stress and the management thereof

Teaching is a stressful job. This is not news. Today I'm trying to decide how to manage stress related to the standards to which my students are held. My school created its own curriculum, and each unit has TSW's (The student will...) on which they must reach mastery. The TSW's are vague and poorly written and the rubrics are so subjective as to be laughable. In our current unit, the bar is so low in most TSW's that the students can easily achieve "above mastery" status without actually doing anything strenuous. For example, one TSW states "TSW draw evidence from literary texts to support their analyses and reflections." Okay, fair enough. But the rubric. A student will have "mastered" this skill if, during discussions and activities, they "support their analysis and reflections with evidence from the text." Above mastery students support their analysis with direct quotes and explanations. Which, again, fine. But what does support look like? Just sticking in quotes? I'm a pretty good teacher, and I make an effort to have kids dig deep into analysis, but if I were simply a teacher who does my job based on what it says on the paper? Kids could give me garbage quotes and I could say, "Yup, they had a quote and explained why they used it. Above mastery!" In another TSW, the difference between mastery and above mastery is -- I have explained how the character has changed in the story with many details from the story. What does MANY mean? Three? Seven? *John Mulaney voice* Who's to say?

So I'm coping by eating pretzel fragments from a bag I had stashed in my desk, doing a bit of online Christmas shopping, and listening to the sweet, sweet sounds of Eric Nam, current musical crush.