Mobile learning lab boosting SAT test preparation

GETTING PREPARED: Providence College students use tablets to tutor Dr. Jorge Alaverez High School students preparing for the SATs. / COURTESY GOLDEN GROUP
GETTING PREPARED: Providence College students use tablets to tutor Dr. Jorge Alaverez High School students preparing for the SATs. / COURTESY GOLDEN GROUP

Francy Mata, a junior athlete at Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School in Providence, knows geometry is not his strong suit.
That sense was underscored when he shared his PSAT test results with Adrianna Ramirez, a senior at Providence College who is tutoring Mata in a new mobile learning lab making its way around New England.
For Mata, who is an all-star linebacker, excels at track and field and hopes to be college-bound next year, taking time out of his after-school hours to work on improving his PSAT scores for the SAT wasn’t an option. But working with Ramirez on Monday mornings has helped him identify his weaknesses and focus on them, and doing the work on a wireless device has made it easier, he said.
“I never thought you could actually do schoolwork on the tablet,” he said. “I had used a tablet to play games. It’s definitely helping me a lot.”
Gutted and retrofitted with comfortable seating, wireless Internet connectivity, individual workstations and wireless tablets, the school bus picks up Ramirez and other PC tutors one day a week and brings them to Alvarez, where the students there take an hour out of their school day to study for the college entrance exam they expect to take or retake in May.
“The old chalk-and-talk SAT classes serve some kids,” explained David Tedeschi, the teacher/leader for guidance at Alvarez. “[But] the technology in this medium is engaging many more students. You’re engaging students in a way they’re comfortable. It’s the way of the world now.”
Conceived and outfitted through a partnership between Verizon Wireless and Samsung, the bus provided a mobile learning space for students in inner-city Boston and Worcester, Mass., last year, and then came to Providence in the fall of 2013, said Shakey Kessisian, Verizon Wireless’ associate director of marketing for the New England region. “It’s a program we came up with because studies have shown how students excel by having tablets in the classroom, and they need those tools at their fingertips,” Kessisian said. “If you’re thinking about what we think of as a connected life, education doesn’t just happen in brick-and-mortar [buildings], so something that’s mobile we’ve identified as a great opportunity.”
For Ramirez, who will be teaching English with Teach for America in Baton Rouge, La., in August after she graduates, tutoring Mata has reinforced her own ability to connect with students.
“He was so willing and open to what I had to say,” she said. “We decided to work on geometry because that’s where he struggles. He seemed just like my little brother, it was so strange. It was great to watch him actually understand, because [on] the first few questions, he didn’t really connect. But by question six, the light bulb went off and he just flew through.”
Students at Central, Mount Pleasant and Juanita Sanchez high schools are also using the mobile learning lab.
“For urban students you need to bring the program to them,” said Tedeschi, emphasizing the lab’s value as a mobile classroom. “A lot of our students take two buses after school. They have a lot of responsibilities and play sports after school and have other commitments. So, anytime you can bring the program in during the day, I feel it gives students the best chance of success.”
Tedeschi said that of the 10 students who participated last fall, five took the SATs in December and all of them improved their scores either in math, reading or both. On average, scores improved by 9 percent compared with testing from last spring, according to data provided by Verizon Wireless. Tedeschi hand-picked the students who would take part, he said, and will have had 30 students go through the nine- or 10-week program in groups of 10 by the end of June.
Tedeschi and Jonathan Gomes, Providence College’s associate director for the Office of Academic Services, say many of the participating high school students and college students are minorities.
“We are in as difficult a neighborhood as any school in the state,” Tedeschi explained, “So every student on the bus was classified as a minority.”
For this reason, too, he added, the mobile learning lab is “as good a program as I’ve worked with in my 18 years in Providence.”
Gomes added that the tutors serve as accessible role models for the high school students.
“When the students make that connection with the high school kids and they keep coming back [to the lab], the students being tutored see that the tutors understand the significance of being there consistently. The tutors are able to talk about their life stories in regards to what influenced them to come to college. [The high school students] get to see live college students in action.”
Kevin Bautista, 17, an Alvarez senior, completed the first session of the mobile lab in the fall, but had a conflict and couldn’t retake his SATs. He didn’t need to, however, and has been accepted at the University of Rhode Island, where he hopes to major in computer engineering and minor in film media.
“I tried to get things done myself, but if I can’t do it myself, I’m obviously going to ask my tutor and he was a big help,” Bautista said. “It was a great opportunity, having an educational program during school, learning new things about math.” •

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