Stella's notes from her visit on March 5:

Hello all -
Some belated remarks about my visit to Mr Caruso's class on Friday: I was there from 11-12, but they had lunch at 11:35 so I didn't see much class time (I had a meeting afterwards so I wasn't able to stay longer). The class I saw was a language arts class as opposed to English, I think - in any case, there were far fewer students (approx 5) who were all vehemently not on task. They were supposed to be working on the test workbooks but were mostly hanging out in the couches; Mr Caruso was talking to me and trying to find workbooks. I talked with a few of the students, but they had little enthusiasm. Overall I left with rather a different feeling than Ian reported - it was pretty depressing and uninspiring environment, it seemed like there was very little we could do to excite these students.

I asked Mr Caruso about tracking, which he said they didn't do; however, there were behavioral problems which caused the classes to be switched around somewhat and as a result of that there are one or two top classes, one of which Ian visited. The others range from hopeless to difficult, in terms of motivation and reachability.

In terms of the format of our project, my visit has made me reconsider our present pretty straightforward and unexciting plan which more or less echos the workbook but with different texts. I'm having trouble coming up with an alternative though, not having the time or the wo/manpower to devolop a high-quality high-intensity videogame-like program.

I also spoke with a friend of mine who spent the last summer working with exiting HS students in Boston preparing for the exit exam. He said that when they looked at the results of the previous tests they saw that students were consistently failing in one or two areas, or rather that they had one or two recurring problems (eg. being too intimidated by the essay to even start), and so they focused on these problems, rather than trying to do everything. This seems to me a very good approach, though I'm not sure where we'd find the data on RI test results. Doing this would also make the program more broadly applicable - I know that the point of the course is custom-made programming, but since there's a high chance that Mr Caruso wont even be teaching next year, and the class will certainly be different, I think a certain amount of generality is necessary.

I did ask the students about test-taking in their past. It seems that they have these exams almost yearly, so they are certainly used to them. The few students I asked didnt seem at all worried or intimidated by them. They also don't seem to have learnt much about test-taking strategies.

After this visit, I feel even more lost than before, as to what our goals for the project are/should be, and in what format to present them. Perhaps my idea as to the goal of the program is too optimistic and we should just stick to what we have and hope it will reach some of them. But how to reach as many as possible? My plans now for next week will be to set up our website, find RI test results (does anyone know where?) and brainstorm.

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend and enjoying the weather!
-Stella