Diva

The first time I met Diva, she was demonstrating the patience of a saint while entertaining my toddler neighbors.  The scrawny little cat was hunkered down next to our bamboo fence when I rescued her from Suel and Rodasa who thought that petting a cat included hitting it with a spoon.

            That was about a week after I had moved to Montepuez so Mireya had not yet returned from her trip to the states and my house still felt too empty.  When the cat showed up again looking for a little food and affection, I was more that happy to oblige.  She would climb into my lap when I sat on the porch or sprawl out in the sun in front of my house for a few hours before disappearing again for a few days.  The friendlier I became with her and the more food I offered, the more frequently she started appearing.  Eventually she worked up the courage to follow me into the house but she would scamper from the door to hide under the kitchen counter afraid I might kick her out.   

Behind the trashcan?  Really?  Could you try to be more pathetic-looking?

           After a week or two of my allowing her to take naps in various hiding places in the house, she decided that this wasn’t a half-bad place to be and that I wasn’t going to throw her outside if caught her in the house.  She started coming nearly every day to spend the whole day, sleeping on my bed, sitting on my lap while I read, and sharing my meals.  When Mireya came back, the little cat took pretty well to her, too.  We would watch movies on her bed with the laptop and a purring cat between us. 

You are not a lion and this is not your habitat - inside joke for the family ;)

            We still didn’t think of her as “our” cat until another teacher came to visit and saw her sleeping on our porch.  He knew the people the cat really belonged to and said that if we wanted her, we just needed to talk to them because he always saw them throwing her out of the house; they didn’t want her.  Up until this point, we had just been refering to her as “the neighbor’s cat,” not even knowing which neighbor she belonged to.  With this news, we decided we could claim her as our own could finally give her a name.

            Only one name seemed appropriate considering how quickly this African stray had adjusted to the pampered life of a house cat: Diva.

Mireya and Diva.   She definitely earned her name.

She even got her own dressing room.

            At this point, we were Diva’s main residence.  Mireya and I were eventually suckered into letting her sleep in the house at night after she came home one morning with a torn ear to constantly remind us of how narrowly she had escaped a fight.  Diva had no problem with that.  She loved to snuggle.  However, 4:30 am would roll around and Diva would start getting restless to be let out and do her business.  Not the most convenient time, but it’s still more convenient than cleaning up presents.

            While she turned out to be easily housebroken, she still left us presents to clean up.  Bugs were usually not worth her time but she LOVED chasing the geckos that live in our house.  The only problem was she chase them, catch them, and play with them until they got so scared they lost their tails (a gross self-defense mechanism for geckos).  Diva would then leave the dead gecko and it’s still wriggling tail for me to sweep up…  Either way, cats are great for pest control.  This includes toddlers.  Suel was afraid of Diva so whenever she wandered into the house at a bad time, we would chase her out of the house with the cat in hand.

This how much Diva cares about the imminent termite invasion.  Yes, I came home from a weekend away from site to find termite mounds growing out of a crack in my floor...

            Diva wasn’t just a star in our house, she also started attending our REDES (women’s group) meetings.  She loved to hang out in our alpendra while we sewed bags with our girls.  We joked about Diva being the REDES mascot and the girls loved her.

It is unfortunate that I waited until now to talk about the cat that we had.

Had.

            About a week ago, Diva started acting lethargic.  She was quiet so we immediately knew something must be wrong because she usually never shut up.  She deteriorated over the course of the week despite our efforts to keep her fed and hydrated.  While she still had the strength, she would get out of the baby bath lined with towels that served as her bed to go outside and do her business but she started getting weaker and then started walking in circles.  We knew then that it was probably over but we tried to keep her comfortable.

            Mireya and I were both home when she died and we were able to bury her under a bamboo cross in our yard.  Our neighbors thought we were crazy for crying over a stray cat but most of them respected our little “funeral” anyways. 

We may not have had her for long, but at least she finally found a family that loved her.

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater

I gave my first test two weeks ago.  Oh boy, was that fun.

