Great News!

Here's the update I promised in my last post.  Scholarship night was last night at the high school.  The students at Arlington High School have earned more than $800,000 in grants and scholarships.  Alyssa was honored for being in the top 10% of graduating seniors in the state.  She also received recognition for the Presidential Scholarship she received from Eastern Washington U.  Last night we found out that she had earned a $2000.00 scholarship from the Kiwanis Club and $200.00 from the teacher's union.  She's a great kid!  It was amazing to see so many kids recognized, including some of my former students.

You might be wondering why I am posting in the middle of the day. Well it's that lovely time of year again when I have to torture my students with our lovely No Child Left Behind test.  Today is day two of writing.  The 9 and 10 year olds at my school have to plan, compose, revise, edit, and write a final draft of a 5 paragraph essay today.  We started at 9:30 this morning.   Most of the 4th graders finished by 1:30.  Now I have the final 11 kids from all the classes in a side room still writing.  They have had snack breaks and lunch, but no recess today.  That's part of our test security protocol.  Someone somewhere thinks that 9 and 10 year olds might talk about their test if we give them recess.  They don't know kids very well.  All of my students can come up with lots of other things to talk about.