What it takes

This morning as I strode purposefully to the bus stop, I felt determined, resolute, powerful and strong. "Whatever it takes!" I said (isn't that the motto of some branch of the military?) I visualized myself at batting practice, like in high school swinging away at whatever obstacles hurl themselves in my direction, lest I miss one and end up with a honey comb-patterned ball imprint on my forehead. Yes, I confirmed. I'll do whatever it takes!

I was reminded, it takes a lot. A lot of patience. A lot of swallowing your anger and frustration. A lot of pretended charisma and fake enthusiasm for Kaplan test prep strategies.

With the beginning of test prep unit, the kids didn't know what hit 'em. What's this? No more Read Aloud? No more independent reading? ALL test prep ALL day? I think they felt the switch, maybe sensed my internal tension as well, and it manifested itself in generalized increased pain-in-the-assitude. Even the ones who are not normally pains in the ass were painful today, and the ones who usually pains in the ass really outdid themselves. K--, for example, hit another kid upside the head with a book and broke his glasses? Like, not in a violent way, and the glasses weren't broken on purpose, but still. This is not how things are supposed to run in my classroom. K--, I think has reached an early adolescence and should be shipped of to a desert island with all the other attitudinal adolescents and only permitted to return when she's 18 or shows a record of better judgment. She gets under my skin like none other.

The other blow came with the after-school program I work on that's geared to helping high achievers maintain their high scores or do even better on the test. We got their test results
back many of my students went down over the course of the program. Which kind of shakes my confidence in whatever the hell we've been doing for three months but also confirms my belief that the tests are just so frustratingly temperamental and coincidental... it's not like the kids un-learned stuff, it's not like they got dumber or forgot what they learned... so why are we so bound to these scores? Can we take credit for a four point improvement? Can we penalize ourselves for a four-point drop? Like Corky says, if we're talking about margins that slim, it probably has more to do with whether or not the kid ate an extra cheerio that day than it does with anything in particular that we're doing
or not doing...

Anyway, partly I think as a result of the monthly festival of womanhood, and partly because of the rain and partly because of stuffing my round soul into ucomfortable square-shaped test prep shoes, I felt all out of sorts come 5pm. And, noticing this, in a touching and undeserved display of empathy and affection, Corky invited me to sleep over and get my grad school paper done in the company of a friend, leftover appetizers from her party and night-time mimosas. So it looks like once again, all will be well after all.