Exam Time

This week, I am taking a big test. They call it CXC which stands for Caribbean Examination Council. At the end of form 5, everyone has to take this exam. There are a bunch of different subjects that you can take the test in. Usually, students choose around (I'm guessing) 6-9 subjects to take during form 5, which they then take the exams in. However, I am in form 4. At my school, the principal is wanting all the form 4's to take a CXC exam in the subject EDPM (Electronic Document Preparation and Management). Ever since September, when school started, we have been working on our SBA (School Based Assessment). This is basically just a conglomeration of the work we needed to learn for the exam. Somehow that goes towards our grade, but our teacher grades it. Then, on Tuesday, I have the exam for the practical part. Some official examiner person will come to watch us and grade us, I think. But, it will still take place at the school. And then in another month, I will take the theory part of the exam.
For me, this is not that big of a deal, because I don't think it will really count for anything for me, but for the form fives, it is a very big deal. When people go to look for jobs, the employers will look at how well you did on the CXC exam. That and the exam that the form sixes take. But, after they finish form 5, they can graduate from school and they don't actually have to take form 6. Usually, those who are college bound do take form 6, though. So, anyways, there is a lot of pressure to do good on CXC. It's not as big of a deal for me, though. But, this exam is something that people all over the Caribbean take.
~Olivia

I taught my last class on Wed. night. I have had most of these 7 students in all 3 classes I've taught here and all of them in 2. They are all on their way to becoming social workers. I felt a little warm and fuzzy about the whole thing because I won't necessarily see most of them again. They, on the other hand were feeling stressed and a little afraid of me since I am giving them a final yet next week. Actually, the final is tomorrow. So I will have to finish editing it in the morning. But all I have to do is to e-mail it in. They have proctors who administer the test. I'll finish up this class in the next couple of weeks by grading their final exams and their final community project. It feels strange to see this part of my assignment coming to an end.
~Barb

Since the class I've been teaching this term is a preaching class, the "final exam" is for each student to deliver a sermon. With four students, we decided that trying to get all the sermons done in a single two-hour session would be difficult. It would leave hardly any time for the evaluation that we do all together. In addition, I've really stressed that preaching is an act of worship. So when the students preach, we try to set a worshipful tone by beginning with prayer and singing. In order to have sufficient time for all of this, we divided the final preaching into two sessions. Two of my students preached last week. The other two will preach on Wednesday. So I've had very little that I need to do in preparation for these last two classes. I will, of course, still need to give grades to each of the sermons. Some of the students have other assignments that they haven't turned in that I'll need to grade as well. So while I will have a fair amount of grading to do in the next week or so, the time spent on classes is down considerably and will soon be completely over.
~Richard