Yesterday I gave my English class in Los Alamos their first test. I’m pretty sure I was more nervous than they were.
As a student, I never realized how desperately my teachers wanted my classmates and me to do well. But as I graded the tests, I found myself rooting for each student, silently cheering when they aced a section and feeling a sense of failure on my own part when it was clear they hadn’t mastered the material.
Out of seven tests (two students failed to show up), the average final was 78%. Two of my students ended up with scores above 100 (I gave them extra points if they knew more than, say, the 5 out of 10 questions in a section that were required). But one student answered only 30% correctly. Yikes.
How do I respond to that? There’s clearly a huge difference in English proficiency, which is possibly due to the differences in age: my youngest student is seven, my oldest is seventeen. I would also be willing to put money on the fact that only one student, possibly two, actually studied. Not that I blame them for that. In a sense, their grades for my class are meaningless. It’s a class they attend voluntarily during their summer vacation, their grades won’t show up on any transcript, and they can’t “fail.”
Yet after living here for a month and a half, I’ve realized how important knowing English can be for improving lives. I also realize how grandiose that sounds, but it’s the truth. Knowing English can be the difference between getting a decent-paying job in Lima and never escaping the extreme poverty in Huaycan. Knowing English opens up so many doors that would otherwise be permanently shut. Any fair-paying job related to tourism in Lima is only tangible for those who know English: hotel doormen, concierges, managers, bellhops, front desk greeters; restaurant greeters, servers, managers; tour guides, museum workers, even the person on the other side of the counter at Starbucks. The people who work these jobs were instantly more employable because they knew English.
So although the English classes that LLI provides don’t count towards grades at school, they’re worth the effort and consistent attendance and extra studying. For this reason I’m concerned about how well I’m teaching and how well my students are improving. For this reason I need to figure out how to raise the class average, how to challenge the students who know their stuff, and how to help the students who feel in over their heads.
Another excellent post—all the teacher-types at Hope CRC would appreciate this one.
Paragraph two especially resonated with me.
You capture the sense of mission, of LLI’s purpose—keep at it and be encouraged.
Have you structured a vocab and language lesson around gardening?
Hi Corenna,
I found out about your website from News and Notes. I enjoyed reading about some of you experiences in Peru. The gardens at the zoo were certainly beautiful, but in the rest of the city there is really a lack of trees and other greenery.
Your website is really nicely done. I appreciated your story about the scorpion. When I taught school at Rehoboth in New Mexico I took the class for a walk one day. We came upon a rattle snake. My response was “Quick, run away” but some of the boys were already running after it. They managed to kill it (thank God) and I don’t remember what happened to it. The Navahos enjoy eating rattle snake meat.