Phase 1: Preparation

            Of course my test would be fair but challenging.  It would be multiple choice so that it would be easy to grade.  I would give my test to 11^th during their double period so I could divide the class of 90+ in two groups and limit students 2 to a desk.  We don’t get free copies from the school so my options are writing the test on the board for the kids to copy onto their own paper, collecting money from the students to make copies, or to just suck up the cost of the test myself. 

            I wanted to cover as much material as possible on my test so asking the students to waste most of their test time copying the test down onto their own paper is out of the question.  At 2.5Mets a page, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to request that the students pay for their own 1-2 page test, afterall that’s what most of the other teachers request.  Then I’m reminded that chemistry is one of 9 subjects that my students buy tests for.  On top of that teachers aren’t above charging students for a 5 page test when the test is only 1 page while another would demand their students pay for a 10 page info packet.  I’ve already asked my students to supply their own copy of the periodic table and to buy two notebooks for my class.  That leaves me to buy all the copies for 300 students.  I could easily spend 1000Met out of my 7000Met monthly allowance on those tests. 

            It took forever but I finally produced two versions of a multiple choice test that fit on half a page.  I even wrote a third version to go over as a review before the test and teach the students how to answer my questions.

Phase 2: The Mission

            My 11^th grade test during 1^st and 2^nd period was a mess.  I made all of the kids put their stuff at the front of the class and told them to only take out a pen.  Of course I still had to kick out four or five students for trying to use their notebooks under their desks.  I didn’t even bother kicking people out for talking.  I would have kicked out the whole class. I told them up front that there were different versions of the test and that they would probably have different questions than their neighbor. I still got questions like “Teacher, there is a mistake.  I don’t have the same choices for question 3 as my friend.”  Time after time, I say, “No mistake.  Look at your own test.”

            They really just have no concept why teachers give tests in the first place.  School is all about getting good grades.  You're not actually supposed to learn anything.

            My original plan for 11^th grade was to split the class into two equal groups and give the test to one group during the first half of class and then again to the second group during the second half to minimize crowding.  It turns out that this is hard to do when you don’t actually know how many students to expect.  I had a full classroom for the first period and 4 students second period. 

            My 12^th grade tests went a little better.  I made them all get up and then I sat them down one by one.  This worked out great for two reasons: 1) I achieved the maximum space between students 2) Sudents who wanted to sit near each other were separated and students who wanted to sit in the back were seated in the front.  The bonus benefit of surprising my students with random seating was cheaters were no longer seated near their hidden notebooks!  The students were much more willing to admit there was a notebook under their desk when it wasn’t their own. 

            I did have one good moment in my last test for 11^th grade.  My students finished their test very quickly and with almost 15 minutes still left in class, all but one student had left.  The last girl watched the second to last student leave, looked down at her test, then looked at me, and started to get up. 

            “You have until the end of class, you know.  Take as much time as you need.”

            She looked so surprised that I was willing to stay just for her but she sat back down and ten minutes later handed in her test.  I was glad to show her teachers should care but unfortunately I don’t think the extra time helped her…

Phase 3: Debrief

            I knew that I was going to have a high fail rate so 50 pass/50 fail for 12^th grade and about 70 pass/30 fail for 11^th grade.  All and all, not bad.  It was really funny to see the rediculously wrong answers students had selected because they had copied someone with the other version of the test. 

            The hardest part by far of the whole testing experience was handing back the exams.  I learned the hard way that I need to circle all of their answers in my own pen and fill in all of the questions they left blank.  As soon as I handed back the test, my desk was swarmed by students with claims of errors in their grade.

            “Teacher, I put the same answer as so-and-so and you marked it wrong.”

            “That’s because you had different tests.  Your answer to your question is wrong.”

            “But Teacher”

            “No.”

            “Teacher, you forgot to add points for this question.”

            “That’s because when I graded the test yesterday, you hadn’t answered the question.”

            “But Teacherrrrr”

            “No.”

            “Teacher, you marked this question wrong.”

            “That’s because you marked two answers.

            “But TEEAAACHHHHERRR”

            “EVERYONE SIT DOWN.  I’m not changing any grades.  I’m going home.”