Are You Smarter Than A Seventh Grader?

Yesterday both of my boys finished their achievement testing for this school year. It is always such a relief to me when they have reached this milestone. This school year has seemed to move so quickly.

I was never any good at taking standardized tests in school.
I always made good grades on daily work and chapter tests, but when it came to achievement tests I never performed well.

Maybe I was nervous. Maybe it was just too much information at once. Maybe it was both.

I try not to put too much stock in the scores that my children get on these tests.
Don't get me wrong, I am proud of them when they do well. But I am also proud of them when they don't. Their scores don't define who they are as students or people to me.

I think it is unfair to judge their complete year of work on this one test each year.
How they work each day matters much more to me. I care more about their attitude and effort towards their school work than I do the letter grade they receive. (That doesn't mean I want D's and F's all the time, but you know what I mean.)

Each year I serve as a testing proctor. I usually just work with one or two students that need to be tested alone for different learning needs.

This year I was blessed to work with a precious girl in the seventh grade.
As I was helping her, I realized that the questions on this seventh grade achievement test were hard!

The listening skills portion of the test, in my opinion, was the hardest part of all. I'll be honest with you, I couldn't even answer all of the questions they asked about the passages. And I was the one reading them! Pitiful.

I wondered as I was reading over some of the other sections of the test how I would score. How would most adults score? It's humbling.

It's so interesting that sometimes as parents we expect our children to accomplish things that we could not even accomplish ourselves.

Anyway, I'm glad it's over, because it means school is almost over. Summertime here we come!:)

P.S. Thank you, Mia(and girls), for your prayers. This year was a great testing experience for all three of us. I also received a sweet note from the mother of the girl that I worked with, and she said it was the most relaxed her daughter had ever been during testing.:) At the bottom of her note was this verse from Psalms. It made me think of you, Mia.

Psalms 145:7
They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.