Got the Score

Hi,

It was another fun week at the zoo.  Next weekend we get to spend it testing applicant students for next year – a little hypocrisy involved.  My fearless (rather worthless) leader stated back in November that they would need to fail half of the 4^th grades this year to get the class size down to one 5^th grade class next year.  One of their “new” big buzz phrases this year has been “Backwards Planning” (10 years old in the US).  Basically it means looking at what the goals are for students and then building instruction to meet those goals.  Unbeknownst to the children, our English Head of Department was backward planning their demise at our school.  Strange that I will be testing six new 5^th grade applicants – guess they will have to get rid of a few more students if I accept them.

On a really positive note, I feel like I got the last laugh this week.  After the newest standardized testing (Accer) I was finally presented with the results for English this week.  67% of my seventh graders were within the range of all 7^th grade students worldwide.  Compared to the next highest grade level at 22%.  Again, my all-knowing HOD spent almost 30 minutes trying to discredit the results.  Possibly that 0% of her 4^th graders were within the range – just an Educated guess?   I would think she would have been happy, since she had set the goals for her students to fail and they met her expectations.  I on the other had thought my job was to get them up to grade level and they met my expectations – strange how that worked.  I am extremely proud of them, especially since this is only their fourth year of English and they were performing between 2^nd and 4^th when I started teaching last year.

Again, we are trying to find a few funny things to share each week.  We took a few photos that we thought would get a chuckle.  The first is a picture looking out the window of the men’s toilet at our school.  If you look closely, you can see all the students lined up outside facing the window.  Maybe it is just me, but I really feel awkward standing there looking at students while aiming at the bowl  -- haram, haram!  The second is of a new salon “Rehab Saloon” that just opened – for those that need to look their best when recovering from bad choices and staring new habits.  The last is an oops that we laugh at on a regular basis.  They missed it “by that much!”  Nothing like one section of a bridge before the road goes in to mark the spot.  The cops love to sit there in the shade.  More fun to follow – we hope.

We missed Koen’s B-day this week, but we received several new pics – guess that will have to hold us.  Nick and Fran’s computer took a header this week, so they were without Skype – and we really need our weekly Koen fixes.  So, I suggested I would be willing to buy Koen his first computer – I got notified today that Koen loves his new IPad 3 – the old man got played! :-)

Lesson of the Week: If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.

Love to all,

Doug and Missie