Stress
2006-05-23 6:41 p.m.

Stess is bad for you.

Today began SOL testing at my school. Only the 6th and 7th graders were testing, but we all got involved, thanks to needlessly convoluted schedule changes. Our entire schedule will be totally different each day this week. We made handouts for the kids, but they still can't figure out where to go.

The Powers That Be want us to give all the monkeys SOLs in all subjects, all grades next year. Someone really needs to tell them that there is not enough classroom space in the entire building for every child to sit and test simultaneously. This is why we have gym class. It's where we send them when we have no place for them to sit. Our class capacity is figured by subtracting the 100 or so in gym at any given time. There are simply not enough seats, unless we use the auditorium, which we are not allowed to do. Yet another fine idea from the Land of Them What Administer, But Don't Teach and Ain't Been in a School Building for Twenny-Hunnert Years.

Tomorrow, my darling eighth graders take their reading test. I would feel better about this if I knew with any confidence that they are actually capable of reading. Even if they can read, most eighth graders are so bonelessly slothful that they can't be bothered to waste energy on actually explaining what they've read to me. I really can't tell what they know.

My particular testing group includes the Empress (who got another referral today for telling me my class was excrement and telling me to shut up), SpongeBob (a bowl-cut skater boi with no common sense and a big mouth) and Molasses, who be jus' plain ole slow. Oh, and I forgot sweet, doe-eyed Rashim, who is a six-foot bundle of fast-twitch muscle fibers. I hope his mom remembers his meds tomorrow. He has to sit still for three hours!

I've been relieving stress by planting still more stuff in the garden. Yesterday I added some petunias and marigolds mixed in with the begonias out front, a strapping new portulaca cultivar out by the mailbox, more chocolate chip ajuga around the maple tree, and New Guinea impatiens beside the deck, with the Hosta brothers: Jimmy,Rasta, Pasta, and La Vista. I'm about out of planting space, but I still have planty of stress.

17 days of school left. Six blocks of lessons left. I can do this.

If I show up at your house in the night with a truckload of plants, just hide and let me work out my tension. Your yard will thank you.

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