Prayers and Exams

This morning I was up for giving the morning devotion. We have an assembly
every Monday and Friday and a staff member is meant to give some sort of a
prayer/scripture reading. I'm not religious, you see. I believe there's
something more than just silly ole us, but I'm pretty much anti-religion,
and hesitate to make references to Jesus, Heavenly Father, etc. etc.
Buuuttt, I had to say something....
So my "prayer" was along the lines of:
None of us knows the paths our lives will take, where we will be 5, 10 years
from now. But we do have today, and in this day it is important to make
good decisions - know right from wrong, strive to become better people,
learn all that we can, be respectful, etc. So today let us all have the
strength to do be the best we can be.
Unfortunately I was a tad more eloquent in typing it just now. I sort of
fumbled around the not necessarily bowing our heads thing, plus, everyone
was soooo attentive that it kind of spooked me a little. But that was that.

Today was also a culmination of sorts, as it was the Mathematics exam for my
Grade 10's. I ran around like a nut distributing calculators and pencils
and writing "YOU CAN DO IT" on the board in 3 classrooms. Part 1 lasts only
an hour. I whipped through it in about 10 minutes. Unfortunately so did a
few learners. Their answer sheet consisted of miscellaneous numbers
scrawled across the page. James, if you're reading this, I'm referring to
Kativa from 10B, surprise! A few questions were kinda cruel. Surface Area?
Really? How many of you could calculate the surface area of a matchbox?
Volume OK, but Surface Area? And a probability problem where the
probability is given, so find the number of red balls in the bag. Why
couldn't they have just written a straightforward find the probability
question?

It was well-written, I have to say, and a very well-rounded test for
well-educated, English-speaking students. But my kids...sigh.

It was the same for Part 2, which technically lasts 2 hours. Some were done
after an hour, most after 1.5 hrs. But of those that finished early, I knew
they had written nonsense. I did it in 20, but there were 2 questions
actually that gave me pause, and 1 I couldn't do at all because I didn't
know what the value of a hectre was. How freakin random!? The rest, again,
was a pretty good test of overall math comprehension and ability...if you
could read English very well. Example: Box A contains x cookies. Box B
has 5 cookies less than Box A. Box C has twice as many cookies as Box A.
a. Write down, in terms of x, the number of cookies in Box B and C. b. The
total number of cookies is 55. Write an equation and solve for x to find
the number of cookies in Box A.

Now, for those playing at home, imagine this was written in Spanish...a
language you've all had about 2 solid years of instruction in.

I glanced at the answer books for some of the kids, and I'm guessing that
maybe only a handful will pass the exam with a 30% or higher. I think on
the whole everyone will get more points than they did in August, but it
won't be enough.

I am proud to say that just about everyone (save the
finish-in-10-minutes-ers) seems to have gotten the Trig problems right!
That, I am proud to say was my doing! :-)

Ok, off to see about a cold shower to cool off and strip off a few layers of
sweat...then to make dinner for my 3 learners of the year.