California Science Test (Days 138-139)

Today is the first day of state standardized testing at my school. Yes, with the pandemic waning and things getting back to normal, it means that spring season is testing season in schools around the US.

Here is California, high school students are tested in math, language arts, and science. While only juniors (along with grades 3-8) take the math and ELA assessments, the science test is supposed to be taken in grades 5, 8, and "once in high school" -- it's up to the discretion of each district to decide which year students take the high school science test. Well apparently, my district chose senior year for the California Science Test (or CAST).

And today is CAST day. With most of my students being seniors, it means that most of my students spend their day on the big science test.

According to Tina Cardone's original list, a "state testing day" is one of the special days for which we should do "A Day in the Life." And since there's no monthly minimum day in April, we can also count today as the monthly posting day.

8:00 -- I send my entire senior Advisory class directly to one of the science classrooms for the CAST. The schedule is set up so each state test is proctored by teachers in the corresponding subject, so only science teachers administer the CAST. (That means I'll be called upon this month to do math exams.)

Anyway, zero period turns into an extra conference period. I use it to grade many recent assignments, including the recent quiz retakes in Calculus and Ethnostats, and yesterday's unit circle quiz in Trig. My prep period extends into nutrition.

9:20 -- The CAST continues into second period. My Ethnostats class this period has just four students -- all seniors. And so I still don't have a class to teach yet.

Instead, I'm called upon to sub for the science teachers' only second period. Both science teachers send me all of their juniors -- three from each class. One of the teachers has AP Biology this period, while the other has "Physics of the Universe." (This is the new name for Physics in California. Recall that all science classes have now incorporated Earth Science, and so Physics plus Earth Science is "...of the Universe.")

The three Physics students have an assignment to do -- prepare for a notebook check. I've noticed that the interactive notebook trend, which began in math, has extended into science. It appears that the AP Bio teacher has also left an assignment for the juniors on Google Classroom.

One of the Bio students is also in my AP Calculus class. She is the lone junior in my class -- the one who told me earlier that she was having trouble working with her TI Calculator (unlike Desmos), which is why she had several questions to redo on her quiz corrections this week. And after she finishes her science assignment -- considering that today is Fourday on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #4: We remember how to use a calculator like riding a bike.

I use today to help her with the calculator functions, especially graphing and numerical integration. I hope that she'll be ready to handle all the calculator problems that the AP throws at her. She tells me that she's taking four AP's this year (including also English Language and US History), and I look forward to finding out how well she does on them.

One of the Physics juniors is also in my fourth period Ethnic Studies class. But he's already caught up with the material and earned a perfect score on last week's quiz, and so there's nothing for me to help him with.

11:00 -- Second period leaves and fourth period arrives. By now the CAST is complete, and so I finally have a full class of my own students.

But of course, I don't wish to teach a new lesson today. After all, second period doesn't get a lesson today, and I don't want that class to get ahead of fourth. So instead -- aware that many of these students are missing several assignments -- I use today as a special missing assignment make-up day. In fact, the Warm-Up and Exit Pass for today are:

Warm-Up: Today we will make up our missing assignments.

Exit Pass: Today we made up ______ points for full credit. (The answer is 6 -- and of course, today's date is the sixth.)

As I said before, so many of my decisions in my classes ultimately go back to making the points in all classes equal, and making the homework add up to 200 points for the semester. I'd already planned for fourth period to make up a six-point assignment on April 6th, CAST day -- and so I didn't want to raise the number of points each assignment was worth (which would pulling a fast one on the kids). So in the name of keeping the points equal in all classes, this is why I didn't change the number of points in Calculus (even though it will now be harder to get to 200 HW points before the AP Calculus exam).

On the other hand, the HW points in Calculus and Ethnostats are unequal now anyway. That's because I gave Calculus two assignments yesterday anyway (one from AP Classroom and one from the text, on the disk and shell methods respectively), yet assign nothing in Ethnostats today (as it would be unfair to give second period HW on a day when that class doesn't meet).

Since I can't afford to have a no-HW day in Calculus this week, the easiest and fastest way to make the points equal is to have a one-time 12-point assignment on Friday. I haven't decided yet what the content of this assignment will be yet -- you'll find out on Friday.

12:50 -- Fourth period leaves for lunch. And sixth period is my actual conference period.

I use this conference period to make my first tweaks to the Ethnostats final exam. First, I remove the two questions with probabilities less than 1% and change them to ones with more than 1% (in order to avoid confusing students with double-converting the percentages). Then I also change the lone Chapter 17 question, because I found a better question from the text that's more relevant to Ethnostats -- but that one comes from Chapter 18.

So now I'm declaring that we'll reach Chapter 18 this semester -- and now I have to figure out how we're going to get there. After all, this week has been mostly wasted, spending one day on the Chapter 14 quiz corrections and another day on missing assignments (due to the CAST day).

