SOL

Today I got to be a hall monitor while Jake’s grade was taking the written portion of the Virginia Standards of Learning aka the VA SOLs. I can’t help but giggle every time I hear or read about Virginia’s SOLs. It’s an absurd acronym and whoever named the tests was definitely not thinking it through.

I got to spend two hours in one of the fifth grade hallways reading my book, “Harpo Speaks!”, which is on loan from Meryl. The book had split in two and only recently had I found the first half. I was really frustrated when it was gone since I was only 10 pages in when it disappeared. Now it is firmly taped back together. Anyway, I digress.

My duties consisted reminding people to keep the noise down and escorting children to the bathroom. Only one child at time was allowed in the bathroom so as to prevent them from chatting about the test in progress.

On the whole it was pretty boring trotting children back and forth, but I did notice one thing. Far more boys needed to go than girls. I think it was because the boys were less inclined to go ahead of time. Meryl thought that maybe the boys were more motivated to try to escape from the test. There was one very classic moment when the other monitor leaned towards the entrance to the bathroom (There is no door, just a short hallway with wall acting as a baffle) and told a boy “Hurry up, other boys needed to go.” A very audible and surprised sounding “Oh!” was uttered and then the child in question re-emerged.

I was glad I could help the school out and Jake was very pleased to see me, but they have got to change the name of the SOLs.