It's Friday!!!!

It's Friday and i feel fried myself. I has been a hectic week back at school. The first day back was only with the teachers and at about 3pm, almost end of workday, i find out that i will not only be teaching all periods (thats six hours straight) but that i will now be teaching 8th grade to. That second day was crazy to say the least. by the end of the day my feet ached so much and i had blisters. we r doing what is called Countdown to FCAT. The students take this test every year and now we have 7 weeks to get them to pick up there grade. If the child's grade goes down on FCAT, the schools grade goes down also. Currently our school has a grade of C. which i beleive is not that bad considering that 90% of our students are from haiti and many do not understand much in English. But it is still a chalange to work under these conditions. Now i understand the whole rage with the whole star program the government wants to incorporate. For those of u who do not know what the star program is, it is this program the gov. has devised. If the teachers student get good FCAT score, the teacher gets extra benifits like money, materials, etc. But i find this truly unfair. Many of the students guess on the test. I don't agree with the students doing this, but i understand their desire to just finish the test. These children are drenched in tests all year, school test, state test, reading test, writing test, and the list goes on. The last thing these kids want is to take a test that last Two weeks. But then again how will the teachers and the state get there data? It's a no win,no win situation, it's depressing. I have really smart kids in my class and its sad to see how society and their own self-estem has brought them down. they beleive they are not able to acomplish anything and thats just plain sad. But we need to keep on going. My student r doing fairly well. I'm very proud of their attitude this year. they came more mellow and they r doing all of their work. Which makes me SOOOOO happy. I was joking around with them and i told them "now i have to correct so many papers, you are all doing ur work!" their answer "Well Ms. get used to it" it may sound rude or whatever you may think but i personally could not have been happier.