The Busy Life of a Single Mom

Ugh!  I hate days like today. They are so boring - and so NOT why I went into education. This week across the state of Texas we are doing standardized testing (the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, otherwise known as the TAKS) from the 3rd grade through the 11th grade. At the high school level, our tests started yesterday, and we have tests through Friday. Today I adminstered the 11th grade Math TAKS test.  It was sooo boring. There’s no interaction with our students because they are taking this important test (their graduation depends on this test), and we can do nothing else interesting (like read or blog) as we have to be “actively monitoring” our students. 

I won’t get on my TAKS soapbox and discuss the test itself, but just the long days of giving the tests. We started this test at 8 am this morning, and my last student did not finish until almost 3. For this entire time, I basically had to just stare at the nine poor teenagers in my room as I have to “actively monitor” and be sure they do not cheat. This makes for a very long day, and I think more exhaustive. I find it much more tiring to do this than to teach all day long. So I leave you today with just a couple brief blogs (and want you to know that this will probably be the norm for this week as I will be testing sophomores in Science and Social Studies for the next two days), but next week life goes back to normal, and I will continue with the Disney and Dancing with the Stars updates as well as some recipes we enjoy and such.