SAT Reveal Day

I wish I could bottle up the reactions of students when they click to open their SAT results.  Try as I may from the first day of school to inform, motivate, and encourage students that "reveal day" will eventually arrive, I feel like actually getting reactions from students perhaps might have more impact.  For me, the reactions provide a range of emotions.

My heart jumps for those students that I know have worked and studied and followed advice and practiced in order to achieve their preferred level of scoring.  I want to go pat them on the back or give them a hug and shout to the world about their accomplishment.  For others that I know did not heed my advice and direction, I have a different reaction.  Believe it or not, the reaction is not, "I told you so."

Instead of that option, what I really want for them to understand is to learn from this missed opportunity.  There are some students that are genuinely disappointed, and I truly believe the thought they would do just fine on their own.  These are the same students that usually have pretty high aspirations for themselves, and all of the sudden a score comes back to them that is a bit of a reality skull shot.  I think I hear themselves asking, "Wait a minute....this is my score?"

And then there are about the 5% of students that simply didn't give an effort.  I use to get really frustrated with these folks.  The frustration was derived from state meet and exceed standard levels that eventually paint a bit of a picture that many feel is a result of my teaching ability and efforts.  I'm older now and have just learned to try to minimize the students that don't try.  I realize now that I can't make them try.  For those folks, I feel sorry for them - again, another missed opportunity.  Little do they know now (despite all my attempts) how their lack of effort and concern could be costing them in their lives.

Maybe I will keep this blog post and share it next year as part of my continuing efforts to motivate students to try to do their best on their state mandated SAT test.  Maybe instead of bottling up reactions, these words could reach one or two more students that wouldn't have otherwise reached.