This week is exam / continuous assessment week. The students rock up for their exam or assessment task if they are in Grade 3 - 9, in their classrooms and then leave. Some students are picked up by their family driver in the huge SUV, others wait around for the bus, and the older boys of course drive themselevs. Today I was back and forth between schools so was able to compare. The boys arrived within the school vacintiy and hung around their cars in the car park, or sat across the road from the school in the large dessert area. The girls came in and sat around on the landing reading from their notes and doing due diligance in preparation for the exam. After the exam the girls sat around in the court yard talking and socilaising, the boys in contract were out through the gates and gone.
I was working with Salama and her mother rang her at school. Don't be lulled into the thought that Emirati parents don't care about schooling and their children. Some do! Salama's younger sister Rafea is in Grade 11 and today she sat applied mathematics. Salama's Mum rang to sound off at Salama about the exam and she was quite angry. The exam was hard, why was it so hard? Why do the students have calculators if they are not allowed to take them into the exam? What can Mum do to help? Rafea wrote the last long answer question not in the answer book but on her exam paper, what can be done... and so the conversation went on... in Arabic of course. While Salama is a teacher and a good teacher she can't sort out the woos of the education system or the rules and regulations of the exam system. From my end of the conversation here was one caring Emirati Mum, trying to do the best for her daughter!
1 comment:
Doesn't matter where you are, teachers are always going to get the same concerned/irate contact from parents. There's just no getting away from it.
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