Grade 12 departmentals are tense times in our province. 50% of the final grade rests on those two or three hours in the gymnasium. I hated the pressure myself, 39 years ago when I wrote my exams, and I feel the same sadness for kids today. But I do appreciate that we need standards. The art of it is I guess to not add to the tension.

Setting the exams is like setting places for a banquet.  Sticky ID label at the top of the desk, answer booklet at the right, questions at the left, and if the exam is physics, formula sheets in the middle. Dessert forks optional.

Then we let them in, their tense faces nervously joking with each other. Backpacks get placed in lockers or at the front of the gym, caps are off.  Nothing can be brought in that has potential for cheating. No calculators, no dictionaries, no earphones, nothing.

And yet water is permitted and a small nonnoisy snack- so kids’ desks have water jugs, mints, gum, fruit leather. It is 9Am so nobody feels like dessert but some have brought  a sucker, a bag of nuts, cough drops.  More to the point, they have brought backup plans for their own success – a watch propped on the desk, extra pencil leads, extra pencils, ruler, protractor. For the math exam when calculators were allowed kids brought in fresh batteries, even a second backup calculator. 

It was like watching people preparing for their one kick at the can, kind of like their own funeral or wedding, they weren’t sure.  And even their clothing was mainly funereal Most were wearing some variation of navy or black, with so few red, green, white or beige shirts that the group could easily have passed for a mime troupe. This was no time for levity.

They had brought in extra Kleenex, one girl even bringing a box of 250 just in case. And two reported having been vomiting in the last hour and wondered if they could sit near the exit, or a bucket.
Some had brought lip salve.

I checked ID as required surprised nonetheless that even this process is far from standard. Most had a school ID card but some had  lost it and  had a temporary one, a driver’s license, even one had a Sears card and several used their passport.  It is after all a secured exam, highly secret, but accessible actually to walk-ins also. If you can pay the fee and pass it, you get the credit for it.

The student ID photos were obviously taken five months ago. Several kids had since cut their hair or dyed it and a few were wearing glasses to write the exam that they did not wear for the photo. One student who looked very much to me like a boy had on the ID card the name “Val” and I was deeply suspicious of someone malingering – until I saw his exam label name ‘Valentin”

Cheating is taboo of course. You can lose your exam credit and so can the person you cheated from. The kids are warned and for once in their lives they do take this seriously because we do. There is no noise at all in that gym for 3 straight hours, except the odd cough.

We teachers circulate to remove debris like discarded backs of exam labels, to not clutter up the desk and I suppose to eliminate noise of rustling papers or the potential to use these little slips of paper to pass notes.  But I saw no cheating. One time as I walked down a row I thought I heard a voice call me and turned but nobody seemed to be looking at me and I suspected I had heard two kids whispering – but I am not sure even now.

I really do feel they came and worked alone, all of them. And watching how teenagers handle this level of tension is really quite an insight into the human condition. Some nervously tap their feet or jiggle their knees up and down as they read. Some run their fingers through their hair and many hold onto something, the edge of the desk, their knee or rest their hand against their forehead, their cheek, their chin. One hold a pencil in each hand as he read the questions.  They do not look well rested. I assume some have been up all night studying even and a few have the troubled rash of acne or a reddened splotch on the neck.  This is a party you don’t skip, even if you are half dead. And absence is nearly unheard of.

They chew on their pencils, they hunch forward. One girl sits with her shoes off. Another curls her feet right under her. In silence they sit, but all very much animated nonetheless, reading, turning pages, writing, erasing, oh yes erasing. The desks get covered in eraser chips as the hesitant mind changes and changes again. Feet come half way out of the shoes, knees are twitching.  Hands reach up to itch the forehead. One girl opened her palm out as if to talk to herself or to count off points she had remembered finger by finger. 

And their fashion statement is casual. Here we see jeans, T-shirts, hoodies, soft fabrics, comfort clothes if you will. Even the beautiful girls have their hair mostly in a ponytail or easy braid. This morning was not one for a one-hour make-up session. 

And we teachers circulate offering Kleenex, picking up garbage, answer requests to be escorted to the washroom, and ensuring nobody is cheating.  We are putting in so many miles it is like mall walking for 3 hours and our legs ache. We lean against walls and then start off again, hoping our shoes don’t squeak the floor.

The exams are hard. I look through each one I supervise. Multiple choice questions are part B of the essay portion written several weeks earlier, in class. This one, the scantron one, is computer marked but painful. Of every four answers at least two seem vaguely right. These are subtle tests, tests to make you tear your hair out. And yet statistically fair I guess. They do lots of analysis to make sure a question is fair. It’s just that I often myself doing such exams, get a few questions wrong, especially in English literature analysis. I would like to be able to write in “It all depends’ but of course you can’t.

This 3 hour session is however not all painful. Some of the kids sense success. They enter having done in the 80s or 90s for the term and all they technically have to do to pass is to score 20. And you can see they are as time passes more and more cheerful. Some even leave the exam, happily after merely an hour. They aced it. They know it.

And so I realize I am watching for some a tragedy, like a cliff leap, but for others the end of the runway as they soar.  And for most of them, let’s face it, they are soaring. Very few actually flub the test completely and have to repeat the course. If they were really doing poorly they usually have dropped out by now. So this, though a room of tension, is also the scene of victory. And certainly a last scene before good-bye to a course, to a school and for some, to the public education system.  Here is where that happens, right here.

I feel privileged in a way to be shepherding them through this. For some there is no joy in Mudville, but for most, there is a huge sigh of relief as they leave the exit door.

Me, used to kids but less used to formalities of teaching, am struck by the oddity of the situation. It feels like we are at a banquet but nobody is allowed to talk. It feels like the PA voice is the voice of God, in church, too powerful, even scary.  When the exam in nearly over and the kids’ hands shoot up to call a teacher over to check their ID so they can leave, it is like hearing beepers go off in an avalanche. We teachers bolt towards the hands as if in some kind of race, our only amusement for the past hour.

And as they leave I feel a kind of joy for them too. I was present at the launching.  These are the nation’s youth and we will pass the torch to them rather shortly.  I think the world is in pretty good hands.