(Note: For those of you reading this blog who are not particularly interested in educational theory and practice, you may want to skip this entry.)

After an incredible four-day long weekend of travel and adventure, going to back to work on Monday was a bit of a shock. The past two days have been composed of a variety of teacher activities. Monday morning I met with David to discuss Tuesday’s test. He explained that all tests at Tec de Monterrey are completed by the students on computers, and are randomly generated from pools of questions created by the teachers. Tuesday’s would draw evenly from two pools – one on each of two units. I suggested that smaller pools (one on each topic within the units) be created, in order to create a more balanced test. David was enthusiastic about the suggestion, so I spent much of the day sorting questions into new pools, writing new questions to add to the pools, and correcting the English in the questions that had already been written.

During class later in the day, David’s (and my) students gave group presentations on a nutrient macromolecule of their choice. I asked the students questions at the end of their presentations, and, as in Canada, I found that these students often presented information that they had looked up and written down but did not really understand. David and I discussed this later, and neither of us are sure as to how it could be prevented, although we agreed that spending more time teaching presentation skills might help. I found out only after the presentations were over that David wanted me to help grade them. I had been paying attention of course, but I would have liked to have known that I was evaluating before seeing the presentations, so that I could have made notes. Thankfully the students were required to hand in a CD with their slides on it, so I was able to review these in order to evaluate the presentations more accurately.

This morning I met with David to discuss the grades for the presentations. He had graded them as well, and he was happy to find that his and my grades agreed with one another (thinking back to the assessment course I took at UBC, I believe this means that the assessment rubric had good validity). After our chat, I finished planning my lesson for tomorrow, then took a lunch and suntanning break before heading back to invigilate the test. This required a sharp eye, as the students all take their tests on their personal laptops but may not use any applications aside from an internet browser, which may only have open the single window that displays the test. The students find out their grade as soon as their test is submitted, and I learned today that, at Tec de Monterrey, any grade below 70% is considered an F. Many students failed the test today. I am curious to see how they do on the final exam.