phillip, great post and points out the importance of mental preparation is just as important as knowing the material. For some reason there are a large group of instructors that are actively involved with students that have no understanding of learning disorders and how the number of students today with some form of learning disorder is larger today than any other time in our history and all indications suggest the number will continue to rise. What this means for us as instructors is we need to read up on the best practices of knowing when we may want to direct our students to specialists. The ability to determine if a student has a learning disorder is not easy and this does not imply that we ignore the fact that some students are just lazy and do not want to do the work but it does make an already complex situation more complex by throwing in the issue of even smart and dedicated students may not do well on tests. The more we get to know our students the more we can identify the root cause of their lack of performance on tests. James Jackson