When your best...

just isn't good enough.


Well, we got our state standardized writing test scores back yesterday. The last five years I was never below a 94%, this year was not the case. This year I clocked in at 70%. I had more people fail this year than in that last five years combined.....times 3. I knew this was coming, but it still hurts.

I've known since October that we were not learning the way we should.  I tried to address the issue every way I knew how. In fact, the entire 8th grade team of teachers tried to address the issue because it was grade wide. I won't go into details with that, but we are all EXTREMELY frustrated with how this school year went.

The only thing I can take away from this is that I know that I truly did everything in my power to give those kids the information they needed in the ways they needed it. I changed my teaching style halfway through the year to cater to this particular group of kids exactly, but many of them still were not having anything to do with it. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!

On the positive side...I had twice the amount of perfect scores I have ever had and 4 times as many pass advances I have ever had! One student who got a perfect score told me, "Thank you for giving me confidence in my writing to get this score." Which was pretty darn awesome!

My students took their reading SOL on Monday, but I have not gotten those scores back yet, so hopefully that news will be a little bit better.

We are now in the home stretch with 7 1/2 school days left until summer. We are in the dreaded part of the year after testing when I am trying to keep the kids engaged and fill time productively!

My students have been working on their book collage posters for the last two days and they finally finished them today! I did them a little differently this year and they actually turned out pretty darn cute. I will take pictures of them and share them soon!

I hope that your testing is going well!