I already declared that the next quiz, to be given at the end of this month, is on Chapter 15, and so I don't want to get too far ahead of Chapter 15 before that quiz. I'm willing to start Chapter 16, but not 17, before that quiz. But then there won't be much time left to teach both 17 and 18 before the final.

Since there is a Chapter 18 question on my final but none from 17, I might spend a single token day on 17 before moving on to 18. (I did the same the first semester -- there was only one day for Chapter 9 as there were no final questions from 9.)

And so this ends my teaching day. Admittedly I don't do much teaching today...

3:10 -- But tutoring is another matter altogether. I usually don't tutor on Wednesdays, but one of my Calculus students really needed some extra help on his quiz corrections.

Of course, I also helped him with using his TI Calculator as well. This means that on this Fourday, I fulfill the fourth resolution by getting two of my Calculus students to remember how to use their TI's, ironically on a day when Calculus doesn't meet.

Why wasn't this guy able to attend tutoring yesterday? That's easy -- he's an athlete, playing a road game in one of the three sports in which our tiny school competes. One of those sports was Cross Country, as I already mentioned on the blog earlier. But XC is a fall sport. Our sport for spring is one of the lesser known sports -- lacrosse. (Both "Cross Country" and "lacrosse" have "cross" in their names -- and indeed, "lacrosse" is often abbreviated LAX.)

But unfortunately, yesterday may have been the final lacrosse game of the season. During the tutoring session, my player tells me that the referees might soon be going on strike. Oh, and speaking of sports...

5:30 -- I still follow the track team of the high school I attended as a young student. And so I arrive at the school just in time for the last race of the day, the 3200 (or two mile). Ordinarily the Mile Relay is last, but neither team at this dual meet chooses to contest it.

Of course, one reason I still watch my old team is to map current runners' times to the COVID-93 and COVID-96 What If? stories. But it's really hard for me to follow the race. An eight-lap race is always difficult because inevitably the fastest runners lap the slower runners. In order to save time, the boys and girls run the 3200 at the same time, so many of the guys are lapping the girls.

Oh, and one opponent runner appears to be far ahead of the others. He laps some of our male runners (to say nothing of our girls), and on the first mile. So he likely laps some runners a second time.

Suppose I'd been running in this race. As I mentioned on the blog before, I was never one of the fastest runners on the team -- indeed, some of our top girls were as fast as I was. I'd have been disappointed if I'm tired on the seventh lap, I start slowing down -- and then a fast girl passes me up.

I wonder whether a strike involving lacrosse refs would also affect track -- after all, track has refs (for example, the one who shoots the starting gun) as well. Then again, we can't assume that track refs would have struck in COVID-93 or COVID-96 unless we assume that the pandemic is the reason for the officials' strike. I wrote that I likely quit Track my senior season in the COVID-96 world. In the COVID-93 world, I run my Track freshman season, and even run the 3200 a few times.

(By the way, my current school and the one I attended as a young student have played each other in lacrosse this season, with my alma mater claiming victory. Notice that my school didn't even have a LAX team in the 1990's, nor did most California schools. So we can't discuss what happens with our LAX team in the COVID-93 or COVID-96 What If? stories.)

OK, so that's enough about sports. Let's return our focus to academics.

With today's California Science Test, I can't help but think back to the old charter school. That year, 2017, was the year of the first CAST, and my eighth graders were scheduled to take it. But our school lacked a science teacher, and I was called upon to teach science -- which was a big failure. I'm still upset which myself with not making a bigger effort at teaching all my students (not just the eighth graders) enough science.

In fourth period today, I ask some of the seniors what the CAST was like. One girl tells me that she recalls seeing some questions about photosynthesis (which was likely covered in, say, an AP Bio class) as well as some about the motion of the planets (covered in, maybe, Physics of the Universe). But, as she explains, she isn't even enrolled in science, since only three years of science are needed to graduate.

This raises another question -- when is the best year for giving the high school state exams? We see that state tests during senior year are rare in this country -- and perhaps one reason is that not everyone takes every subject every year (except English). This is in contrast with many European and Asian countries, where there's a big test at the end of the last year (the French bac, the Chinese gaokao, the A-levels in England or their fictional counterpart the NEWT's for Harry Potter, and so on).

On the other hand, this same student informs me that last year was a tough year for her to take state exams as well. Since colleges place an emphasis on strength of schedule in the junior year, she took lots of hard classes, including AP courses, last year, and she had to take state tests on top of those AP's.

Anyway, the state math test will be in three weeks. Today is the biggest testing day for my students, but three weeks from today will be the biggest testing day for me. And so I think I'll do another "Day in the Life" for my testing day. (Today can count as my monthly posting day, not my post for the special day "a state testing day.")