This time of year is the worst.  STAR testing is next week and into the following week.  There's lots of pressure on the administration to raise test scores, they place pressure on us and it is my job to prod the kids into performing at their peak level without laying any stress on them...they are only 8 years old, for heaven's sake.  The powers that be, at the state and federal level, have lost track of the fact that 8 year olds are not mini adults...you know like in those portraits from the 17th century where the children are painted with grown up proportions, just shrunk.  So we expect the children to learn like adults, just smaller.  But their experience of the world is so limited and their brains so barely developed that you have to see them in a whole different world, their world.  Test scores make sense to an adult, they are pretty meaningless to a 2nd grader.  In my perfect world, we would not test or even give grades to 2nd graders.  We would teach them.  Our goal in education would not be to raise test scores, but to incite a love of learning.

In two weeks, when the tests are over, we will be able to breathe again, and enjoy each other, and do all the fun projects that we have not had time for all year.  We will have music and art and go on field trips and do a play...and before I know it the year will be over and I'll be worrying over next year's crop...