Testing. Testing. Testing . . .

We are in the midst of six long days of Stanford testing. Too long.

Having repositioned all the desks into rows has me feeling discombobulated, and reading script after testing script is numbing my brain. But I've had some time to contemplate the "stuff" teachers find themselves doing, completely outside the realm of assigned duties.

Today's was a doozy. As I administered the Listening portion of the test, rushing around to check that each of 26 first graders bubbled something (and just one something) next to the appropriate question number, Mrs. C gestured urgently in the direction of one of the children. I looked over and then desperately wished I hadn't.

The child had vomited all over himself and his test booklet. Every year during the TAKS, I live in fear of this moment: vomit on a test booklet. A puke test must be bagged, tagged, and reported as a testing irregularity. And someone (I prayed it was not me--turns out it is the Testing Coordinator) must transfer the child's bubbled answers from the barf booklet into a non-barf booklet. (And you thought that someone who threw up on a test booklet would be finished with testing? Naive little pretties.)

The other children remained surprisingly calm. ("Can you hear me now?") I, however, have the gag reflex of a mama bird. Trying very hard not to make a bad situation worse, I summoned a monitor from the hallway who kindly took the child to the nurse and then buzzed the office to let them know we needed a custodian, stat! Moments later, as I attempted to wipe off the worst of the yuck with giant wads of paper towel, our heroic but somewhat harried Testing Coordinator swept in with The Bag in which to preserve the puke test. (Is there performance pay for that?)

After the hubbub subsided, we took a brief break, regrouped, and soldiered on.


Note to self: Do not become a testing coordinator--EVER.
. . . Do you suppose there is a Chief Officer in Charge of receiving the state's vomit tests?