good and great teachers.

i don't see myself as a teacher (not yet?). i am only a person who thinks that she can teach.

after all, to date i have only one student on my hands. but she's already a handful.

after more than two months, suddenly she told me that she wanted a test. i thought, yea why not? all these while i've been teaching in a very casual atmosphere, mainly helping her with her homework and school assignments. i didn't really set a target, as in how much i want her to know by the end of this. after all, it is an evening school.. at the most unproductive hour of the day, when the brain is pretty much hypoxic, especially for two girls (her and myself) who i can say have a very limited span of concentration.

"я хочу свою знанию проверять". - i want to test my knowledge, she said.

ok, she got me at that. so we agreed on Tenses - the Present, Past and Future.

if you're following me on twitter you'd know how excited and anxious i am about the test.

now (i think) i know how teachers feel prior to a test or examination. what sort of questions do i ask? do i make it hard for her, or do i make sure she aces it? do i make it exactly as i those which we did together in class or do i stir in a twist? how many questions? do i ask her to underline, or circle, or write?

cut me some slack for being a noob. LOL.

i finally made the test exactly like the exercises we did in class, only changing a few verbs and nouns here and there.

yesterday was the D-day. gave her the questions, explained what to do and she answered them.

boy was she in a hurry to finish them all!

"не спеши!" - don't hurry, i told her as i noticed that she already made a few mistakes.

after she finished answering (it took her about 20mins, whereas i expected at least 30-40 mins), i asked her if she wanted to check her answers once again, to which she refused.

ok fineee.

i think teachers know how much their students know. i know that she knows. if done properly, she would've aced it.

so i asked her, what mark did she think i should give.

"двойка." - two (in Russian marking , you'll need at least a 3 to pass). told me that in school, if she makes 3 mistakes, it meant that she had flunked the test.

"это не двойка. я поставлю тебе тройку" - this isn't a two. i'm gonna give you a 3.

but that's a lot of mistakes!

i tried telling her that it's okay to make mistakes in a test, because sometimes it makes you remember better. not sure if she understood the concept.

honestly, she didn't flunk it. of course there were mistakes here and there but some answers were good.

her only problem is that she rarely takes any time to think. i told her that. and guess what her response was? she told me that she always choose guessing over thinking. if there's an MCQ question, she'd circle the answers just like that, and according to her, that way she usually gets 50% correct.

oh man. how do i make her understand? i have no idea.

yesterday i finally understood what people mean when they say that teaching and educating are two different things.

teachers teach. good teachers not only teach, they educate. and great teachers, on top of that, inspire.

and this little low me is still trying to figure out how in the world can i be all of the above.

Happy Teachers Day in advance, to great teachers who inspired me. i can never thank you enough!