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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Top 10 Reasons I Love Benchmark Week

10) Standing around, with nothing to do but watch kids quietly take a test, is practically another mini-Christmas.

9) Gives me a chance to see how students other than my own can do on difficult, tricked-up, culturally-biased questions.

8) My psychic ability gets a workout when I predict who will be next to ask to use the restroom.

7) I enjoy witnessing Einstein's Theory of Relativity in action, where every 5 minutes seems like 2 hours.

6) It's just about the only chance I get the time to quietly count pi out to 254,000 places.

5) As an army of one, I do less all morning than most people do before 9 AM.

4) I swell up with pride every time I hear that one of my students finished their test in 30 minutes without showing any work -- that's like doing a crossword puzzle in ink!

3) Sometimes I fall asleep and wake to find that I'm a giant blue creature on another world -- watching giant blue kids quietly working on a test.

2) With half the day devoted to testing, and shortened periods with my classes, there's not as much time for the kids to waste each day.

1) There is always the knowledge that next week will NOT be a benchmark week.

6 comments:

Ginger Snaps said...

Oh the joys of standing around and having nothing to do, but then there is the DOH going off in my brain when they choose the wrong answer!

Please visit my new blog http://gingersnapstreatsforteachers.blogspot.com/

I'm trying to get the word out for teachers!

Theresa Milstein said...

This is great! It's hard to put a positive spin on benchmarks!

In our district, we have state tests, plus tests from the superintendent to see how the kids will do on the state tests. I'm afraid to add up how many hours are devoted (wasted) to testing.

Margaret English said...

Ha! 10, 7 and 1 ring familiar bells with me.

ReadingCountess said...

I laughed out loud! Hilarious, but true. I wrote about benchmark testing and the large amount of other extraneous testing this week, too.

Sarah Garb said...

It really is quite wonderful whenever there are long periods of quiet testing. I sometimes don't let the kids know that everyone has finished testing just so we can keep up the quiet after-test reading and general atmosphere of calm for just a few minutes more....

Dina said...

Giant blue kids...thanks for a laugh out loud that echoed in the hall.