Friday, June 5, 2009

A break of the monotony

The final exam for the Juniors is a 15-minute Oral Presentation on an aspect of a piece of literature. It's an IB assessment and students are scored based on knowledge of text, analysis of text and its literary devices, organization, and language. Beyond that, though, they can present any way they care to - an interview with the author, a monologue from a character, an analysis of a motif, etc.

It's a good assessment, but they take forever. Instead of being set in one time period for the final, we spread them all around the week in groups of 8. Listening to 5 straight hours of 17-year olds talking about literature is both my favorite thing and least favorite thing in the world. As an English teacher, I love doing it; however, you can probablyimagine that many of them are bad and, regardless of quality, it's just hard to listen to so many for so long.

Thus, it's been a long week. Students are supposed to hand me an outline that I can follow while I listen, though, and one kid did something to lighten the mood. Before he began, I asked him to pass me his outline. It was three sheets long, and I noticed there appeared to be a photograph in the middle, that I figured must have been given to me on accident. I went to pass it back, when I realized... it was Kevin James' face smiling back at me. I burst out laughing. He got me.

Five more today, and then I'm done. Then I can get to some real grading.

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