1. Remember to photocopy the test next time you are at the library, may as well do more than one chapter while you have enough coins for the machine.
2. Get the little kids down for a nap, so they don’t pester big brother.
3. Set the kitchen timer for 50 min.
4. Remind B to have lots of sharpened pencils, it makes everything sound more formal.
5. Go take your own nap.
5b. make coffee
6. Remember not to grumble that he isn’t grading it himself (like he does for his homework.)
7. Find your official red pencil, grab the calculator (there are always a weird number of questions, so you have to figure out how much each one counts, and do the word problems count more, and if he writes the answers strangely, but you know what he means, do you act with grace or the way you remember you toughest college proff did it?)
7b. add up the number right, and decide what it all means.
8. Write out the grade on top, throw the test in the box of stuff to file in the portfolio – you still haven’t decided if you are going to put algebra on the high school transcript yet or not.
Optional step 9. Grimace that his grades are just like yours: boring chapters, bad grades. Hard, interesting chapters, good grades.