The Exploits of a Honduran Teacher: Grades...

Monday, October 30, 2006

Grades...

It seems that I haven't written for a little while. This is mainly because there hasn't been too much going on besides school work. Grades for the first quarter were due today, so I have been working like crazy to get them done. The schools down here divide the school year into quarters and each one is completely separate from the other- so I had to calculate final grades for each one of my 175 students. In order to do that, though, I had to finish grading all of their papers and stories, which took quite a long time to do as well. So I literally worked all weekend long with just a few breaks. I was pretty disappointed with the grades of my students... in most of my classes I had anywhere from 5 to 11 students that didn't pass (out of 25 students)- they just don't do the work and so they get zeros on everything. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for them.

Two weekends ago we went with Cleo to see her new grandson that had just been born the day before. That was an interesting experience because we went to one of the public hospitals where all the women and their new-born babies were in one big room together. I felt really out of place because here I was in another culture surrounded by lots of women who were all breastfeeding their babies. Needless to say, childbirth and pregnant women are not things that I am used to...

This past weekend we took a break on Friday night and went to out to Pizza Hut for one of our coworker's birthdays. It was fun and we got to practice our Spanish a lot. Saturday we worked all day and then went to a costume party that some of our American friends were throwing that night. The party itself was alright, but it was really fun to dress up. Brian dressed up as a lumberjack/hick, Anna was a Japanese woman, Jason was a ghost (with a few sheets) and I was a European hitman. I found this really great toy gun at the "Everything" store that looks really real (plus it shoots darts really well). Then I slicked back my hair with a little pony-tail and dressed in tight all black clothes. Here are some pictures (I will put more up, but am not able to transfer them now):