The Olympics

Since resuming classes after Tsagaan Sar, I have been engaged in a flurry of Olympics. You see, the Academic Olympics are a BIG deal here. Think the National Spelling Bee, only on steroids. The competition is fierce, the distrust is rampant, and the glory is sublime. The Olympics span all subjects, but obviously for me, it's all English. For weeks now I've been giving practice tests (mostly grammar and listening) and trying to teach test-taking strategies, even adding extra time to my school schedule to accommodate students wanting additional help. I've also been working with a handful of students who participated in the PC International Writing Competition, but more on that later.

So on March 1 each school held their Olympics; technically it's only for 9th & 11th grades and teachers, but 8th graders can take the 9th test and 10th graders can take the 11th test. Based on those results, students knew if they should (yes, should, not could) participate in the city-wide Olympics, held at Khan-Uul school this past Sunday. The overall winners and the winner from each school (regardless if they placed 1st or 60th, if you placed first among all participants from your school, you "won") will participate in the aimag-wide Olympics on March 29th. I've heard non-winning students can pay to participate.

Let me elaborate on the Khan-Uul Olympics process: Participants (and I as the Native English Speaker representative) show up at 8:30am. They figure out what room they're in, and by 9am are expected to be in it. Well, that doesn't happen 'til about 9:15. Next, the tests. The tests are not printed. Rather, one copy of each exam is in a sealed envelope that, at 9:30, a participant from each classroom witnesses being opened in the teachers' lounge. Now the copies are made on "official" paper (the paper had the ubiquitous red stamp on it) and taken back to the classrooms for participants to start. I am finally given the listening scripts to read about about 10am. I start making the rounds to 14 (yes, 14!) classrooms to read the listening scripts. Parched, I finish around 11:30. I then summon any and all available PCVs to come assist with the grading. Yep, all the grading is done by hand. No Scantrons here! Two other PCVs show up and we begin the grading at about 1pm. One teacher from each school is asked to help grade the 9th and 11th multiple choice. We, the native speaking PCVs, will score all the writing. And due to the aforementioned distrust, we, the PCVs, grade everything on the teachers' exams. 193 exams and 3 hours later, we're finished. It's a little after 4pm. I am exhausted. My head is throbbing from reading all the essays (each essay got read and scored twice in an attempt at objectivity). The overall winners got a medal and a cash prize, something that apparently became very messy and contentious when a pair of teachers tied for second and a pair of students tied for first on the 11th grade exam. Glad I wasn't part of sorting that out!

But the fun was only beginning...

For the second time, Mongolia participated in the PC "sponsored" International Creative Writing Competition (ICWC) . It takes place in about a dozen PC countries and aims to improve writing skills, the least-taught skill. So on Friday and Sunday, the official writing sessions for the competition were held. Why two sessions? Because the Khan-Uul Olympics date got changed on us and when we realized no secondary students would be able to come to the Sunday session, J&K added a session on Friday evening. The turnout was impressive really, given all that was going on over the weekend. 48 participants across grades 7-11 and university. The students were given a choice of two prompts and one hour to write a creative essay. 6 PCVs and 4 HCNs with high-level English got together on Monday over dinner to score the essays. Every person read every essay and assigned a score based on a rubric. That's 10 readers x 48 essays = 480 reads. It took just under 4 hours. Exhausted and again with a throbbing headache, I stumbled home.

All that said, I'm actually looking forward to the aimag-wide Olympics. One of my students has a great shot at winning the whole thing (she was one of the two that tied for first on the 11th exam) and going to UB to compete at the national level. I'm just not particularly looking forward to the marathon grading that will follow. And in the next day or two J&K should have averaged out the ICWC essay scores and will announce the winner of each grade level. Those winners' essays will go up against the winners in the other aimags, and perhaps eventually against the other participating countries' winners. And again, I have a student with a real shot at winning not only for Choibalsan, but for Mongolia.

ICWC UPDATE: My 10th grader WON her grade and my 7th grader took 2nd in hers! Woohoo!

I think Bambuul hates me though, having locked her in the living room (couldn't crate her for that long) and neglected her walks and play time in favor of bed time these last two days. Not to mention the extra time at school the last 3 weeks. I can't wait 'til school break starts next week so I can catch up on sleep and puppy lovin' (er, I mean, training, yes, puppy training). But for now, I pray to the coffee gods to spontaneously refill my travel mug. Please!?