We've really been blessed with our little one. She is SUCH a good helper when it comes to helping out in our classrooms. She seems to enjoy being on the inside sometimes, but I have to wonder if sometimes it doesn't get old. I do know that she feels a great deal of pressure to be a good student - probably because she hears us grouse so much about the many children we teach that simply do not give a hoot. Bailee, on the other hand, gives so much of a hoot that she does a pretty fair impersonation of an owl!
This week she was extremely stressed about taking her first ISAT test (the horrific offspring of No Child Left Behind). It was in Reading, which she sometimes feels a little less confident about (Math is simply her strongest suit). She was in quite a state that morning, and it really got me thinking about what all this testing is doing to our children. Certainly it is causing a great deal of stress. The stakes seem to just get higher all the time, but I for one am not seeing the Holy Grail of achievement that NCLB promised. I just see lots of stressed out teachers and kids - and the not so slow death of ANYTHING not tested. I think we lost more than we gained, and the children are paying the price.
By the way, Bailee did just fine on her test (scoring in the Advanced range) - even though she read the term "simile" as "smile" on one section of the test. She definitely thought the test questions had gotten a little strange! She was determinedly looking for the example of the "smile" until she noticed her mistake.
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