IS EXAM STRESS ONLY FOR LEARNERS?
Have you ever considered this?
When thinking of examinations the first thing people think about is the amount of stress the students have to go through. The heaps of content they must go through, the hours of studying and long hours of the actual writing of the exam papers.
What I find astonishing is the lack of thought for the educators who have to set or in the case of external papers, have to moderate those papers. I know that doesn't sound like much work, granted but minor details are important for the success of the exam. This is just the beginning.
It's stressful for all of us
If it is stressful for a learner who has to write ten exam papers, how stressful is it for a teacher to mark only one of those papers for three grades of five classes of fifty learners per class? That is 250 papers the teacher has to mark within a specified time period which is normally two days. If there is time and the subject is written earlier in the examination timetable, a teacher can be fortunate enough to have three days to mark. 
I'm not sure of how other schools around the world work but in South Africa a teacher can teach up to four subjects at once. A practical example is I teach English First Additional Language, Geography, History and Creative Arts. These can get a bit much to handle at once.
Juggling them all
English and History were both written today. One was written at 8 o'clock in the morning and the other at 11 o'clock. They are both my subjects so I need to be done marking them both in three days. That is 300 scripts to mark in three days whilst attending to my regular duties of teaching and class management.
These are the papers I am marking now. There's no space on my desk.
Tomorrow another English and Geography papers are going to be written. That's an additional 300 scripts to my workload. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the work ends at marking. Oh no. There's more.
The processes that follow
After marking there's a process called "Item and error analysis". What happens at this stage is that the entire exam paper for each learner gets analysed to check which questions proved difficult for the learner and what could have led to that difficulty. After identifying the errors, strategies need to be developed right there and then to combat those errors. All of this takes place within the first two to three days after the paper was written.
What follows is simple but still frustrating part of recording the marks by hand of every learner. This may seem like a mundane task but after everything else it's quite irritating. After the marks are recorded and submitted for evaluation, they come back to the teacher and then the process of punching in the marks into a computer program begins.
I can literally type of this all day but I believe I've made my point. Me writing this post is a way of venting. I needed to take a breather from marking and thought steeming about it would be a good way to release some tension.
In part two of this post I will be giving tips and advice of how to deal with the mountains of scripts to be marked and how to lessen the stress.
Now it's time for me to get back to work.
If you like this post please consider reading my other work
LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD
ARE YOU AFRAID? GOOD
A BITTER SWEET DAY
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE
ALL IMAGES ARE TAKEN FROM PIXBAY.COM
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This well written i have to say i love the "O" face picture....
Thank you for reading and resteeming. That face embodies exactly how I feel right now lol.
I feel your pain... This problem cut across the whole of Africa where teachers are being underpaid yet assigned a 5 teachers work.. In my country NIGERIA it's much worse.. A teacher is uncharge of more than 4 subjects and atbthe same time he's a class teacher who have to update the register book and all other official books....I AM A TEACHER MYSELF (a victim of these same phenomenon ), the question we should rather be asking is what is the way forward ?
There's no way forward unless we take a stand against our employers. They expect us to perform miracles with these children when in reality they've cut the legs right under us. There's no support from them and we go beyond the call of duty because we love our children. That's why they are taking advantage.
Wow, that does sound like a lot of stress for sure.
During six months, many years ago when I worked as a freelance teacher, I taught two merchant classes how to use computers. There were more than 30 students in each class, and they came and went. I never even managed to know them all by name, and then I had to give them grades based on their performance. Even the latest students I'd seen only once.
Crazy.
Teaching is a stressful profession filled with unrealistic expectation from the employers. Yet we perform. It requires great patience with both the learners and the bosses.
How was your experience though?
Bad at that place. Nothing worked on that school. At other places I loved teaching, but except for that school, I only taught adults, not kids.
Lack of resources and proper facilities can ruin a teaching experience. I'm happy to hear that your other experiences were good. What did you teach?
I seriously sympathize with you. I might not have gone through the experience, but one of the faculty in our department always tells us about what he's going through, and us students see how hard it is on him as well.
The only thing I can say is, that everything has a purpose, and I'm sure those kids that you're teaching will appreciate your hard work (if not now, then in the future). Keep up the good work!
Thank you. They do appreciate it. Teaching is quite a rewarding and fulfilling profession. Lol People treat teachers like local celebrities.
It's just that we work under dire situations at times and we're not being recognised for the work we do. But It's a calling more than a living so can't complain really.