Thousands of little boxes

Grading in Mozambique involves filling little squares with numbers
1-20. Each student receives marks for three tests and then a final
grade based on the average. That means filling four little squares for
each student, and we have about 300 students each - plus everything
must be in pencil first and then traced over in pen, and all grade
sheets must be made in duplicate in case of any irregularities.
Teachers are also responsible for statistical maps of their students'
learning outcomes, which involves another sheet of little squares
documenting how many kids took each test by gender, and calculating
the pass/fail percentage for each class and gender. Plus, due to our
faulty electricity situation, part of the task had to be done hunched
over the light of a candle. This all adds up to literally thousands of
little boxes we've filled this week and this is just the first half of
the grading process. Because we are taking students to national youth
conferences next week during the break, we're missing out on
'conselhos' in which teachers get together and read off the grades for
each class while the term director fills out a very large grade sheet
to display publically. This is another example of when Americans think
about how many work hours could be saved with the use of a computer or
photocopier.