This is a Test, This is Only a Test

I am really struggling to find some grace for myself this week.  I hurt my back lifting sandbells incorrectly last week and haven’t worked out, not even yoga, this week.  I write this while drinking my second beer and eating Swedish fish I discovered in a drawer.  Today, with no tweezer anywhere nearby, I noticed a wild, pure white hair growing out of my temple like a deranged horned owl. Not the top of my head or even in the little hairs that grow across my forehead; straight from the side of my temple.  I am not sure if it compliments or detracts from the whisker on my lip which is so thick and prickly it would best befit a pirate.  This is not a glamorous time in my life, folks.

However, I think what really has me just stretched thin and taut and fragile though is state-mandated testing. I am tired of being flexible and in good humor and conciliatory to the chaos around me.  My room is a testing room so I am kicked out for most of the day.  My first class of the day met me at the room where we were supposed to have class.  This turned out to be a piano room. With pianos.  Oh, and the entire piano class.  But not to worry, we are flexible.  We left a note on the door and made our way to the choir room where there were risers, no desks and not enough outlets for computers.  I went on to proctor the next period and that room was cramped with exhausted children bubbling in bubbles.  By this time they had been at it for 2 hours and had 3 to go.  Some kids were already done and they had the choice of staring, reading a book, or sleeping.  Most chose to stare.  No talking, no doodling, no joy.  Not even when they get 20 minutes to eat their lunch.  Silence.  My proctoring period bled into lunch and if my sweet co-worker didn’t come to relieve me, I would have had to proctor through my lunch.  I like kids.  I chose to work with kids, but there is something so very necessary about eating food in a kid-free room for even ten minutes when you are with children all day.  It was an exhausting, soul-sucking day. 

                                             

We have another day like this tomorrow and three more days of this in May.  At one time, Texas used to require fifteen EOC (end of course) exams in order for students to graduate.  God bless the TAMSA moms who marched and protested and yelled loudly enough to get it down to five.  I could not imagine doing this fifteen times a year. I could not imagine your kids and mine going through this.  I would like to say that these tests measure what our kids learn each year.  That they are true indicators of knowledge not only acquired but used correctly.  Maybe some of the test is, but it really seems more like a test of conformity.  Are you a good test taker? Do you know how to take this test?  If you do, you’re fine.  If you are trying to take it based on knowledge and facts alone, you could be on shaky ground.  And if you are an English Language Learner or a Special Education kid, you will take the same test again and again and again, because it is not asking you what you know, it is asking you if you know how to take this test and you don’t because it is not written in any language you know.

I think it is time to really ask just who profits from this and why this is still a thing.  Teachers don’t profit by losing their planning time, their lunches and their classrooms. And it is definitely not profiting the students who sit in a fugue state for five hours and whose only relief comes when they whisper for a dictionary or the bathroom pass.  It is not the administration who organize and plan and then reorganize and put out test-related fires all day.  I just don't know why we do this and who it benefits and why it exhausts me and my people and every kid in school to a point where all we can do is eat carbs and cry a little.

Tonight, I will finish this beer and eat all of the remaining Swedish fish. I will find one or two interactions with kids tomorrow that make my day seem better.  I will actively monitor and walk myself in circles around that testing room.  That will give me grace for all the carbs I eat when I am sad and tense and tired. I will let my back heal and cut myself a break and always, always, lift sandbells with my knees from now on.  And I will gather some hope that with all I have seen on social media about these state mandated tests lately than people are getting ready to stop just thinking that these tests are a waste of time and start saying it. Loudly.