SubscribeStar Saturday: Our Digital Future: SATurday II

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Yours portly is ready to deliver the content his readers, paid and otherwise, crave:  commentary on the new digital SAT administration.

That’s right, friends, yours portly is spending this beautiful Saturday morning in a room with kids taking the SAT.  I’m specifically in the extended testing room, which is a long administration but means more money.  The idea of being paid to sit here and write self-indulgent blog posts while three kids gawk on standardized test questions fills me with the kind of glee that only union workers and government bureaucrats feel:  the glee of getting one over on the rest of society by suckling at the bloated teat of an inefficient system.

But as I wipe the corrosive milkfat from my chubby cheeks, I must take a moment to do the unthinkable:  I must extol the virtues of this new digital administration.

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Hump Day Hodgepodge: Testing Reflections

It’s a busy week here in the world of yours portly.  The end of the first quarter is approaching rapidly, so every spare moment has been dedicated to chipping away at a mountain of history quizzes and tests.  Needless to say, it’s slow going.

As such, school is on my mind—as it is pretty much every waking moment of August through May.  Fellow teachers will understand that teaching is a profession that consumes your mental energy constantly.

Today the school is undertaking the pre-administration of the PSAT, the l’il brother of the SAT, which I proctored this weekend.  Pre-administration is the process whereby students bubble in all of the sensitive personal information on an elaborate Scantron so they can receive their scores—and send them to the gaping maw of the academic-industrial complex.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: SATurday

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Continuing with a recent theme, today’s SubscribeStar Saturday post is all about what I did this weekend—well, at least this Saturday.

After a long, productive week at school—which saw my team of super nerds win their Quiz Bowl regional competition on Thursday—I woke up before the dawn to head back to school.  I signed up to proctor the SAT, the dreaded standardized test that is part of the grand kabuki theatre of higher education admissions.

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