The thing about Alexis is that she's a little smarty pants. By that I mean school comes easily to her, which is pretty darn fantastic in every way. She looks forward to classes, loves when there's a serious challenge, and spends hours and hours studying away just because she enjoys it.
Really, we hit the kid lottery with that one.
Her love and devotion to school is why it made TOTAL sense that Alexis came home and told me that she was OH SO EXCITED about state testing. Whatever her teacher has been selling in terms of the tests being fun, Alexis was buying it all. Hook. Line. Sinker.
I might have rolled my eyes when the kid started a countdown to the tests like someone would do a countdown to Christmas or vacation or something that is legit fun. And not a test. And especially not a super long, super boring test. I mean, TEST. Tests aren't all fun and games. They're TESTS.
The enthusiasm stayed all the way up to the day before testing was set to start. I don't know what happened, maybe she had too much time to get lost in her own head, but suddenly Alexis exploded into a panic. BUT I DON'T WANNA DO THE TESTS. WHAT IF I DO BAD? And on an on.
Through the course of her panic, I got a heavy dose of third grade gossip. Somehow, other kids had gotten the idea that if you do poorly on the test, very bad things will happen. You won't get to move on to the next grade, you'll have to do summer school, you will have to sit in the principal's office for the rest of the year, your favorite boy band will break up, and you'll be forced to wear granny panties for the rest of your life. Or something like that.
Basically, the kids came up with a whole list of really terrible things that would happen. Miss Alexis found herself in a panic over the whole thing.
Total panic.
So I had to do that thing. I had to do that thing where you whip out a giant needle and stab a huge hole in that bubble that your kid lives in. I had to fill her in on the real purpose of state-mandated testing and how it's not really the kids who are being tested, but rather the adults.
Ten minutes later, she understood.
"So what you're saying is that I should do my best, but if there's a bunch of questions that I can't answer, it means my teacher did a bad job," she said.
I could have gotten into the whole concept of "teaching to the test" and how it makes me stabby, but I spared the kid an hour of my craziness. Instead, I replied, "That about sums it up."
"Well, then," she said. "I guess that means my teacher better be super nice to me so I make her look good."
Yep. That exactly.
