Discouraged

I haven't felt motivated to write anything lately.  I am mostly trying to contend with my daughter's nonexistent college application process, and it is draining me of energy. 

On other fronts: as a teacher, there are few things more discouraging than reaching the conclusion that your efforts are, as with your own children, all for naught.  In the past few days I have:

Spent two full days prepping my 8th graders for their first big test -- going over an outline, making suggestions for learning vocabulary and geography, reviewing how to write a comparison/contrast esaay, allowing them to prepare  4"x6" notecards to bring with them.  One student had to take the test early -- today -- because he's going out of town.  He forgot his notecard, failed the test (he doesn't know that yet), and told another teacher that he's sure he aced it.

Discovered that one of my other classes has, as a group, virtually no retention, so told them to prepare for a vocab quiz today on a short list of words that we have already reviewed twice in class.  While most of them did do well (it was a multiple choice test -- how hard could it possibly have been?), two of them got Ds.

Tried very hard to counsel a senior whose college choices are completely unrealistic and to give him some other ideas.  He just laughed and told me that one of his schools is a "shoo-in." 

Discovered that of a group of "non-honors" students with whom I spent a great deal of time last spring on the college process, not a single one took my suggestion to take the SAT and ACT at the end of the year.  As a result, they are just now taking the tests, and coming up with completely random lists of schools because they have no scores to bring them down to earth and help them plan realistically.

If only all the wisdom, or at least basic knowledge, that you accumulate by the age of 50 could be of any use to people who are 17!