My students are gone, mostly
As I stated in another post, the past couple of weeks have been extremely busy. My class recently took their final tests, the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) and the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). I also posted recently about how nervous and excited I was for them and their results. The class did very well. Of the 21 students in my class, only two did not make the 2/2 standard on the DLPT and two others did not meet the 1+ standard for the OPI.
The two that didn't get the 1+ on the OPI were 97E's and careerist NCO's, so they got waivers. The Army needs qualified Interrogators and speaking scores won't make or break them. The two that didn't get a 2/2 both missed a 2 on reading by one point (their converted scores were 39 - they needed a 40 to get a 2). That's only one or two questions on the DLPT reading comprehension test, so they were very close. Those two are both 98G (or 98G equivalent from another service) and did not get waivers, so they are going to remain here and take a few weeks of post DLPT instruction and test again. We can fix a 39.
Overall, though, the class did very well on their testing.
The only thing left after they received their scores was to have a class picnic and to graduate. We had the picnic at Lover's Point Park on the Monday before graduation. It was a nice day and the class had saved up quite a bit of money from their soda fund, so there was plenty of food. So much food, in fact, that at the end of the picnic, many people were taking home cooler loads of stuff, myself included.
We had graduation rehearsal on Tuesday. I was going to serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the graduation, which would be a challenge, since the only graduation I had ever attended was my own, 12 years earlier. Fortunately, one of the other MLI's came down to help me run through the rehearsal with the students. After practice, we had the student speakers give us their speech - at every graduation, we have students give a speech in their target language and translate it for the guests. We had to take out the heavy red pen of editing since their speech was over six minutes without the translation. We got it down to five minutes total.
On Wednesday, the speakers dropped off a copy of their edited speech to me so I could type it up for them. Later that day, I gave them the printed out copies and told them to practice it a few times in front of people. I finalized my script and got a last minute award added in.
I also had an interview on Wednesday. One of my students' sister is a SGT in the Army and serves as a reporter for the Pentagon Channel. She was coming out for graduation and was going to do some interviews with students, staff and faculty for the channel. I was picked to represent the school. So, I got an oppurtunity to be interviewed about DLI and what we do here. Anyone that knows me knows that I love to talk, especially about myself, so it was a lot of fun for me. I got to talk about our mission and specifically how challenging Korean can be for our students. I also got to talk about the jobs military linguists do in the field, other than their specific military specialties, and how we try to train/prepare them for those situations.
Graduation was on Thursday. I got there early to set up. We put signs up on the rows of seats for the command group, the students, and the teaching teams and set out the programs. I had to track down one of my students to let her know that she would now be sitting in the awardee row and not her regular seat since she was receiving the last minute award I had added to the script the day before.
The ceremony started at 1000. One of the local channels had gotten word that the Pentagon Channel reporter was there that week, so they decided to get in on the fun. They conducted some interviews that day and also were on hand at the graduation to tape it. The Pentagon Channel was not taping graduation - the reporter was in the audience as the sister of my student and not working through it. I'm glad she got the chance to enjoy the ceremony.
The ceremony went well. It was seriously HOT on the stage with all the lights aimed at me but that was really the only bad part. It was a great experience to be able to stand in front of my students and call their names off as they were presented awards and/or their diplomas. There was one humorous moment when awards were presented to one of the teaching teams. It was my team, so the last name I had to read was my own. I then had to leave the podium to get my award. I really didn't want to have to do that, but the Chief MLI insisted that I recognize myself at the ceremony. The upside is that the certificate came in a very nice wood frame. I've already replaced the certificate with a class photo of all the students and instructors. The photo is really more important to me than the award.
After graduation, I congratulated some of the students that stuck around and took a few pictures. Then we cleaned up the theater and went back to work. The department chairperson wanted to have a meeting with the team members and then take us out to lunch. At the meeting, we got the results of the student's end of course questionnaire. My score went up from a 3.38 on the mid-course questionnaire to a 3.74 (out of 4). That is a big improvement. Our goal is 3.4, so this shows what the students thought of my effort and work in class.
Well, this is a loooooong post, but it was a busy week. I still have more to say about my class and students, so I'll post more as I can.
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