Test Administrator (giving me the tests): "These are consumable, ok?"
Me (walking away): "Got it!  Thanks."
Test Administrator: "That means they can write ALL OVER IT."
Me: "Gotcha.  Have a good day!"
Test Administrator:  "They can highlight it, too."
Me: "..."
Test Administrator: "They can even color in the little faces of the pictures that go with the questions if they want to!" (clever grin).
Me (mentally): What the fuck is wrong with this person??!

If you read the caption about my ACP scores, you might have noticed that I said we are the only school in the district to "place" hispanic students before they enroll with us.

The basic facts are this:  many, many families in Dallas speak Spanish at home.  Out of that number, about half are proficient in the written language as well as spoken.  When students enroll in high school, they have "choice sheets" which they use to select the classes they want to take.  As long as the credits add up, the choice sheet ends up being the student's schedule.

As a Spanish 1 teacher, I started the year with dozens of students in my class who already speak Spanish.  As you might imagine, when I am slowly teaching the "Non-native" kids (the ones who have no experience with Spanish at all) things like uno, dos, and tres, the spanish-speakers talk, disrupt, graffiti the classroom, and generally act out because they Already Know the information and this class is an Easy Grade.

Last year our department chair set her foot down and said it should stop.  Of course I agreed because it's not fair to anyone involved: the non-natives should get instruction without having their accents made fun of by natives, and the natives shouldn't waste their language skills in a class designed for novices.  Our school offers great AP Spanish classes.  My guy-friend-teacher, who used to teach Spanish 1, said to me (quietly) during this meeting "You might want to keep those native speakers... those are the ones that help your test numbers."

Which is true, and patently unfair.  But every other school in the district is enjoying that bump in numbers.

Not I!  Thursday and Friday, we go as a department to the middle school and test the students who plan to come to our high school in order to gage their Spanish proficiency.

If you think high school kids misbehave, you have not been to middle school in a while.  Last year when I walked in, after politely declining a date with a 13 year old, I overheard the following conversation between two boys I had just given pencils to:

Boy A: "Damn she fine!"
Boy B: "Who dat teacher right in front of us?"
Boy A: "Yeeeee bro.  I'ma hit that."

I walked away before it was obvious that I heard so I wouldn't have to respond.  I'm planning responses if this happens again this year.  Maybe something like, "Really?  Can I have your number?" and then laughing hysterically for five minutes.  Might just go with the Death Stare.  We'll see I guess.

With a week to go before students arrived, we had in school training.  This was mostly uneventful, except we got more acronyms to learn and "incorporate into our curriculum."  PDAS, ACTfL, AFT, something something.  Oh and be ready for TAKS!!!!

However, this was the first time I had to sit through a presentation by the testing coordinator.  This particular woman is roughly 100 pounds overweight and around 50 years old.  Despite this age, she chooses to talk like a baby.  As if that was not bad enough, the time had come for me to become a spectator of Redundancy At Its Absolute Worst.  Here is a VERY small segment of her typical speech (keep in mind, she presents an hour-long segment EACH time we administer a test, be it state-mandated, mid-terms, finals, ACPs, etc.), keep it mind it is in 50 year old fat woman baby voice, and pronounced veeeeery sloooooowly:

"When you give the student the answer sheet, tell them NOT to bubble in the names.  The names are bubbled in for them.  Already.  So they shouldn't do it.  They always try to bubble right when they get it.  So tell them not to!  If that's bubbled in, we get in trouble.  I mean if the student bubbles it in.  It's bad.  So YOU tell them not to.  Then make sure they don't.  Okaaaay? It's ok if they don't bubble it in.  In fact, they need to be told not to do it.  By you.  One time I saw a student bubbling in their name, and I said, 'WAIT!  No no no.'  Because they don't need to."

Without fail, we are also given a sheet of paper with the instructions on it.  So the meeting is called so we can sit and listen to her elaborate and say the same thing 238291038210 different ways.  Did I mention the meeting is Mandatory For All Teachers?