Friday, April 20, 2007

TAKS Happenings

As my students sat diligently working on their TAKS exam, I simply sat and spent time watching. I hadn’t been watching very long when I decided to make a list of the different things I saw and post it here.

The Things I saw during the TAKS Test

· Kids working hard
· Pencils being flown around the test paper like a rocket ship.
· A girl whose vacant stare and sheepish grin told me she was miles away having a great time.
· A boy picking his nose, looking around the room to make sure nobody was watching, and then wiping a huge chunk of something under his desk.
· A fairly lengthy finger puppet play…complete with one hand actually talking to the other.
· Frightened eyes
· Several blank stares
· Some quite sneaky attempts at what I can only assume was designed to be some kind of sign language between two girls. Both of whom instantly snapped to attention and got back to work the moment I cleared my throat.

And of course…
· A girl, who the nose picking boy didn’t see watching, looking like she might become violently ill.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Hugh...I giggled so loudly my secretary came in my office to see what was happening. Now I have to explain that I find nose picking stories hilarious. Just lost whatever shred of credibility I might have developed.

And my wife tells of seeing the same things from her high school students. Do we ever really grow up?

Pastor Bluejeans

Hugh said...

Pator Bluejeans,

You ask, "Do we ever really grow up?" My opinion is, not if we're lucky.

But I made you laugh...so my work is done here. Up, up, and away!

P.S. Sorry about the whole credibility thing.

Anonymous said...

As a third grade teacher myself, I journaled through several days of our standardized testing (ours is called the MAP) and posted it on my own blog. Some similar things happened to me too. You have to laugh about it or something worse might happen.