As you read this, hopefully I’m sitting comfortably at Mountain Market in Haines, enjoying a hot drink with Michelle, waiting for Aly to finish her final round of Scholastic Aptitude Testing. She smoked the SAT itself a couple months ago. Today she’s taking two subject tests to “keep in her back pocket” for college admissions applications.
Thank goodness she’s the only student in Haines taking subject tests today. Her unique status provides us a little leeway in arriving at the scheduled 7:45 a.m. start of the regular SAT session. We may well spend that leeway getting to town in the current winter storm. We do scrambles like this more often than we care to, but not having the added requirement of showing up precisely on time will help reduce the already high stress we’re all feeling today. Even so—well, let’s just say that hot drink will seem well-deserved.
She can’t lose here; only a few colleges require subject tests. She’s testing in two of her favorite subjects, World History and Literature. If she somehow does poorly, no schools need know. She’ll probably finish before 10:00 am, then we’ll hang around town until we can hike home in the afternoon. Luckily, there’s a Christmas bazaar today, that’ll be fun.
We’ll all be glad to have these tests behind us. All three of us are opposed to “teaching to the test,” but we’ve spent a lot of time reviewing in preparation. Once she’s finished, we can go back to the more natural unschooling method. Her educational progress can once again be evaluated by how well she grasps what she’s learning, and how relevant it is to her, rather than trying to produce the correct answers according to someone else’s criteria!