I’m Colby’s teacher and the creator of the LifePractice model (along with the kids, parents, and the staff I hired on in the past half-decade of practice).

We didn’t concentrate on the state tests hardly at all. There was a brief formative test about a month before, to see what skills we needed specifically to brush up on. If kids did well on the formative >75-80%, the didn’t do any more prep. Those who had some struggles in place, we did brief workshop/tutorials in those areas and the kids with very low skills got more intense than the others.

Our assessment scores were fine and we met AYP all 5 of those years in Reading and missed once in math (we had a very small 8th grade class once and 1 kid didn’t meet standard, even though the score improved 20% from the year before). We also brought home more “Standards of Excellence” awards than the other schools in the district all of those years but 1.

While other schools were holding ice cream parties and rallies centered around the test, we were building Viking Ships, growing gardens, and video conferencing with a women’s school in Egypt.

The kids report that this approach kept them relaxed and our projects were all started on the foundation of those standards, but moved on to deeper learning from there.

Did our highest scorers go down a few points? Maybe. But again, the test wasn’t our focus. They still met the minimum requirements that most schools hold up as “high achieving.” We noticed those scores and just kept learning Life.

If you have students who struggle with school because they hate it or are bored with it (which describes ~98% of the US school population), these types of projects light them up!

I promise.