Testing

Soul draining out of my ears.

Do you have any idea how terrifically boring it is watching kids take a major, life-altering exam?

You don’t want to know.

We did benchmark testing today at work, which is a fancy way of saying that we pretended we were taking our TAKS test (look it up if you’re that bored—basically, the Devil of education—the test we’re all teaching to these days) so we’d have an idea of how the kids will perform on the real TAKS test in March.

I think watching paint dry is more interesting than watching Freshmen take an English/Language Arts test.

I won’t go into the intricacies of how the system works; I don’t want to bore you. Suffice it to say that the kids are read to as if they are idiots, given the rules for the test that is the same set of rules they have been hearing since the 3rd grade. They’re bored. I’m bored.

It is so silly that this is where our education has gone. It scares me that my son will be starting this mess in three years.

God, I wish we could afford for me to not have to teach so that I could stay home with him and Laura and just home school them.

God, I wish I had the patience to actually spend the entire day home with the two of them (or even one of them), week after week after never-ending-week, without needing a stiff drink.

I teach high school for a reason.