Kuuliza si ujinga

All day yesterday, students were knocking on the door of my office. They would enter, looking rather embarassed, and hand me a notebook that they'd been holding at their side and behind their back. When I returned to my office from teaching, I would meet students standing outside it, or they would simply follow me there.

Why all the concern about notebooks? Well, they have mid-terms next week. And the message that their homework average is 15 points of their mid-term has finally gotten through.

In short: my students are panicking.

So, I thought I had explained my grading system. But admittedly the explanation was in rather bad Kiswahili. I hadn't figured out the Kiswahili word for points, or even the Tanzanian English word (now I know: the homework is 15 marks, maksi kumi na tano, of their midterm). I figured since my explanation probably wasn't very good, I'd give them the chance to make up the homeworks they missed.

Now the fun begins. I wrote four sets of make-up questions, each focusing on a different topic we'd covered. I posted all four sets on the walls of all the Form II classrooms. Then, on Friday, instead of teaching, I wrote review questions on the board for the students to work on. I then went around my chem classes and told every student how many marks they currently had for homework. This was a huge pain in the neck, but had the side benefit of helping me learn the names of several students. I may have doubled the number of names I know!

I told the students they had until Tuesday to give me their make-up problems. Well, apparently I caused a high level of panic, because by Friday afternoon there was a huge pile of notebooks on my desk. And a large crowd of students pushing notebooks at me for me to correct immediately, then quoting the Vodacom ad "faster faster faster" while waiting for me to recalculate their grade and write the new grade in my notebook. Including students I had concluded didn't exist from the number of zeros in my notebook)

(By the way, they say Americans are impatient! Panicked students have us beat.)

So. You may be wondering, why do I bother giving homework, and putting myself through all this trouble? Admittedly, it's a huge pain. I collect homework from all my form II chem students ever Wednesday. If they all gave me their notebooks, that would be 150 notebooks. It's probably good that only half of them consistently do homework, as it's hard enough to correct 75 notebooks and return them by Thursday afternoon.

Plus there's the problem of cheating. I know my students copy homework from each other. I have yet to mention it to them because I feel that if I fight cheating, I should conduct an all-out war, not do it halfway. And I really don't have time to compare all their notebooks against each other to see who's copying from who.

Oh, and there's the problem of posting questions. We have no photocopier. I write two copies of the questions by hand, and use carbon paper to make a second copy of each of these two copies. I then post the questions on the classroom walls. Students then take them off the wall to copy into their notebook, and sometimes don't return them. I really don't have a good answer for the students who come to me and say "I want to do the homework, but the questions are gone."

So: given all the trouble, why give homework? And if I'm going to give homework, why correct it? And if I'm going to correct it, why count the grade if I know they're cheating?

My current answer: first, I want to keep their minds on chemistry. If they have to do homework every week, that means they're thinking about chemistry at least a little each week. And it means at least some of them are doing practice problems every week--problems which I don't have time to give them in class, but which they need to do to learn the topic well.

As for counting homework to their grade, well, it motivates some who otherwise wouldn't do the homework. And even if they copy off each other, someone has to be doing the problems that other people are copying. Plus it forces them to write sets of chemistry questions and answers in their notebook, which they'll be able to study later.

In an ideal world, my students would be self-motivated, all do their problems by themselves, and stop stealing my valuable copies of homework questions from the wall. Things aren't ideal here. But I feel like the homework is worth the trouble, even if I go slightly crazy every time I receive a giant pile of notebooks.