Why are test so stressful?! Today SJ's education specialist from the charter school came by to give her a kindergarten assessment. So a few things happened.
First the ES per an earlier conversation was supposed to be here at 9am but she sends me a text at 8:50 asking if "can meet today?" Hint: She isn't coming at 9 so we start our school day late because of course I spent the early morning running around cleaning, and getting the kids dressed.
**I have a confession, most days when we are not leaving the house I let my kids wear what they want. Today I picked their clothes with little protest from them because they were excited to have a visitor.**
So I start school late, get them through all but science and our ES comes at 11:30. In the previous post you can see we end our school day by noon because I have noticed that after that time it is very difficult to get my kids to sit still or listen to anything instructive. They prefer to go outside and play, go figure. So she shows up to test SJ who immediately goes into "what can I get away with" mode.
Now I'm frustrated, SJ is restless and the ES is ready to give her the assessment. She starts with asking SJ letters that are mixed up, SJ does good missing only one or two after declaring that she wanted to do something else.
She goes from what the letters are to how each letter sounds, same result. SJ is then presented with short vowel words and asked to sound them out. She does the first one, skips the next two and gets the fourth right. She doesn't want to read the long vowel words at all and by the time we get to the sight words the only ones she wants to say is "a" and "is".
So I am sitting there frustrated because my ability to teach my child is wrapped up in this assessment presented by an ES who has just met my child and has no idea how brilliant she is! I desperately need this affirmation so that I can prove to the imaginary "perfect mom" in my head that I can best her. So here I am asking myself why this test was so important.
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