Finals

Chloe and Zoe finished taking finals last week. They were proud of the fact that the teacher didn’t have to read the questions to them. When they first moved here, they couldn’t read any of the questions on the test. For example, the math test was mostly word problems, so while they may have been able to solve the problems in English, they couldn’t even start since they couldn’t read the questions. The tests here are just sheets of densely packed Chinese characters. This time around, for both the core Math and Chinese subjects, both girls read everything themselves.

Over dinner after the first day of finals, Chloe says, “Mr. Chen graded all the Mandarin tests during lunch, and in the afternoon, he went down the list of students and asked if they wanted to hear what they got on the test in front of everyone. When he got to me, he joked ‘Are you sure Chloe? You sure you want to know your score? You’re not going to cry, are you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m positive I want to know my score.’ And then he said, ’NINETY-ONE!”…And the whole class cheered! The boy next to me was like, ‘Wow, you’re awesome, you even did better than me!’”

Tears well up in my eyes. The image of a whole class of 28 kids rooting for my daughter, fresh off the plane from the US, who couldn’t read any of the test questions the first semester, but who is finishing the year strong. It wasn’t the grade that struck me; it was the sense of empathy her class embodied. Their sense of collective pride for their classmate made me want to go and hug every one of them. A classroom full of eleven year olds pulling for each other, encouraging each other to do better. A class of kids who are brought up in an environment that values competition, but yet who are willing to encourage Chloe to work harder. If this doesn’t embody ‘class unity,’ I don’t know what does.

I think this is what Chloe and Zoe are referring to when they say they love their school. It’s these moments that move them to want to work harder, learn more, and discover what it means to live in a new country.

A sample math test. The majority are word problems, or have words in them where even one word makes a big difference in the question (ex: units like kilograms, acres, tons all have one word in common, but not knowing the other word destroys your will to live).

Celebrating the end of finals with a trip to the amusement park.