a few simple guidelines should be followed.
#1 – Don’t fall asleep!
Now, I do understand that Korean kids have it rough. They have to go to regular school during the day, then as soon as that’s over it’s off to the hakwon (after-school school) for another round of all the same subjects they just had. They spend about 10-12 hours a day in classrooms – and then there’s homework to do (for both schools) once it’s all over.
Even so, tests are important and one really should try to stay awake during them. This poor guy ended up doing okay on the test, but I think if he’d not fallen asleep he could’ve done better. And before you ask, yes, I did wake him up.
All three times he fell asleep.
(I’m not so mean that I’ll let a kid sleep through a test and then penalize him for not getting his work done.) It was before the third wakeup that I snapped the pic. He was suitably embarrassed by the picture once I showed it to him, and I hope that has an impact on his in-class sleeping habits.
In his defense though, he was the only student in the class to correctly answer the hardest question on the test, so I guess the time he did spend on the test was put to good use. When I congratulated him on being the only one to get it right, he insisted he’d gotten it wrong. I had to show him his test paper to prove it to him, and he was dumbfounded, as he couldn’t remember writing it.
Now I’m wondering if maybe I should’ve let him do the whole test in his sleep….