Everyone has likely heard of the Ohio State Proficiency Tests, those standardized tests that all 4th, 6th, 9th, and 12th- graders must take. As a parent and as an educator, I do spend a lot of my time—personal and professional—preparing all of my kids for test week. It’s writing on Monday, reading on Tuesday, math on Wednesday; citizenship and science to finish up the week. My son Brent took the 6th grade practice proficiencies last fall, and, proud parent that I am, I’m happy to report that when we got back the results last month we learned that he passed all with flying colors. All of Brent’s hard work, his teachers’ lessons, Shelley and I with him at the kitchen table poring over worksheets, it all payed off, right? Without question, yes. Nevertheless, there was an unlikely X-factor in the equation. It was cycling. Yes, cycling.

If you were at the Woodville race last year you undoubtedly recall the massive search that began at the conclusion of the race (not a minute before) and ended happily with the safe return of the young juniors, Cory Sarks and Brent Teall, who had ridden off the course. [Photo, below.] Let me again thank all who took part in the search and those who stuck around until the boys were located. Now, as I mentioned above, proficiency week begins with the writing test. And proficiencies is one stressful week; it’s stressful for the kids, and it’s stressful for the teachers and administrators. But whatever pressure Brent may have felt leading up to test week, evaporated as soon as he read the first essay prompt on the writing test.

Sometimes a writing test prompt makes a student cringe, "How am I supposed to write about this?" Which is why test-makers try to make writing prompts as opened-ended as possible and why we language arts teachers tell our students, "If nothing else, lie—make something up!" This test prompt asked the student to recall a time when he visited an unfamiliar place and narrate, in detail, his getting to that place, what he did and saw there, etcetera. Brent was able to craft two-plus pages of nonfiction, parlaying the momentarily frightening experience of getting lost south of nowhere (Woodville) into a 6.5 on the state test. And was Brent pumped when he got home that afternoon. "It was easy, dad," he said. "I just wrote down what we were doing there and how we got lost, the details of countryside—how every road looked the same—and about that guy who wouldn’t help us but told us to go to this gas station that wasn’t even there, how we finally got found, and I used plenty of descriptive words."

They're called adjectives and adverbs. But never mind that, son. Keep on pedaling.

David Teall