By Jacy Chittenden

NeSA Testing has been going on for about seven days now. NeSA is the Nebraska state test. All students across Nebraska take this test. I interviewed numerous students and teachers at Dawes to see what they thought of the test.

Some of the teachers I interviewed were Mrs. Newby, Mr. N. Miller, and Mrs. Vandarwarka. They all had many different opinions. Mrs. Newby thought, overall,  the school was very successful with NeSA testing. She also thought that it went smoothly and productively and it was well organized. She also talked about the block scheduling and she said that it was a tough transition, but it was great to have the extended time for a variety of activities and instruction. Mr. N. Miller said that we did very well with testing and he thought that many students kind of like the NeSA Testing, because of the break from regular classes. He also thinks that block scheduling helps and alleviates behavior problems because of less transition times. And finally, Mrs. Vandarwarka thinks that NeSA went well and that block scheduling helped a lot with the students. But she also thought that block scheduling would be more beneficial to the teachers if we could work out a better way for teaching for the longer periods. So overall, she thought that the students were prepared for the NeSA and did pretty well for the most part because the teachers, as she says, “taught explicitly.”

I also interviewed some students around the school. They were Ashley Alvarado, Hailey Condreay, and Natalie Huffman. Ashley thought that overall, she did very well on her NeSA and she thought that it was pretty simple. She also thinks that the school was very successful with the testing and that she likes the five minute passing periods that are included in the block scheduling. Hailey thinks that the school, and herself did good on the NeSA and that it was very easy, so they should make it harder. But, Hailey did not like the block scheduling because of the fact that classes are longer and teachers don’t have a lot of things to do for all of that time, so it was boring. And Natalie thought that the block scheduling was pretty cool and we got to miss out on a few classes every day. She also thought the school was successful with NeSA.

The entire school did well in many people’s opinion. Great job students, and teachers, for AWESOME NeSA Testing.