Madison has thrived in the program. We put her into the program because the kid loves learning and we felt it was the best place in our odd county school system. We are hopeful she will earn the diploma, but Madison still wants to take some of the courses she will test out of again in college. Just in case. The IB students finished school last month and will spend all of this month testing for the diploma. Because I am on the board of our IB parent organization I was trained to proctor these exams and was one of the volunteers to take the first week.
The rules of proctoring are crazy. If you are the person in the room where the testing is going on, you sit in a corner watching over the test takers. If one raises his hand, you walk to him and take care of whatever he needs which mostly amounts to getting him a tissue or water or escorting him to the bathroom. Sitting in that room you may have nothing with you. No cell phone, no book, no papers. Nothing. If you are the person who sits outside the bathrooms, you are responsible for signing students in and out for bathroom breaks and then you must go in after each person and check the bathrooms to make sure the student didn't leave anything hidden in the bathroom. If you sit here, you are allowed to have items to keep you occupied.
Parents may proctor exams their students are in, but Madison wasn't too keen to have me looking over her shoulder so I immediately scheduled myself for the bathroom monitoring. Also, I was the person in charge of making the volunteer schedule so.... After the students go into the exam room I had to go into the bathrooms and check for contraband which in IB terms meant secret study notes. I checked behind wall hangings. I lifted up the back of toilet bowls and checked under the lids. I rolled and unrolled the toilet paper to make sure notes weren't written on them. I checked under the sinks, the urinals, and the toilets. I made sure nothing was shoved up into the paper towel dispenser or thrown into the trashcan. Pretty much I was a FBI agent protecting a witness from death. Or at least that is the way I approached my job after the first day because I was pretty much sick of those bathrooms by that time.
On Friday Madison didn't have a test so I was the proctor in the exam room. I had to sit on a chair with nothing and not speak. It was like being sent to the corner by your parents as a punishment for doing something naughty. While I didn't get to speak as a bathroom monitor other than to give times I did have a book to read or a crossword puzzle to complete or my phone for silent texting. Here I had nothing. For four hours! It was torture. I figured the entire week was the longest I had been quiet since my birth.
When I left there on Friday I was exhausted. I went home where my husband was taking an online seminar that he had been taking all week. He too had been confined to a chair only listening to someone drone on and on all day, but at least he could get up and move around and talk. I smiled at him and proceeded to get dinner ready. I made a quiche and a nice fruit salad and yelled for everyone to come and get it. As I was lifting the glass bowl of salad to move it onto the large cutting board that sits in the middle of my counter I tapped it against the board and the thing exploded. It exploded with a huge BANG and millions of pieces of acrylic went everyone in my kitchen making crackling and popping noises like Rice Krispies.
Tom and Madison came in when I yelled. Madison held back the dog and Tom entered the kitchen to help me. He stood and looked around the room at the mess. He looked at the millions of pieces of cutting board all over the counter. Then he grinned.
Tom: "I figured after a week of no talking eventually something was going to explode!"
I keep him around for his humor.
No comments:
Post a Comment