Tomorrow I’m scheduled to take a really big test. To say it’s stressing me out would be a $2950 understatement. It’s a really important test, and weighs heavily against my total “grade,”  and in my opinion, a bit disproportionally. I know exactly how our students feel every time they take a high-stakes assessment:

1. Even though I was provided “standards,” the list reads like a manual for a Millennium Falcon (and that’s not a Ford product, kids)

2. Even though they’ve given me a practice test, some of the subtleties of the test procedure were confusing, even to a technologically sophisticate such as myself, so I hope I don’t panic and spontaneously combust.

3. Even though they have given me “sample prompts,” they are general, vague, and inexplicable in nature.

Hmmmm. Sound familiar?

The parallels cannot be denied.

But I will do my best. I have been working on this assessment my entire teaching career. And failure does not mean I am a bad teacher.

Right?

Right. Just like not passing any high stakes test means one is a “bad” anything.

Wish me luck. Because brains ain’t going to cut this one.