(Breathe, Jay....take nice long breaths to ease the tension and anxiety and frustration....)
I found myself with that type of self-talk a lot yesterday, as the roll-out of our MAP (Measured Academic Progress) screener didn't exactly feature a smooth execution. Okay, I'll cut the crap and just say that yesterday was, at times, excruciatingly frustrating.
The situation wasn't helped by my preconceived disgruntledness towards the whole idea to begin with. With that crumbly foundation already in place, the glitches and bugs and uncertainties that made up the day didn't exactly construct much positive.
I will say this, though. I appreciated the students' efforts. The majority of students appeared to give a good effort, and so I will hold on to that circumstance to help me get through today. Because while we were told that most students would finish in a class period, and while I've been told that this testing would only compliment my efforts to prepare students for the PSAT NMSQT, my guess is that around 70-80% of the students did not finish. I'm hopeful that most of those only have a few questions remaining. WHAT I'M REALLY HOPEFUL for is that when the students resume their tests today, they won't have to start over at question #1.
The view I have as proctor of the test just isn't very user friendly, so I really don't know how many are suspended, how many are completed, and how many haven't started.
Today, though, I at least know how to find the right class to test, which was a mystery for the first part of testing yesterday. Today, though, I also think I know how to correct the situations when students seem to get knocked out of testing. Today, though, I fear the "unknown". What could possibly go wrong next?
I hope all of this frustration and money and time spent on this system of screening and detecting students that are lagging behind in their reading and math skills pays off sometime. For now, I'm just going to try to get through today.
No comments:
Post a Comment