First of all, she assigns us a novel a month to read and then get tested on. Fine. I think that's a good idea because she provides us with some excellent reading material. However, it's up to us to pick up on everything mentioned in the book from the smallest most insignificant detail to the actual lesson of the book. And even that would be fine if she actually cared whether or not we got anything out of these books or whether or not we understood them, but she doesn't (nor does she care whether or not we read them apparently, but more on that later). We never discuss the novels, nor do we even go over the answers of the tests she gives us on the novels. She gives her novel tests on those bubble sheets so that she can run them through a computer and save herself from doing some actual teacher work. When she passes back the checked tests, she ONLY PASSES BACK THE BUBBLE SHEETS. So we never see the tests or the questions (or the actually worded answers) ever again. Only a sheet of filled in circles and letters. How exactly is that supposed to help us? How can we learn from our mistakes if we have no idea what the mistakes were? huh huh huh?
And furthermore, it's not like these novel tests prove whether or not we read the books, because on the very first novel test, I read the whole book front to back (it was Jane Eyre.. a fairly long book, but not bad). I got an A on the test but just barely, with a 90%. I was pretty happy about that until I that at least five people (there were probably more than that, but I actually talked to these particular 5 people) who had not read the book at all and had only read the cliff's notes and somehow ended up with 105%. So that ticked me off but I figured I'd just try harder next time. Then we read The Grapes of Wrath (another fairly long, but good book). So this time I read the entire book, front to back, then watched the movie (which was actually kind of annoying cuz of the pointless changes like the reversal of the order of a few scenes), then read the spark notes as a review before the test. I only ended up with a B on that one. Yet again I heard of people who hadn't even opened the book and had received A's. On our most recent novel, The Catcher in the Rye, I read the book, took notes on a few things (cuz she always has an order of operations thing added to the bubble sheet for each novel), and read all of the sparknotes the day before the test as a review. I got a D on that test. Gee that makes sense.. And ya wanna know why? Well for some reason, she had a giant red slash through all of my order of operations (there were 10 events, each worth 2 points). According to her, I missed all of them. I say that's impossible because there were a few of those that I was 100% sure of. So I looked around at a few of the papers of the people around me, and I noticed that instead of actually writing out the events in the correct order (like I did) all they wrote was the correct numbers of the orders of the events.. Like if the correct order of the events was 3, 4, 2, 7...etc., then all they did was write those numbers.. So next to #1, they would put 3; Next to #2 they would put 4, etc.. So I'm guessing that the way she had her answer key to those particular questions was in that form, and the stupid, lazy, #$%^ was too lazy to look up the actual words of the events, so she just marked them all wrong (probably for a stupid reason like "didn't follow directions" although I never heard her specify the way to write those out). So anyway, if it weren't for the loss of those 20 points, I may have gotten a decent grade on that one. Oh well.. It gets worse...
Rant number two... The Macbeth tests. Granted, Macbeth was a few weeks ago, but I'm still upset by the final test. I don't even remember what I got on it, but I remember how stupid the test was. They would ask opinion questions like "When did the audience feel the most suspense?" or "when did the audience begin to feel sympathy towards the queen?" or something stupid like that.. Well, WE'RE the audience so you'd think we'd have the correct answer to questions such as these. But noooooo... What she meant to ask was "When did I, Satan, feel the most suspense?" and "When did I feel sympathy for the queen?". There were quite a few questions like that, and every single one of them made me wanna break something.
Rant number three.. Hamlet. Every week or so, another Act of Hamlet is "due". All that means is that we will be tested on the act at the end of the week or however many days she decides to give us to read it. Now here's what I mean about her not being a teacher at all. She tells us to read the act. She passes out the tests. Beyond that, she does nothing. We never discuss the acts until after the tests (like it does any good once the test is over), so if there's something we don't understand (seeing as how the play was written hundreds of years ago) or something we just don't pick up on the first time reading through the act, you basically fail the test. However, this isn't even my biggest complaint.
My biggest complaint on the Hamlet era of Satan's class, is that the tests are short answer/essay and she makes US check the tests!!! When you're dealing with essay/short answer tests, there are many possibilities of answers. Plus, each short answer question is worth 3 or 4 points and the essay's worth up to 6 points. So she'll read off one possible answer and beyond that, it's up to us to decide how many points to give eachother on the test. Which sounds cool cuz then if you have a friend in a different class there's the possibility that you can check each others tests (if she happens to hand you that particular test) and just give each other A's, but what are the odds?? We usually end up getting the tests of people we don't even really know or aren't friends with. But anyway, all that is beside the point. The point is, she doesn't teach us anything, she doesn't review anything, and she doesn't even check the freakin tests! So what the hell is she getting paid for?????? She's a baby-sitter. Not only that, she's the baby-sitter from hell. Sigh...
Okay
there are a few updates now. This is a couple weeks later.
We're now reading Othello, only instead of discussing it with us, she thought
it would be sufficient to just show us the movie so that's all we've really
done in there all week. Our test is tomorrow. Anyway, I was
recently informed by a friend of mine that she was painting her nails during
their class. And I was informed by another friend of mine that she
has the GATE classes teaching eachother. She assigned a certain act
of the play they were reading to each group of people and had them teach
the class each day. How wonderful.