Every year at the end of April, high schools in Illinois are faced with the PSAE. Well they are for now, PARCC is coming, but that’s for another post. State mandated testing is simple enough: the state tells you who to test and the school is responsible for testing them. In the case of the PSAE this means two days of testing for the junior class. Okay, so one quarter of your student population is testing. What do the other three quarters do for two days?
It would be easy to simply send the other students home. Sending them home would certainly reduce the possibility of an interruption to testing but what are the students getting out of being away from school? Not a whole lot. That is why my school takes non-testing testing days seriously and plans meaningful activities for each grade level.
Freshmen, as mentioned in a previous post, participate in a mock-PLAN test on day one and the career fair on day two. Sophomores are engaged a series of five rotations day one and a mock-ACT on day two. Seniors are given leave for the day but are tasked with several college and career readiness activities. Day one seniors can participate in an organized job shadow. Day two they can either serve as ambassadors at the freshmen career fair or finalize any college entrance requirement still hanging out there.
This year the group I was most excited to work with was the sophomores and their rotations. Our guidance counselors often struggle to get classroom time with their students. So when they were given an interrupted half day to implement a guidance curriculum, they jumped at the opportunity. Our sophomores were able to learn about the importance of testing, use technology to explore college & careers, gain knowledge about the dangers of drugs and discuss/plan ways to tackle the issues facing our building. Of these, I am most pleased with the sessions on drug avoidance and the student discussions.
Drug use is a hot topic in our area. Not necessarily because “everyone” is using drugs, in fact the vast majority of our students are making positive choices. However, we are located near the heroine highway of Chicago, and our city and county are experiencing overdoses at an alarming rate. To combat this trend, a team consisting of a counselor, social worker, dean and school resource officer compiled a presentation showing how each of them are impacted by drugs. It meant something to the students because each adult spoke to their specialty and didn’t try to address issues beyond their knowledge. Perhaps what was most impactful during this session is when one of our teachers shared her story. The story of how she lost her son to the drug. This session could have been another ‘say no to drugs’ lesson but instead it was meaningful and heartfelt. Students didn’t just hear statistics, but they saw the personal impact drugs can have on the people they know.
The next session allowed students to discuss what they had just heard along with other strengths and issues facing our school. Unlike the previous session, which was led by staff members, this session was entirely student driven. Twenty student leaders were trained to facilitate meaningful conversations with their peers about the strengths & weaknesses of our school and what we can do to solve them. So often, as educators, we design enrichment opportunities for students or create the interventions that we think will work and we never ask the students what they think will work. This day, students were empowered. They had a voice. They identified our issues, surprisingly accurately, and they came up with interventions. Interventions that could be implemented by staff and interventions that needed to occur peer-to-peer. These students made me so proud. The sophomores were taking control of their building and becoming the upperclassmen leaders we needed them to be.
All of this happened on a non-testing testing day. A day when students could have easily been asked to stay home. Instead, because a group of staff members took it upon themselves to deliver meaningful curriculum, our students began to take ownership of their future, their school and their choices.
What will you allow your students to do on their next non-testing testing day?
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