Stress for everyone. Anyone?

Well, this week was a bit stressful to all parties involved at school. It was end of level testing this week and I have never felt so much pressure before. It's amazing how much these tests matter in our world today. That's how my school gets funding. Test scores! Multiple choice tests! Wow. Another great decision made by people who have never taught before.

Anyway...I do hope my class did well. I feel their scores reflect my life this past year. It's sad but true. I've worked so hard so that they could feel confident answering basic questions (in my mind) about what they have learned/ what I have taught ALL YEAR! So don't even get me started about how many students came and said "I'm tired and I didn't eat breakfast this morning!" Seriously!? Or how I truly avoid looking too closely as I was monitoring the room because I am positive that answers were circled when the question was not even read all the way through! How do I know this? I saw it ALL year long as I tried to help them!

Overall, I just had to take deep breaths give my students life savers, pretzels, granola bars, fruit snacks, and jolly ranchers and say, "Ok. You know this. Do your best." I try to tell myself that I've done all that I can. Like I said, stressful!

Because we depend on these tests so much, the school made it a well oiled machine with plastic totes that have everything needed including the testing materials, sharpened #2 pencils, erasers, sample fill in papers so the students knew exactly how to correctly fill in their forms. The tote also included this helpful page to hang on our classroom doors...

As you can tell, teachers who know how to spell were really stressed too. It definitely made me laugh a little to see these signs up all over the school! And I really did laugh when I saw other signs after testing...