Why I Hate Honduran National Exams

1)The proctor assumes I am not an equal to the Honduran teachers.

2)She only brings 16 tests for our 19 children, so we just don’t test 3 of them.

3)Some of the kids get parts of the reading test (text, questions, multiple choice options) read to them. Sort of defeats the purpose of a reading test.

4)Even when you set the expectations very clearly, the kids still shout out the answers. They don’t stop until you totally lose your patience and yell at them.

5)The kids ask you if their answers are correct no matter how many times you tell them you can’t say because it’s a test.

6)My students are so dependent. They ask questions when the directions have already been given and refuse to simply put their own common sense to work.

7)They get help when they don’t understand (or don’t want to try to understand) – but not from me, mind you. I’m all about helping when I’m teaching, but an assessment is supposed to measure what a child can do on his or her own. On these tests, they were given clues and had questions explained to them. After all the rules for WASL and MSP, I just couldn’t deal with it.

8)I have to suck it up because this is not my country and this is not my culture. There are some things I cannot change.

I just don’t understand the complete lack of logical and reasoning amongst my students. And I don’t know how they end up that way. Montessori teaches them to be independent; they work at their own level and choose their own activities. I am grateful for the fact that the tests were easy and that our expectations in the classroom and what the students are doing are above the national level. But I would love to get some more of the constructivist philosophy into the classroom, and I think Montessori is conducive to that. I’ve been talking to Momo, and we think I’m going to move up to second grade next year (in February – the school year is different here) because the group is so difficult. But we’d also like to start a gifted and talented program; a few days a week, I’d be pulling out kids for enrichment, and that’s really exciting to me. I can’t change the way a whole country thinks about education, nor do I think that’s my place, but I can maybe help a small group of children to be more analytical thinkers. We’ll see.