A Test

 This is why I get up in the morning:

One of my English students has the lowest self-confidence I've ever seen in a person.  She's had problems on her last two tests because she was too shy to give an answer when almost any answer would do.  During the last test, she broke down and cried for about 20 minutes.  One of her siblings was telling me she was beaten frequently and nearly died as a one or two-year old, so she's got a lot of crap in her past.

So today we had another test.  I was pretty nervous, but I tried to make sure they were well-prepared.  This test was more intensely conversational, which made it a lot harder for some of the students, and I expected much lower grades.

I get about halfway through the test with her, and we come to a part where I ask her a question, and she has to shout the answer.  "What is your name?  I want you to shout." She waffles, and she's the type who if she feels uncomfortable, she just shuts down and won't say anything, so I'm like "we'll come back to it."  As the test continues, I'm astonished.  While I know her English exposure is better than the others and she has a latent vocabulary that existed before this class, she's getting everything right!  There's a few near misses, but she gets them all right, and we come back to the previous question.  I try to engage her on it, and it becomes clear that she knows the correct answer, she just doesn't feel like shouting, it pains her, she says.

I'm not giving in on this one.  I wait some ten minutes, cajoling and ignoring her as seems correct.  She finally decides she's gonna do it.  And then comes up with another excuse.  Back and forth.  Finally I press her on it more, trying to get her to say her name quieter and then louder.  Finally she speaks out, and I'm like "again."  She shouts and laughs. "Again."  She shouts again. "Who just got 100 on this test?"  She smiles and says "Okay, I'm going now."