"Special Needs"

I have a young man who has a myriad of problems with motor skills, cognitive processing skills, etc. He requires shortened assignments AND extra time to get his work done. In math, especially the upper levels (such as Algebra 2 and beyond), this is detrimental.

Amazingly, he has managed to get caught up with his work. Yesterday was his scheduled day to take the 40 question semester exam. We have a modified schedule to allow for 90 minute periods for testing. After 90 full minutes of testing, he had completed 11 problems. He asked if he could come back the following day when one of the testing periods was his scheduled lunch to finish the test. Since that is also my lunch period, he thought it would be all right. I told him that I was not willing to spend that 90 minutes watching ONE person take a test. I did find another place for him to work (Content Mastery).

Today, I realized after the first testing session had begun that I hadn't delivered the test to the CMC for him to finish. As soon as my kids were done and dismissed, I grabbed the test and ran over there to drop it off. He was just arriving as I was. Then he said, "I want to review before I finish it." I had looked at the work that he'd done the day before and he'd skipped a couple problems that were simple recall questions (meaning he wasn't prepared and was hoping to ask specific questions to get those answers). I explained to him that viewing the test and then expecting to get tutoring before completing the test is cheating, and we made him finish the test.

I later returned to CMC to collect his completed test. Apparently, he had used the entire second 90 minute testing period AND stayed after until they kicked him out. Then one of the CMC teachers had to bubble in his answer documents for him. That means he spent nearly 3 1/2 hours on a 40 question test that is meant to be done in 90 minutes or less!!!!!!!

This kid wants to take Pre-Calculus next year. Based on his "special needs", I can't recommend him for that course.

BTW, he only got 20 of the 40 questions correct.

Final Exams

I have several students who took a bit of a mental vacation during the first semester. Suddenly, they've realized that they are in real danger of having to repeat at LEAST one semester of the course, so they are very interested in learning as much as possible now, as if a passing grade on the final exam will be enough to recover from two grading periods of failing grades. Yesterday was the first day of finals, and we had a full day of school with a modified schedule to allow for extra time in the two periods that would take exams. One of my recently returned mental vacationers came by my room EVERY period to ask more questions. This "student" had been telling me all week that he would be staying after for tutoring and then he never showed up. When I'd question him about it, he always said "Oh, I had to leave." Then he expected me to ignore the rest of my classes to give him extra help.

His exam was at the end of this modified day. About 15 minutes in, he asked to be excused because he felt sick. I believe he actually worried himself sick over the test!!!!!

We have three more days of nothing but exams, and all three are half days, before the Christmas break (oops, I mean winter break).