Here in Moldova, we are wrapping up the school year (Can you believe I’m almost through my first full year of school as a teacher in Moldova?? I can’t!). Students in grades 1-8 at my school have one week left of classes, but my 9th grade students will wrap up their classes this week and begin preparing for their evaluations. School is only compulsory here until 9th grade, so they will graduate in June.
The end of school, like in the United States, is an exciting and busy time. It’s can also be a bit challenging for students and teachers alike since everyone is just ready to be done. Also, there is lots of test and assignment grading.
One of our jobs as volunteers is to make sure that we have data to support and show the work we do. For education volunteers, this means we do pre- and post- tests with every student we work with for the course of the school year. It is important that we can show our schools, communities, and Peace Corps what progress we have made and what we need to work on. It’s also good to be able to show our partner teachers and students the improvements students have made throughout the year. It’s also a lot of work (I worked with 206 students this year, which means there are that many tests to grade)! The picture at top is my desk this afternoon as I work on correcting and grading and recording the post-tests for my 9th grade students! I promise it’s not always this messy (see picture below for proof).
But despite the amount of work, I’m very happy to know that a large majority of my 9th graders have shown improvements this year! A few improved their scores by large point margins, and I am very proud of them. It’s nice to see that I actually did teach the students something! Now on to the 4th and 6th grade tests (7th and 5th grade tests will be taken later this week or next week)!
The Oke Den 