Testing, Testing

This week and next week, our lives at school are turned up-side down to accommodate our BIG TEST schedules. We have numerous small group configurations to fulfill various mandates and allow for specific accommodations. And our school works really hard to put some of our students into small groups just so that they can be monitored and encouraged personally. We are not allowed to read anything to these students or give them hints or anything. But we are allowed to say, "You're doing well! Keep it up!" or "Stand up and walk around for a minute." or "Here, pause for a snack." All of these special, personal touches in a very small group (2 - 4 students) really helps them to stay alert, and not get discouraged and give up, and just start filling in bubbles randomly. We have a whole cadre of staff members who are assisting with these little groups. And it pays off--these kids stay on their game and finish the tests and their scores reflect that they were thinking and reading and trying.

But it wreaks havoc on the rest of us..None of us teachers can believe how slowly this week is progressing. By Tuesday afternoon it felt like it must be at least Thursday. We have to keep track of who is where, and we've all changed our lunch and specials times (P.E., music, art, etc.). As a result, the students are very off-balance during the part of the day that we're not testing. I'm trying to do a science unit during the 3 hour window that I have whichever class is not testing for math or reading. But, I don't have an entire class, because 6 or 7 of them are in small groups; maybe 11 are being tested by the ELL facilitator because the directions can be read aloud (in English) to them. (Also, the entire math test.) So, I have a mixture of several classes and they don't know one another well, so there is turmoil there too. Plus every two days, the groups change. But we have set the goal to be rated "High Achieving*" and we've done after-school tutoring, Saturday test-prep "camp" and just our everyday fabulous job of being great teachers. So, we're trying to create an situation where every student can do the very best job.

*High Achieving Schools: These schools must
meet one of the two criteria established by Nevada’s
No Child Left Behind standards. These schools either
have a significantly higher percentage of students
in each subgroup that are proficient than the state
target or have significantly reduced the percentage of
non-proficient students by more than 10%.

I know I'm whining here. But I'm exhausted and there are 5 more days to go before we can get back to normal. The only good thing: Our principal will exhale after next week. And...it is also the end of the second trimester. That means ten more weeks and it is summer vacation. (Actually eleven because we also have Spring Break coming at the end of March.)

Someone is reading this thinking, "You baby-face teachers, always complaining. And you get all that time off!" Yup, and as a result of that time off, we can face another year of teaching kids and administering tests and we manage to restrain ourselves from strangling anyone in our classroom. My professional goal each year: do not commit a felony. So far, so good.