Hoop Time

Well gang, this is my last Friday of work for awhile. Yes, you can hate me or be slightly jealous of me, but don't get too excited. I still have 200 notebooks and nine projects to grade before Monday and then I have to input grades, bubble them, clean up my classroom, and then I get to check out for the summer.

But since it's nearing the end of school, it's time for the kids to jump through all of the appropriate hoops. My students have to take the district benchmark today. It's a 33 question test which covers the last three units I supposedly taught them in the past 10 weeks. Now, I don't put too much stock (no, make that I don't put ANY stock) into the district benchmark test because some schools and even one teacher at my school actively cheats by giving the students the test questions as review either the night before or even prior to giving the test ON THAT DAY. So...my students are "competing" against other students whose teachers have acted unethically. But that's neither here nor there. I just can't believe how many tests my students have to take...there's my unit test and the district benchmark for World History...but then there's the benchmark for math, English...and then I'm sure they also have to take the end of the unit tests for those classes as well. How many hoops does a 7th grader have to jump through in order to move onto the 8th grade? Too many to count...waaaaaaayyyyyyy too many to count. Okay, I'm done bitching. I don't know why I care so much. They certainly don't pay me enough to care this much...