The Boundary of the School Year and The Boundary of the Atom
An atom cannot be said to have definite boundaries. If you want to describe the location of some outer electron in an atom, you describe it not by giving it a set location, but by a probability density function that represents the likelihood of finding the electron in that given region at a particular time. The transition from a classical to a quantum model of the atom took our civilization some time to wrap its brain around, and I am having analogous difficulty modelling the Kokshetau Middle School Number Three's school year.
I have been watching carefully for the end of the school year for a while. I believe it is showing signs of ending. Nobody knows when it will end. When I tell locals that I don't know when the school year will end, they tell me I'm being ridiculous. The school year ends with the "Last Bell" ceremony, which has been scheduled for the twenty-fifth of May for weeks. They were close, at least - the "Last Bell" was on the 24th for us, having been changed to the 24th at the last minute to accomodate a big graduation ceremony for the eleventh graders on the 25th.
I gave a hastily-written speech in Kazakh for the last bell, and although I may complain about my Kazakh stagnating, it must be getting better. For the "First Bell" last year I needed someone else to translate my speech from Russian to Kazakh for me, and I couldn't memorize it. This time I wrote it myself, and was able to remember it. I also wrote and performed a song for Kazakh Voice and Harmonica. The lyrics (which rhyme in Kazakh) were:
I am a teacher (bum ba da da dum)
At the third school (bum ba da da dum)
I give lessons (bum ba da da dum)
To grades 6, 7, 9, and 10 (bum ba da da dum)
When they do their homework (bum ba da da dum)
I am happy. (bum ba da da dum)
When they speak English (bum ba da da dum)
I rejoice. (bum ba da da dum)
To get back to the school year, although the last bell was held close to the scheduled date, it didn't have very much to do with the timing of the cessation of classes. The last two to three weeks of school are dominated by "tests" (which I put in quotes for reasons I won't get into here), which take priority over lessons. There is a schedule of tests, which puts the start of testing in mid-May and continues it well into June, and which is not a reliable predictor of when a given test will actually take place. Consequently, I've had my classes more or less randomly cancelled for the last week and a half. I was told by the math teacher I team-teach with that we would even have a class after the last bell ceremony, so I stuck around, but only four students showed up. (The other teacher herself didn't come, either.) I chatted with the students for a while and sent them home. I was told by the same teacher that today we would have a class, too, but I didn't go because it's graduation day for the eleventh graders, and I cannot believe that anyone would go to any lessons.
But further, it happens that school number three has mandatory summer school for students who are good and for students who are bad. Only if you are a middling student do you not have to go to summer school. Starting next week, I will be teaching fifteen hours of English a week to the best students in the school, and ten hours a week of math to the worst students in my class. The English classes are to prepare students for the Olympiads, which are regarded as one of the primary, if not the primary, measure of a school's performance. The math classes are a requirement if I want to give students the lowest grade, a two. If you give a student a failing grade, you are required to give them summer school classes to give them a chance to improve their grade. I, stubbornly, and maybe stupidly, refused to recant my failing grades for students in my math class who knew almost none of the material, and by doing so, got assigned these extra classes. Fair enough.
In theory, these summer school classes should last two weeks. Me, I'm waiting to see if the probability density really starts to flatten out before I make any conclusions.
I have been watching carefully for the end of the school year for a while. I believe it is showing signs of ending. Nobody knows when it will end. When I tell locals that I don't know when the school year will end, they tell me I'm being ridiculous. The school year ends with the "Last Bell" ceremony, which has been scheduled for the twenty-fifth of May for weeks. They were close, at least - the "Last Bell" was on the 24th for us, having been changed to the 24th at the last minute to accomodate a big graduation ceremony for the eleventh graders on the 25th.
I gave a hastily-written speech in Kazakh for the last bell, and although I may complain about my Kazakh stagnating, it must be getting better. For the "First Bell" last year I needed someone else to translate my speech from Russian to Kazakh for me, and I couldn't memorize it. This time I wrote it myself, and was able to remember it. I also wrote and performed a song for Kazakh Voice and Harmonica. The lyrics (which rhyme in Kazakh) were:
I am a teacher (bum ba da da dum)
At the third school (bum ba da da dum)
I give lessons (bum ba da da dum)
To grades 6, 7, 9, and 10 (bum ba da da dum)
When they do their homework (bum ba da da dum)
I am happy. (bum ba da da dum)
When they speak English (bum ba da da dum)
I rejoice. (bum ba da da dum)
To get back to the school year, although the last bell was held close to the scheduled date, it didn't have very much to do with the timing of the cessation of classes. The last two to three weeks of school are dominated by "tests" (which I put in quotes for reasons I won't get into here), which take priority over lessons. There is a schedule of tests, which puts the start of testing in mid-May and continues it well into June, and which is not a reliable predictor of when a given test will actually take place. Consequently, I've had my classes more or less randomly cancelled for the last week and a half. I was told by the math teacher I team-teach with that we would even have a class after the last bell ceremony, so I stuck around, but only four students showed up. (The other teacher herself didn't come, either.) I chatted with the students for a while and sent them home. I was told by the same teacher that today we would have a class, too, but I didn't go because it's graduation day for the eleventh graders, and I cannot believe that anyone would go to any lessons.
But further, it happens that school number three has mandatory summer school for students who are good and for students who are bad. Only if you are a middling student do you not have to go to summer school. Starting next week, I will be teaching fifteen hours of English a week to the best students in the school, and ten hours a week of math to the worst students in my class. The English classes are to prepare students for the Olympiads, which are regarded as one of the primary, if not the primary, measure of a school's performance. The math classes are a requirement if I want to give students the lowest grade, a two. If you give a student a failing grade, you are required to give them summer school classes to give them a chance to improve their grade. I, stubbornly, and maybe stupidly, refused to recant my failing grades for students in my math class who knew almost none of the material, and by doing so, got assigned these extra classes. Fair enough.
In theory, these summer school classes should last two weeks. Me, I'm waiting to see if the probability density really starts to flatten out before I make any conclusions.
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