Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Hell is going to break loose tomorrow. The final exam begins and I have 200 papers to mark. Every set of paper will have a comprehension, an essay, a cloze passage and a formal letter. I don’t like exams because marking exam papers is a very troublesome matter. Seriousness and concentration is required as those papers are being marked and we are only given around 9 days to complete the task.
This semester was not a very good semester for me. Often, I was discouraged by students who were not keen on their studies. Some skipped classes while some withdrew from their studies. Perhaps my expectation on them were too high, I had this ideal vision of how I would want them to be and they did not turn out to be what I wanted them to be. The disappointments discouraged me. I was so tired of chasing after problematic students that I just did not want to care anymore. I did not bother to check on those who did not turn up for appointments. I decided that it takes two hands to clap and if they wanted to do well in their studies, they had to take some initiative and act on things.
Two weeks before the semester ended, MH came to me and told me that she was going to reseat for one of my papers and asked me if I could give her tuition. I agreed but I was skeptical. Last semester, I offered her tuition throughout the semester but she never turned up even once so this time, I did not take her request seriously. During out first meeting, I gave her some Antonyms to memorize. It was quite a lot to remember. When she came to see me again during our next meeting, I gave her dictation on the antonyms and she got 80% of it correct. I was pleased because she did study. I continued to give her work to do and she always got her work done. Sometimes it was not well done but I could see that she was serious about passing the paper this time.
I’m happy to have given her a second chance. She is one of the weakest in her batch, I remembered her friends calling her stupid but she inspires me. My encounter with her gives me hope to help weak students. She will not get A for this paper but I know if she maintains this consistency that she has, she is going to do better than most of her peers at the next level. Today, am a happy teacher.

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