Blessings Of Testing Season To You

This testing season, I am grateful for...

• That one elective Humanities class that reminds me that school isn't always about marking bubbles.
• My choice not to give up any food items for Lent. Stress eating is just about all I have left.
• A school email that can color my text red so that my emails can end with the words "and then there's testing" and just the right bite.
• Benchmark test scores that skew low. I can use them to scare in their natural form but just at the right time pull out the phrase "of course, you could probably add 20 points to this and it would equal an EOI."
• That one kid in the back in first hour that has a zillion questions. When he asks the question, I know that three other kids in the class are wondering the same thing. Thank you, kid in the back, for not yet knowing that questions are uncool.
• The bluff "We're not doing testing stuff today, let's read from the lit book!" that allows me to own children for a day and slip in some hardcore work on dramatic and situational irony.
• The knowledge that this is my blog, dammit, and I don't have to link to a State standard when I write the words "dramatic and situational irony".
• That whole "figurative language bee" idea from the listserv.
• Full strength cola
• and coffee
• and yarn
• That slackjawed look from the 11th grade teachers today when I showed up at faculty meeting with highlighted score reports and intervention plans.
• Fellow English II teachers to whom I can entrust my children in our round robin remediation festival.