Tuesday, November 21

I feel for the kids doing the exams this week.  The temperatures are hovering around 8-10 degrees above normal for this time of year, and we're just not used to 28 degrees for five days in a row.  The other thing is the classroom set-up.  We're using ten rooms and they're not designed for this purpose.  Today, we have 23 students doing Physics in a double classroom. I suppose there's enough space, but the desks are only standard school issue, about 60 x 45cm, and at least two different heights. It's a lottery which desk you get.  The names are placed in alphabetical order before the students enter the rooms so it's the luck of the draw.  One fellow is writing, hunched over a too-low desk with his too-long hair flapping in his eyes, and a young Asian woman's feet hardly touch the floor.

With five booklets, information sheet, pens, pencils, calculators, dictionary, and a bottle of water, the desk is inadequate.  They're forced to use the floor for the overflow.

And what's the deal with water?  People today won't leave home without enough water for a week.  I read that, across the world, we use 5 million bottles of water a minute!  Some of today's students have 2litre bottles; are they expecting a siege?

I've been trying to fill my time without breaking rules, and still exercising my brain.  On Friday, I listed all the words I could think of which ended in -ism.  I was surprised to find there are over 700 in the English language; I found 116 which I thought was pretty good.  Another day, I tried to list all the countries in the world.  There are dozens and I discovered that I have a woeful lack of knowledge of Africa and the Caribbean. This afternoon, during a Geography exam, I'm making notes for a blog post about what I do during the supervision shifts.

Not everyone is as stringent as I am about obeying the rules about no reading, no knitting, no sleeping, etc.  My partner this afternoon does crocheting (it's not knitting), others do Word Search or Sudoku (they're not crosswords) and it's not unknown to browse magazines found lying around the various classrooms.  Yesterday, a door opened as I walked past, and I spied one of the supervisors with a napkin spread across her lap, covered with a selection of open sandwiches.  All she needed was a glass of bubbly.