In our December issue, we celebrated the alternative avenues to learning and self-discovery which enrich the educational and therapeutic environment that Pathways provides for our students. This month another example of that creative learning came together in a myriad of glowing colors and shapes as students at Springville designed and made a mosaic depicting their visions of pathways to success. The project, with teaching artist Carien Quiroga, integrated the development of skills in mosaic technique with subject areas of Language Arts and Social Studies.

Eleven students and six staff took part in the six-day

Mosaic in progress with Ms. Quiroga

The mosaic will be on display at our fourth annual student art show March 25 at Busboys and Poets in Hyattsville and is featured in the announcement postcard: 

You need a driver's license, or citizenship, or you want to go to college and/or into the armed services: for many worthwhile goals, you must score well and pass a test. This causes anxiety for almost everyone; for many of our students at Pathways, anxiety is more than a temporary discomfort--it can be an obstacle that prevents them from demonstrating what they know and diminishes their chances of reaching their goals.  Pathways recognized this years ago and was at the forefront of advocating for and creating testing environments that made it possible for our students to succeed. Much of how we evaluate anything today, including students, relies on testing. In this heightened atmosphere it is more important than ever to provide testing sites that can adapt to special needs.

For this reason, in 1996 Pathways went through the process to become an approved testing site for the SAT.  Any test site in the nation should be quiet and free of distraction. In addition, what Pathways can provide for our students is a site that is small, supportive, and familiar, all of which are key to having our students do their best. The rigors of the questions and requirements of the SAT are no less demanding, but anxiety that could be generated by testing in a huge, unknown school cafeteria or lecture hall is eliminated. The SAT will next be administered at Pathways on January 27.

Two of our students will also take the aptitude test administered by the military (known as the ASVAB-the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) to determine whether candidates are qualified to enlist. The test examines arithmetic reasoning, word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, and mathematics knowledge. Like the SAT, our students are able to take the test at Pathways. The students prepare for the test with the encouragement of their teachers and therapists at Pathways, making use of online resources and daily study and practice sessions for two months prior to taking the exam.