I’m not cut out to be a teacher in Ukraine.

I was brought up in the American school system. Here, your success is your business. Your friend’s success is your friend’s business. Your grades are your business. Your friend’s grades are your friend’s business. Plain and simple. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

It’s a little different in Ukraine. Here, grades are announced to the whole class. A student can take another student’s test and look at it before the owner gets to look it over. It’s a much more open society and I’m not used to it. I was raised to work for what I wanted and to not care about those around me. Again, here it’s a little different.

I don’t doubt that I would have similar troubles right now if I was teaching in America. It’s finals time. As much as I might dislike and complain to my friends about having to give out grades to students in front of their peers, I still end up doing it. Hell, I even did it the first week I was at my school.

Today, I was grading speaking tests again. All of the grades I dished out were fairly high and well deserved. I didn’t give a grade below a 9 (which is out of 12 and therefore 75%).

One of the girls, who I’ve spent the semester trying to get her to speak English on her own and not have one of the boys translate for her, volunteered to go second and I was ecstatic. She didn’t speak perfectly but she spoke well. I happily gave her a 9 when last semester she would have been lucky to get a 6. She finished speaking, I gave her grade and then we moved on.

Five or ten minutes later, the teacher of the class stopped and asked the girl why she looked upset. The girl said nothing. The teacher kept asking until she got a response. The response was the girl breaking into tears and telling the teacher in Russian that she thought she deserved an 11. I think she said why, but I have trouble understanding Russian when it isn’t filled with emotion.

Now, if I was the true authority figure in the class, I would tell the girl we could talk about it after class and possibly offer her a chance to redo while the rest of the class wasn’t sitting there. I’d also make sure to explain why she was given a 9 in her first attempt.

The teacher in charge of the class almost instantly gave in and told her she’d raise her grade to the 11. It should also be noted that said teacher wasn’t present for the girl’s speaking.

I’m not cut out to be a teacher in Ukraine because I can’t handle the face to face results of telling an emotional teenage girl their grades.