Summer vacation, will it ever get here?!?! Just a couple of weeks left of classes and I couldn’t be more ready. The last month of school is always the toughest, the kids have been checked out for the past month so of course that means more behavior issues and teachers have to deal with the end of the year busy work stuff.
In Honduras, life at the end of the school year can be a bit more stressful for teachers than in the States. Here, if a student fails the year (that is all 4 quarters averaged together) they have the option to take a “recoup” (a test) over the quarter(s) that they failed. That means that the teacher must write a new exam that can be finished within an hour and can not be longer than 5 pages, testing that student over the entire quarter or quarters. If a student takes that test and still fails, they will get the chance to take another test which the teacher will have to create another test for this one individual student. Some students will have to take a “recoup” test(s) in more than one class.
Here in Honduras, the law believes in chance, after chance, after chance. No way does this make for good education. From what I have learned thus far is after the second “recoup” exam, a teacher and school’s integrity is challenged and many teachers will make the test easier or the grader will ultimately just pass the student to not have to deal with that student again or deal with the lawyers of that student’s family. This law isn’t creating more educated students but lazy and corrupt individuals. Things like this helps me understand how this country got to the place it is at, lazy and corrupt.
