Invigilation

“Invigilation” is the British word for “proctor.” This was the end of the semester exam week at school, and I did some invigilating. I picture John Cleese making some innuendo every time I hear ‘invigilate.’ We don’t invigilate our own exams. The exams are given to us and we go to the appointed room. The students are seated so close together that exams would be impossible, so two rooms of different grades are paired up and swap half the students so no one is sitting next to someone with the same exam. Reading and grading papers is verboten for the invigilator. It’s 90 minutes of daydreaming, watching for cheaters and handing out extra pieces of paper. Ninety minutes is a long time, as many teachers know, when you can’t do anything but watch students write and sweat. That’s even too long to keep myself occupied with a daydream (speaking of innuendo). I tried standing on one foot to see how long I could do it without falling over. (Six minutes for the right and five for the left.) The time does eventually pass.

Some things are so obvious that no one realizes I do not know. For example, the invigilator (Tell me you don’t think of Monty Python when you read that word!) is supposed to initial all exams when they are handed out and all extra papers when they are handed out. I suppose this is to eliminate the possibility of students having stolen the exam papers and writing the answers ahead of time? The students protested that I had not signed their exams or extra sheets. When I asked my mentor if this was really needed, she looked at me like I had asked which end of a fork to use. Of course the invigilator initials all the papers.

Next came the tedious grading. There are a few (less than 20) multiple-choice questions but no bubble sheet. The students just write the answers in the test booklet. Then there are another 20 or so questions that require answers of several sentences. Dawn Gafa trained me out of that type of test many years ago, and I have been grateful to her ever since. However, I think these tests were harder on the grader than even my old ones were. They set them up this way because the standardized tests the students take are in the same format!?! I guess where labor is cheap, a nation can make an incredibly hard to grade standardized exam?