'd better think TWICE!
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