WWW.ZBEDU.NET was still down this morning.

At about 4:00pm, I sneaked out from the examination room to my office and clicked on the net. Surprisingly the site came to life.

Today is the first day of the mid-term exams which will last 3 days.

Both seniors and juniors are taking exams together, except junior 4 and senior 3. Senior 1 and 2 take turns to use the classrooms. In the morning and evening senior 1 students take exams, and in the afternoon the same classrooms are switched off to senior 2.

Two teachers worked together to invigilate one examination room. Majority of the teachers have to look after 11 of the exams this time.

Very boring and stressful.

In the exam room, one teacher is sitting up in the front while the other one is seated at the back.

The longest subject s are the two exams of Chinese, which last two hours and a half respectively. The teachers are not allowed to read books or listen to CDs, let alone go back to office for a rest.

The lunch time was very short. When we sorted out the papers and sealed them well, it was 12:20. I had a quick lunch and rode back to school to take care of the first exam in the afternoon, which started at 1:10pm.

The students were all following the relevant regulations for the exams. Basically they are well aware of the results if they get caught cheating on the exams. To risk cheating is not worthwhile at all.

Some good students performed well in the exams. They wrote answers fast. They showed self-confidence on their faces, while the “bad” students were nervous and answered questions slowly and sometimes they paid no attention to what they were doing.

What a big difference between the good and “bad” students!

How can we teachers try best to narrow the gap between them and get over the difference as much as possible?