A Lot of Grading (8/26/2006)

The last couple of weeks I have been busier than I anticipated. I had to grade many exams and go to the seminar. It has been an eye opening experience to mark papers the Tanzanian way and see their marking scheme implemented. The marking scheme itself is not bad. It occasionally has mistakes which I hope the markers catch before they grade--the surprise is how rigidly they adhere to the scheme. If a student makes an error adding early in the problem zero points clearly their work is wrong. Similarly if they have any mistake in their formula (i.e. use length instead of height) they get zero points. I am not saying that papers are impressive--it is clear even if they were marked softer the students would not do too great. However, it has been useful to see that must be completely right to get points.

The teachers' seminar went well. I got some ideas for how to teach earth as a sphere and my first experience with Tanzanian marking. When I finished teaching my probability session I was not sure how much people got out of it, I went kind of fast and spent a lot of time on material I think they already knew. I did receive a few compliments and that is always rewarding. One of them is particularly remarkable in that he said he might have been more interested in math if his teachers did not use notes. Unfortunately not all my students share that opinion.

Also I realized that I will be in for a shock when I return to America because of the different work schedules. Last week was a busy week for me being TOD and marking qualifying, weekly and contest papers. Even with this large work load I was still going to bed at ten and waking up at six. I know a lot of people who this is their normal load. So life is good here.
-T.