Testing Is Over!!

We finished up our 3 days of Stanford Achievement testing!  This was my first year to be in charge of the whole thing, so to say I am relieved that it went off fairly smoothy is a huge understatement!  We had almost 50 kids test from 25 families.  I was constantly worried since putting the order together in late February/early March that I was dropping some ball or forgetting some major something, but praise the Lord, all the tests for everyone got here just fine!

This year we had a plethora of testers, I am very pleased to report.  Last year we did not.  Many grades had to be combined (which is a pain because they still have to break apart for the "listening" section), and I had to be a tester, even though I had just had Micah less than 6 weeks before.  This year I was a little bit passive-agressive when I sent out the first email about testing back in January--"AS ALWAYS, this testing can only take place by having parent volunteers to help administer the tests as well as other needs. Last year we were short and I had to be a tester, even though I had a 5 week old baby, as well as 3 other nursery-age children. If your excuse is not any better than mine would have been, please find a way to help, especially if you only have older children!"  It worked!  Lots of moms got qualified to be testers, which involves having a college degree, watching an extremely boring DVD, and filling out an online application.  As a result, I had separate testers for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 8th grades.  Fifth and 6th grades had to be combined, and 9/10/11 are always combined, since they don't have any listening section.  Having so many testers was a huge blessing, and I am so thankful for each one of them!  There was also a different mom each day as a floater, and another one to be in the nursery.  LOL, if I wasn't in charge, we wouldn't even have needed the nursery--no tester had nursery-agde kids, but I have 4 that aren't old enough for testing!

Tuesday was the grueling marathon day.  That day was the last day for the high schoolers, and there was one high school boy who was soooooo slow.  The Stanford is not a timed test, so as long as a student is progressing, they can have as long as they need.  Well, everyone else in all the classes was finished around 12:00, but it took this boy until 2:20 to finish.  We were all so ready to go home!  He had taken a long time Monday too, finishing around 1:30, but I didn't need to collect his test booklet, so I was able to go home before that.  Tuesday I had to wait.  In hindsight (note to self for next year . . .) I totally should have ran my kids home as soon as they were all finished, since I knew this boy was going to take longer.  Poor Micah was in desperate need of a nap, and Faith was melting down as well, since we had been there since 8:40.  I just couldn't imagine that anyone would actually take more than 2 hours longer than everyone else on a test.  I can't imagine what he does for the actual SAT.  Nathan said he took 2 minutes on every question, even non-math ones.  There may be some special needs involved (no one ever said), but in that case, I think his mom should have paid to have a tester just come to his house.  That would have been so much less stressful for me and for the tester for his grade.  But he will not be testing next year, since he'll be finishing up high school, so it won't be an issue!

We also had the power go out in the church for about 30 minutes Tuesday, which was just another added bit of excitement.  Fortunately, all the rooms have windows, so the kids could keep on testing. Today, since Nathan was finished, he kept Micah at home with him, so Micah could have his morning nap.  He went down a little before 10:30 and slept until after 1:00, and then he went down again around 4:00.  He was a tired little boy!  That certainly made things easier for me!  The floater for today had a 4 year old girl, so I went ahead and brought Anna, Grace, and Faith so they could all play.  The 4 girls had an absolute ball!

I made a bunch of other notes to mention for next year too, such as "make sure to give me the email address you actually check, as opposed to the one you use when you sign up for stuff and don't want to read the junk emails that come as well".  There were a couple of instances where people were not getting my emails--one lady emailed me at 10:30 Sunday night to ask what time they needed to arrive, since she hadn't gotten any emails from me!--while in fact I actually sent out several informational emails *to the email addresses they provided to BJU Press when they ordered their tests*.  I don't have time to make sure those email addresses are not throwaway ones!  But overall things went really smoothly.  Now all I have to do is get over to the post office or UPS or someplace and send this enormous and heavy box on its merry way!  Then I can just anxiously await the testing results for my always-(over?)confidant kids, which is a normal part of each testing year for me, LOL.