Course (Saturday, 2010 August 7)
Forgot to mention: gaunt, but attractive (in a tragic way).
Yesterday was finals at model school. I’ve been grading them. 5e was kind of haphazard; the last question, worth 3 points (out of 20) was "All the keys are coming out in capital; why, and how do you fix it?" Almost nobody got it. I gave partial credit generously, particularly to those who confused caps lock with the shift key. (Shift is called "la touche majuscule", "the capital key", and caps lock is "verouille majuscule", "capital lock".) Those who said that it was necessary to push the "lower-case key" to get keys in lower case did not get credit.
Going through 3e now. It’s really shocking how wide the variance is between the best students in the class and the worst. Highest grade so far: 16.5 out of 20. (Or, in French: 16,5 over 20.) Lowest: 1 out of 20. I know I’m a shitty teacher and only briefly mentioned some things that I ended up testing on, but even so. All of us Informatique teachers are struggling with this problem to a greater or lesser extent. We don’t want to lose the kids who are already way ahead of this stuff. The system is grade-based rather than subject-based, so classes can’t be split by ability. So we get to try to teach a high level to those who are obviously interested, and a low level to those who can’t be bothered.
Speaking of which: group photo!
Today was also the course, or "run", put on by the running club at the model school. I obviously thought it was interesting enough to name this entry after it, but there isn’t really much to say. My host brother Hyacenthe got first place. Prizes were pineapples with hand-drawn paper ribbons on them, and also Starburst. It was cool to watch the race and the runners; it’s always kind of inspiring to see an organized event, makes you feel like something good is happening.
A picture being worth a thousand blurry words, please find yourself subject to another:
(Third place. One of Julia’s students, with whom Julia was very impressed.)
Now playing: Swashbuckling Swantoon, "Final Strike". Discovered this band due to Theo, who grabbed a bunch of random tracks packaged as a collection called "lynn loev 8bit".