The Final Stretch

Essays, grades, planning, planning, planning. Pretty much sums up my weekend. I hope my week is more fun. I really want to watch a movie, or read a novel, or one of the books I am reading but I'm in a pressure cooker right now. Two weeks till *FCAT Writes and about a month until FCAT proper. So it is not only tense in school, but the tension spills over into free time. In spite of all that, I am so pleased with what I am doing right now. Though it has been a sacrifice this weekend, I hope it pays off in quality lessons that will stimulate growth in the students and result in academic gains. I am off to read a little but I had to do one of my favorite things: write. It's obvious, isn't it

*Note:
I just realized that many of you probably do not know what the FCAT is. FCAT is an acronym for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Students are evaluated for their academic gains and schools are evaluated for how much the students have learned. There is a monetary reward associated with bringing a school up a grade. Our school went from a D to a B last year and we are hoping to at least keep our B or raise our grade. We have evaluated the students systematically for progress since they have been bobbling to say the least, so everyone has used the data to focus on covering and reviewing essential areas of weakness. So my weekend was definitely spent on that.