just how stupid do they think i am?

my students must think i am an idiot. sadly for them, i'm not. chinese students cheat a lot, and we have our midterm exams this week. it is basically a very easy quiz. for the past three weeks we have worked on a set of vocabulary words to describe emotions. there are only 36 words!! and we have worked on them in class for three weeks!! and they still think they need to cheat!! ugh.

the student's grades are based largely on attendance and participation. we also give a midterm exam and a final. last semester i gave a lot more quizzes, but it was so frustrating i decided to give less this semester. the students still don't take them seriously, although it is pretty clear that failing either the midterm or final would bode very poorly for passing the class. i still have had less then half the students in each class show up for the midterm.

yesterday i gave the quiz three times and failed 14 kids for cheating. one kid had the answers taped to his arm. others used cheat sheets, or tried to trade papers with their friends, text each other the answers with their cell phones, or talk. i wrote 8 different quizzes this time for all the classes i have. in the afternoon, i got a kid who didn't even take the quiz, he just turned in the answers to the version of the quiz i had given that morning. i had another kid, who i hadn't managed to catch cheating during the test, accidentally turn in his cheat sheet with his test! zero.

the students in the class i had earlier today aren't close. in a lot of the classes, the students are great friends and sit close together. in this class, they spread out. they never sit in the front two rows. today i get to class and the 15 out of 40 that have showed up are crammed, side by side, in the first three rows. when it came time for the quiz, i told them to bring everything to the front of the room. this is my standard rule. no paper. no notebooks. no cellphones. no glasses cases. nothing. they all sat in the first three rows and would not relinquish single sheets of paper. i told them to spread out, and i would give them paper. still no one moved. ah ha. i looked under their papers and they all had the answers written on the desks. bad kids! i finally get them spread out, and i think i have all of their stuff at the front. still, before i start the quiz, i did one more check. i caught 3 more cheat sheets under test papers before the quiz, and another during the quiz. in my class, if you cheat, you get a 0. the kids know this, i am very clear on this point. and yet, the don't learn. there are a number of kids who have, by midterm, assured they have no way to pass the class.

on the bright side, duff and i have made some spunky new friends. yesterday, as i was walking home from my last class, i was charged by three little girls from 9 to 11. they accompanied me all the way home and we practiced their english and my chinese. we sang 'xiao yan zi'...a song amy taught me about at swallow. it was so much fun to be skipping along with three little girls singing chinese children's songs. they are sharp kids and quick learners, and by the time we got to my apartment had mastered a number of new vocabulary words.

this afternoon, duff and i saw them again in our school's dirty alley (a food street with small restaurants and vendors and a lot of trash). they ran up again, and asked me my name. i told them and then i realized they didn't recognize me. they were saying, "you aren't kate." my hair was tied back. i took it down. instant recognition. we talked to them for 15 minutes, and in the process, halted activity on the street. everybody stopped and watched these three brave little girls talking to the foreigners. linda, sue, and mary are the little girl's english names. yesterday, mary's name was yuki.

no chinese lesson for us tonight. amy is putting in long hours at her office. she was at work until 3 a.m. last night, and plans to do the same thing tonight. i haven't any idea what she is preparing for.