TEACHERS! It’s winter testing season in SC and I am feeling A N X I O U S about test scores. Can anyone relate??? Today I had a heart to heart with one of my students who has been feeling super anxious about testing. I very genuinely admitted, “Do you know you’re truly one of my favorite humans in the world? No test score will ever change that.” He hugged me (🥹), smiled the rest of the day, and absolutely rocked the first day of testing. But I didn’t. I was on the verge of tears after school and have been having a hard time breathing all night (hey, trauma response, nice to see ya!👋). I find it interesting that we tell our students they are more than a test score, but how often do we tell ourselves that we’re more than our data? Vulnerable moment: I had a former supervisor tell me they didn’t think I was a “qualified teacher” because not enough of my students met their projected goal. That comment has lived rent free in my head every single day since then. Disclaimer: My current supervisor is a literal earth angel and would never use that approach when discussing areas for improvement. BUT I hold onto that traumatic moment in my entire body when testing time comes around. And it makes me wonder: how many other teachers have these thoughts about test scores? Am I not a good teacher because ALL my students didn’t reach their goal? Am I not effective? Am I not strict enough? Am I not rigorous enough? Am I not good enough? *spirals* This isn’t one of those captions where I have some life changing ~aha moment~ that I hope will help you on your teaching journey. Or some miracle solution to conquering self-doubt once and for all. This is more of a “here’s where I’m at... if you’re here too, you’re not alone.” At the end of the day, I don’t know what these test scores will say about my effectiveness as a teacher. But I do know that when I told that parent about my conversation with her son this morning she said, “thank you for loving my boy and caring for him so well.” And that’s gotta count for something, right? Maybe even more than the score he gets? Thank you for reading.💛🫂