Working In My Head

Vinod came in Monday with hollow-looking eyes and sat down with a sigh.

“Long weekend?” I asked, as I made some final changes to my first lesson of the day. We were in the teacher’s lounge of JM’s upper campus.

“I was working in my head all weekend long,” he said with an empty smile. The odd phrase made me laugh and think back to my years teaching at Hogg Middle School and how teachers there would come in on Mondays with the same tired looks and make the same anxious sighs.

“Working on what?” I asked.

“I’m just worried. About evaluations,” he said lightly patting a plastic sack of booklets he had carried in under his arm.

“What kind of evaluation?” I asked, sensing Vinod was eager to talk about it, despite (or maybe because of) the bags under his eyes.

“Student evaluation. We call them continuous evaluations,” he said and as he talked, Vinod drew out one of the booklets, which was white with a light blue border. He flipped through the book. A student’s meticulous handwriting—in English—filled the first twelve or so pages of the book, line after line, paragraph after paragraph.

“This book is for Chemistry,” Vinod explained. “Every few weeks, we have students work on an assignment in this book. It is their evaluation. Things like tests, little quizzes, group work, projects. It goes in here and it adds up at the end of the year. By the end, this book”—Vinod waved it in the air—“is worth 20 percent of their final mark.”

“What is the other 80 percent?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“State public examination.”

And we both nodded our head knowingly—two teachers a world apart now brought together by a common anxiety.

“In America,” I said, “it’s the same.”

“The same?” Vinod said, his eyebrows rising. He seemed gladdened by this news, in the same way a shipwreck survivor selfishly rejoices when he finds another castaway on his deserted island.

As we had been talking, another teacher named Santosh (different from my friend Santosh at the other JM campus, the one who wanted to learn Spanish) had inched closer listening. Vinod turned to him now and spoke quickly in Malayalm. I picked up the words “Ameriki” and “examen”.

“I told him that students in America also must take tests,” Vinod said, turning back to me. I nodded.

“You get nervous, huh?” I asked.

“Oh yes. Very nervous.”

“What happens if the students fail the state exams? Do they have to repeat their standard?”

“Not usually. They get a chance to take the test again sometime in August after the new school year has started.” (Kerala schools have a long break in March, April, and May). “They get a chance to study more, but it is usually really hard for students to take that exam they should have passed the first time.”

“Embarrassing for them?”

“Oh yes,” Vinod said.

“Do teachers get evaluated?” I asked.

Vinod looked confused for a second. I felt I was pushing him to the limits of his English. After a few more seconds, he said: “Sometimes…students will be asked to write reports about us and our classes. Sometimes. Not always.” He squinted and waggled his head, hoping he had answered my question.

“The state exams…” I continued, trying to break it down. “And the scores the students get on those exams…” Vinod nodded his head, showing me he was still following along. “Are teachers evaluated based on their students’ scores?”

Again, Vinod gave a befuddled look but he had understood my question. “No,” he said. “No, no, no. Of course not.” He shook his head and chuckled.

“In America,” I said, “teachers are evaluated on their students’ scores.”

Vinod stopped chuckling and said, “Really?” He turned to Santosh again and spoke in Malayalam. He turned back to me: “I just told him what you told me. That is hard for you and American teachers,” and he chuckled again.

I felt like saying, “Yeah, tell me about it,” but I simple raised my eyebrows and went back to preparing my lesson.