This one is to paint a picture of who I’ve become as a teacher. I’ve never been one to work miracles and produce amazing test scores. 🤫

Nineteen years. That’s how long I’ve been wrangling small humans into understanding fractions, writing essays that don’t make me want to bang my head against the whiteboard, and somehow managing to stay upright through flu season, standardized testing, and endless spirit weeks (why is every Friday a thing now?).

And in those 19 years, I’ve learned something that no data chart or district PD PowerPoint will ever tell you:

Connection beats scores. Every. Single. Time.

I know, I know. Gasp. Clutch your lanyards. Alert the district office. I said something that doesn’t align with the sacred spreadsheet gospel. But hear me out.

Little Jimmy didn’t learn to multiply fractions because I drilled him with test-prep packets until my soul escaped my body. He learned because I noticed he was always sketching race cars in the margins of his paper and I asked him to teach me about his favorite driver. Because I saw him. Then—what do you know—he paid more attention in math, because suddenly I wasn’t just the grown-up telling him to “focus” 57 times a day. I was the grown-up who cared.

And guess what? That connection didn’t show up on any state assessment. But it showed up in how he stopped crawling under his desk and started believing he wasn’t “bad at math.” 

Look—I’m a mom of four, so trust me when I say I understand the pressure to measure everything. We track our kids’ growth percentiles, reading levels, FAST scores and sports stats. One thing I don’t do is harp on any of these with them. We move on quickly and focus on being better at ourselves each day. I say 1% better than the day before at something, even if it is brushing your teeth today. I am raising well rounded humans. 

But here’s the problem: when we focus so hard on the numbers, we miss the kid.

That girl who bombed the math test? She’s the one who made sure her little brother ate dinner last night while her mom worked a double shift. The boy who can’t read at grade level? He’s bilingual and translating doctor’s appointments for his grandparents. I’m supposed to mark him below benchmark, but honestly? He’s above and beyond where it counts.

Let me tell you something radical: kids are more than data points. Shocking, I know.

Now, I’m not saying academics don’t matter. I teach my tail off. I reteach. I regroup. I run small groups like a caffeinated ringmaster in a very tiny, very loud circus tent. But when it comes down to it, the biggest difference I can make as a teacher is showing up, every day, with the reminder that these kids are humans first, students second.

Sometimes that means pausing the lesson to let a kid cry it out after recess drama. Sometimes that means letting them re-take a quiz because they were distracted thinking about who’s picking them up from school. Sometimes that means putting the textbook down and just listening.

And the real kicker? When they feel seen, heard, safe—they learn better anyway. Not because of the standards, but because they want to.

So if you’re a teacher, a parent, or anyone out there refreshing test score dashboards like they’re the NFL draft picks—take a breath. Zoom out. Remember that behind every score is a story.

And the teachers out here telling those stories, building those bridges, holding it all together with a glue stick and sheer willpower? We’re the real MVPs.

Even if we forgot it was pajama day again.

Mama W 💛