Welcome to Season 3, episode 7 of Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers.

I'm your host Angela Watson and I'm here to speak life, encouragement, and truth into the minds and hearts of educators and get you energized for the week ahead.

Today I'm going to share some thoughts on letting go of expectations around testing

so that it feels less stressful.

Visit truth for teachers.com to get the transcript, links to recommended resources,

and share your thoughts on the show.

So this week I'm addressing a question that was submitted by

podcast listener named Anna. This is what she writes. Hi Angela in your book

awakened you mentioned how often our expectations steal the joy from teaching.

Thoughts like they're supposed to do or know that already can keep us stuck.

This was a life-changing realization for me and really eye-opening.

However, I'm still having a hard time letting go of my expectations when it comes to testing.

I mean, you teach students, you prepare them for tests and exams, of course you have some expectations around their performance, and begin to feel frustrated when they keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

You may start questioning the purpose or the quality of your work,

even though testing is not the end-all be-all, but still, it's an indicator of students' progress,

and a teacher is there to help them improve their test results.

So my question is, how can I let go of expectations around testing and results?

Now, I'm not going to lie. This was truly one of the hardest things for me to deal with as a teacher and I never quite did get a handle on it.

My husband, who was my fiance back in my final years in the

classroom, used to just dread the day that those scores came back because he knew

I would be an emotional wreck.

I think I cried every year when I got my third grader standardized test results back because in Florida,

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