Reading charlie's journal

It's midterm test time at the school I'm teaching at now. For my freshman high school test I do a speaking test, because the students are smart enough to get perfect tests on written or listening tests, but they still can't speak English with confidence.

However there are 35 students in each section, and I only see them once a week. So I have a review day one week, test the first 17ish students one day, and the last 17ish students the next week.

One of my supervising teachers commented that this test is unfair because some students have only one week to study while other have two weeks to study. I know this, and I go in reverse order for the final test to try and counter balance this unfairness. He said still the test is unfair. But in reality, high school students don't study anyway, and the few students who do study are already ready on the first day, and the rest of them will never study anyway.

I reminded him that I have been doing tests this way for a year now, and the teacher in my position did them the same way before me.

This year there are some new government regulations about English speaking classes for freshmen.

1. freshman should be taught English Speaking from a government recommended text (before this law I was teaching without a textbook)

2. freshman should be taught English Speaking at least twice a week (for budget reasons, the school is currently ignoring this law)

3. English Speaking should be a separate course, not combined with Reading or Writing.

Last year the grade for "English I" was a combined percentage of Reading, Writing and Speaking - my percentage was 20%, Reading and Writing were both 40%. However this year there are three separate courses with three separate grades.

My supervising teacher said, "Oh, last year it didn't matter because you were only 20% of the grade. But this year you are 100% of the students' grades."

So it didn't matter that my tests last year were unfair because my grade didn't matter anyway?!?! So now I don't matter. I wasn't really a teacher last year. I mean my title is "ASSISTANT Language Teacher", but really I've been doing all the planning, all the talking, and you sit in the corner in case I fuck up (which hasn't happened yet), and then you have the nerve to tell me my class didn't matter?!?! F* off!

...That's what I wish I could have said to my supervisior.

Please contiune to vote AND post.

That really sucks. I'm glad I'm currently not in any sort of teaching position, especially in language arts of any sort. Good luck with the exams.

--Jami Yeah, that's gonna sting in the morning.