Sickness and Testing

Over Easter break I went on a lovely trip back to Colorado for a few days. Upon returning home I came down with the horrible terrible flu that's been going around and was out sick for the entire 4 day week. Blah. I don't recall ever being that sick before. I've definitely never missed that much school before, as a student or a teacher and I felt pretty guilty about it especially because it was the week before standardize testing started and I missed out on teaching my mini test prep unit. So if my kids get bad scores I'm blaming the flu...

After sitting around my trailer for four days I was pretty ready to go back to school last Monday, but no. We had a snow day. That's right, a SNOW DAY on the very last day of March. Crazy South Dakota weather. I finally went back to school Tuesday and had a fun-filled (read: unbearably tedious) week of administering standardized tests. woo. The tests don't even really count for my 9th graders because the South Dakota state tests used to determine AYP are only given to 11th graders at the high school. So my kids just took the Standford 10 achievement tests, and I have no idea what even happens to those results. I don't think that all standardized testing is a bad thing, in fact it could be a great and useful tool, but pointless and poorly written testing is definitely a bad thing.

Now after two weeks of not actually having to teach anything or prepare anything I feel very derailed. Its hard to be excited about doing anything else the rest of this year when it pretty much just feels like it's all over and on the downward slide. Only about 6 weeks left. And I have to decide what to teach in those remaining weeks when there is SO much stuff we haven't read and learned... so many state standards I haven't even touched on. I'm going to plan better next year. I need to plan better next year.

Sometimes I hate having a job where my decisions dictate the high school literary experience of so many kids... It's a lot of pressure, you know?