Knowing what we know

"You don't own this little bit of knowledge, until you know it"

- me

There has been a pesky email sitting in my inbox for about two weeks now.  Calvert needs me to give the kids assessment tests in order to place them correctly for reading and math, and then they can send the proper level of curriculum later in the summer.  I have no problem with that, I know it is a necessary hoop - it's just the whole testing thing.  

Sigh.

I hate the testing part.  I'm not a good proctor.  I have to physically remove myself from the room and not look at the answers when I return, or else I am pulling at the roots of my hair and saying things like...

"HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU READ THE QUESTION????"

"IT SAYS RIGHT HERE (finger pointing rudely at question #8) HOW MANY CATS ALTOGETHER.  YOU KNOW WHAT YOU NEED TO DO - YOU'VE DONE THIS WITH ME AT LEAST A HUNDRED TIMES!"

"WHY DID YOU UNDERLINE ALL THE ADVERBS???  IT SAYS ADJECTIVES!!!"

"YOU SKIPPED AN ENTIRE PAGE!?!?!"

No.  I am not good at this.

So far it's been two days of less than fun times.  First I feel good at what I see, and then I feel like I have completely failed my kids and they will be doomed to a life of _______ (fill in the blank).

And the stupid part?  This isn't even a graded-type of thing!  It's just a silly placement test and I am assigning myself all sorts of guilt over it.

One good thing - while school districts across the nation are forcing students to answer the most ridiculous testing questions, these questions from Calvert were straight-forward, made complete sense, and gave a very accurate picture of what the child knows versus what they don't know.

For now, I'm off to explain to Rylan what the question, "Tom has 8 cars.  Bob has 3 cars.  How many more cars does Tom have than Bob?" really needs you to do.  She encountered it three different times yesterday and was stumped.  And she's done this style of question with me at least...oh... a hundred times??