Czech This Out

3 May

Today, I feel like I witnessed genuine progress. We had our regular Thursday English Department meeting and an interesting topic (for me, at least!) was brought up. The exam for the end of high school - basically a leaving exam - is very difficult and very subjective. I will give more details in a week or so when they begin, but here I will just say that they are oral exams and the grading is basically up to each examiner - no standardization, no regulation of the method or scoring system that is used. I don't love it, but I have sort of become accustomed to it. The country's exams are in the process of reform as a whole - we'd all been looking at new options. We'd decided last week to use a written, more objective test; however, this week another option was brought up. One of our choices is to use a portfolio. This way we could get an authentic picture of what the kids learn, sort of a view of the process of the student getting to their current level. This is quite a progressive idea! I pushed hard for it, feeling a bit guilty because I am helping to make hard decisions, and I MAY not be here when they are implemented, meaning I may not have to do any of the real work for it. Still, I was ecstatic to see that the other teachers were willing to take this risk and put in the extra work to make real changes in our school specifically.
So, on another note...on Tuesday and Thursdays, I teach American Realia - which is like history, geography, and government - basically a social studies class about America. Some of my classes take a lot of energy, since they are conversation classes or involve complex grammar lessons and questions that I don't know how to answer! This Realia class is often a welcome relief...a bit of hard fact, something tangible, and not debatable...in short, I like knowing what I am talking about on occasion!

posted by Kassidee Kennedy @ 2:06 PM