It’s the end of the term. It’s finals time. I’ve taken the students on my own path for the past six weeks, but now if they’re mainstreamed into the standard finals, they’re all doomed to fail. To save them, I’ve successfully negotiated the right to give them a final of my own design.
And then I wonder why I’ve negotiated so vigorously for something so risky. What if the students fail? What if they feel disenfranchised, having been derailed from the status quo? What if their conclusion is something like, “Is this what we get for being honest?”
But the reason why I’m so confident is because the verdict is already in. The students have changed. They don’t use their phones in class. They don’t use class for chatting with their friends. The absent glaze in their eyes is gone. They’re determined to learn and they’re not letting anything get in their way anymore, including themselves.
I negotiated so that the final was an oral test. The message had to be clear, “There is no way you can cheat on this final.” They had to translate phrases we had studied from Lao to English / from English to Lao. They would have to respond in seconds and had to be very prepared.
80% passed with astonishing confidence. I had the privilege to look every student in the eye and confirm that they owned their own knowledge. Confidence makes the eyes shine. Like winners in a game show, they slam their palm on the button and win the pot.
The other 20% need more time. I discovered that the 5 boys who sat in the back row couldn’t differentiate key sounds like ch/sh/th/s/z. When all these sounds sound the same, they can't get past the starting block. I offered to help them that night, but they didn’t show up. Like turtles in a protective shell, they weren’t ready yet.
Another 10% thought they could play the old game. Two begged for the chance to try again. Why did they think ten minutes of review would help? Technically, you can’t cheat on an oral test, but they had a friend mouthing the answers behind my back. I wasn’t going to waste time lecturing. I just asked, “Why didn’t you prepare before?” She said she had a sore throat or something. (cough, cough)
It would have been a challenge to win over every single student, but I was finally just getting to know everyone’s name. To be fair to myself, we had already arrived. The culture in the class had changed and we were on a new bus.
My memory scans over the highlights of the last six weeks. The times I’d yell myself hoarse over the din. The day I slammed the door and kept students hostage until they finished their writing. The day students started learning and the day someone told me, “You taught me how to be honest to myself.”
50 students crowded into a 95-degree room. Who could have imagined it could be done.
