That's the Teacher in Me!

February 6, 2010
As a teacher in Nepal, I’ve been reprimanded a number of times for not beating my students. As a teacher who will return to America and teach next year, I can’t even imagine beating my students! So, I’ve quickly become a favorite teacher and I’m supposedly the “nicest” of the higher level students, all on the basis that I don’t beat them! Now, we’re not just talking about a beating when you misbehave, but even if you don’t know the answer or are confused by the teacher’s teaching (scary, right?!). So, when I walk into the classroom to teach, all my students breathe a sigh of relief and relax in their desks, because while I expect them to learn, I’m not going to beat them if they don’t instantly understand the material!

Now before you go thinking that I’m a push-over and the kids probably walk all over me, you should know that I’m also known as the strictest teacher in our whole school, the city, and quite possibly all of Nepal! Sound like a contradiction? Yeah, I thought so too the first time they told me that! I managed to earn that name the first 4 days I proctored exams: one day in each classroom!

Here in Nepal, all the students take all the subject exams in a span of 3 days. All the upper level students are mixed into different classrooms to “prevent” cheating (I use the word prevent very loosely, as a collaborative society is clearly rising up in Nepal!). For term exams we have 8 days of testing, one for each subject. For mid terms, though, we have only 3 days of testing, with multiple tests on the same day. Well, I was thoroughly trained by Conroe High School (about 8000 times in the 1.5 years I taught there!) how to actively monitor students while they are testing to ensure that they’re not cheating.

Here we only have one aisle in the room, and there are 2-3 students crammed into the benches vaguely reminding me of pictures of the covered-wagon days in America! And the aisle we do have is about as big as a 10 year old girl, so I don’t do a whole lot of walking back and forth through the room, but I do stand for most of the exam, making sure I can see everyone. Turns out, most of the other teachers sit for the exam. In addition, I don’t allow talking (well, they’re not supposed to talk, but, I guess the other teachers don’t fight the urgent whispering breaking the silence filled with car horns and shouting in the streets!). I can’t handle talking during exams, so, I threatened to cut marks the first day I proctored an exam if the students didn’t stop talking. They didn’t stop talking so I did cut marks (rule number 1 in teaching-never make an empty threat!), and quickly everyone in the school heard all the juicy details of how MY red pen made a nasty little minus five on the top of two students exams. And they got quiet. Real fast.

So, now that I’ve established myself as the strictest teacher, I walk into the classrooms on testing days to a chorus of groans, that make me laugh and quite proud. I may not beat the students, but they sure are quiet when I’m in the room! That said, now that I’ve got a reputation that precedes me, I can relax during the exams and watch the kids. I’ve got a few short stories of the past 3 days of exams that made me really laugh inside!

Picture this: for exams, there are class 6-9 students packed into the same classroom, with ages ranging from 9-10 all the way up to 16-17 depending on when the kids started school. In the front of one classroom, there were three boys packed into a bench, which was a sight in itself. Now, the funny part was that the two outer boys were class 8 and 9 students, who were big boys, especially here in Nepal! The middle one was one of my class 6 boys who might be the smallest of all my students, class 5 included. Basically, he looked like a little flea next to a water buffalo and an elephant. And the whole exam he was battling for his small little pocket of air next to two vortexes that continuously demanded more space! I mean, his feet don’t even reach the ground when he’s sitting on the bench! So he brought his little clipboard and worked through his exams on his lap, giving them the space their size and age demanded!

Then, there were those kids who know absolutely nothing (honestly, I sometimes wonder if I gently blew into one ear would it come flowing right out the other side?!) about their classes and they get their exam and just sit and stare at it. I mean, they bore holes into it with their eyes. As if maybe, just maybe, after paying absolutely no attention to their classes for the last 4 weeks, the paper will magically produce answers for them. Or they stared out the window with their mouth half open, and I was just waiting for a little spittle to start trickling down their vacant faces! Or, my personal favorite, they start SINGING the questions to themselves in a little bird voice until my eyes bore through the tops of their heads and they look up to my laser eyes beneath raised eyebrows and immediately their jaw snaps shut with the speed of a snapping turtle! And that red pen just twirls in my fingers...

There were a number of other humorous incidents (pencils flying across the room in a hurried exchange of lead for ink and pencil boxes crashing to the floor to name just two!), but you get the idea. I’ve started entering the classrooms, laughing at the groans, and reminding them that I’m the strictest teacher once the exam starts, but the nicest one before, so they better get all their talking/shouting/gassing out before the exam starts because after that bell rings, I won’t allow any of it! They laugh at that and take me up on my offer and talk louder than all the other classrooms, but as none of the exams have begun yet, I don’t care one little iota. However, the other teachers frown slightly (I’m sure they thought I had no control during the exam time as well, but the students quickly set them straight as the teachers have asked me about my proctoring “style!”) but in the end they let my students rant and rave, knowing that at the sound of the bell you could hear a pin drop (and usually do hear a pen drop!) in the room! And at the end of the day, I go home satisfied knowing that I’ve earned the title of the nicest yet strictest teacher in the country! Sometimes, the bamboo rod just isn’t as powerful as a red pen :).