“Last day, be good” Yahkemp wrote on our test prep count down.
My little enforcer…he’s not so little, actually. He wears his pants below his hips and has an attitude so big I actually rejoiced the day he earned a suspension (which he never had to serve…welcome to special ed), but after 2 months he’s finally mine, just like the rest of them, and that alone makes me smile when he writes things like ‘be good’ on the board.
We left it for the day.
Tomorrow is day 1 of the ELA.
“Will it be hard?” Christopher asked today.
“It will be challenging,” I said. “But we’ve been working hard and if you use the strategies we’ve been working on you’ll be just fine.”
“She means it will be hard,” Joshua said.
I smiled. We know each other too well. They read, but not well enough. They write, but not well enough. They comprehend, but not well enough. It’s going to be hard.
“I expect you to do your best. I expect you to try and not give up. You are as prepared as you can be and you’ve worked very hard. No matter what, I’m really proud of every single person in here.”
It was probably the quietest I had ever spoken in my classroom. They all heard me. You could have heard a mouse run across the floor. Thank God one didn’t.
“What if we fail?” Malik asked.
“Then you work hard on your portfolio and we take it to (the Assistant Principal) and I fight for you.” I said.
“Okay,” he said, looking down at his desk.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said.
I’m not sure if they believed me because I’m not sure if I believed myself.
Ready or not, the test begins tomorrow.
3 comments:
Good luck! You'll let us know what happens, won't you? (If you ever get the test results back...)
hey, good luck to you and your kids. do let us know what happens. and ya know what? we're proud of YOU. it's a good thing you're doing, and whatever the scores, you've made an enormous difference in the lives of a dozen people: unmeasurable, which is the shortcoming of standardized tests.
You survived, yes? I've been thinking a lot about you and your kids this week.
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