Since it’s April Fools Day today, I thought I’d mention an interesting lesson I learned from a teacher way back at the end of grade 6. Fortunately I wasn’t the only one who learned the lesson that day and even more fortunate that the joke that was played on us didn’t cost us anything but a bit of wasted time.
On the very last day of school, our teacher announced first thing in the morning that she had a surprise test for us and that it was an important one. Since we were moving to a new school for grade 7 the following September, the test was going to be an important indicator for our new school as to which classes we belonged in and which ones of us were good learners and which us were…not so good.
Or so we were told by our teacher.
Of course, it was the last day of school and besides, we were only in grade 6. It wasn’t like we were in high school or university, so we figured the test thing must be a joke.
Then the teacher started handing out the tests which looked about 15 pages in length if not more. That’s when we started realizing that perhaps she wasn’t kidding. This was real and we were actually going to have a test that we’d previously known nothing about.
After handing out the tests and after we’d all looked at each other trying to convince ourselves that this was a joke, our teacher reminded us about the importance of the test.
She then started reading the first page of the test out loud, a list of instructions for how to complete the test. I recall that the list was long, perhaps 30 bullet points in length and some of the statements were kind scary. They spoke about some of the things we were going to be tested on, stuff that we’d never even covered that year or in any other year for that matter.
At this point I think we all figured we’d were in big trouble.
Our teacher read the first few instructions and then told us that she wasn’t going to read them all and that we should first read all the instructions ourselves and then complete the test. She made it clear we should read the instructions completely and then do the test.
Instead, most of us – me included – simply flicked to the second page and started answering the questions.
About 5 minutes into the test, a few of us noticed one of the guys in our class had closed his test book and was sitting in his chair not doing anything but smiling. We’re looking at him wondering why he was smiling and why he wasn’t writing the test. Certainly he couldn’t have finished it so quickly? It was at least 15 pages in length.
Someone asked him why he was smiling and not doing his test and he just smiled and suggested we read the instructions. By this time, people in the class were openly talking out loud which was certainly odd and unexpected during a test.
I decided to take his advice, read through the instructions one by one as our teacher had also told us to do….and at about instruction number 20, figured out why my classmate was smiling. This instruction told us to turn to the last page of the test whereupon we were told in big black letters that the test was a joke and that we were to close out test book and just sit and wait for everyone else to figure it out.
By the time everyone had figured it out, some people were 5 pages into the test and literally had to be told it was a joke as they still hadn’t read the instructions.
Some of us have to learn the hard way from time to time.
