A Hard Lesson Learned

Hillcrest is #1. Of course, we already knew this but it is fun to win UIL and see the kids light up with pride for their school. It was a good day. Drew placed 2nd in spelling. He was pretty excited. He was so excited when the number sense awards were being called. We ALL knew he had done well. This test is extremely hard but he loves the challenge. He was comfortable with all the information---squares, cubes, roman numerals, metric conversions, the whole nine yards. His name wasn't called and we were all left puzzled. His friends rallied around him with encouragement and he actually handled it well. There were no tears (which I totally expected). He was really glad that Hillcrest won first place and found comfort in the fact that he helped get them there.
The more I thought about it, I knew something was not right. I emailed the GT director to see if we could look at the test. She agreed and Mark reviewed it in her office. We found out was that Drew had done REALLY well (1st place) but his paper was disqualified for a write-over. Drew is NOW VERY MAD! He denies that he wrote over and Mark says it looked iffy. So the whole paper was thrown out over a questionable "8". We all know the boy has terrible handwritting. Isn't that the mark of a gifted mathematician? Sometimes, I think we forget that even if this child can multiply 326 X 11 in his head, he is still emotionally 8 years old. I think that if there is a questionable problem, that that particular problem should be marked wrong. That seems fair. UIL seems to think that as well. Our WISD UIL committee has made the decision to disqualify any test that is questionable. Way to reward the kids for all their hard work and all the mornings of getting to school at 7:15 to practice!!! All that to say, Drew was happier thinking that he had not placed. We think that in the long run, he will feel better knowing he did well. That is the end of my ranting and raving. I am putting this to rest.
Now on to more fun stuff but just as challenging----trying to get a good picture for the Christmas card. We have three very independent subjects who don't always want to cooperate! One is them is always a little goofy looking in the picture. I guess we will just keep trying!