Tracy Kalinowski creates a complex end-of-year project for senior AP statistics students

As the end of the 2025-2026 school year comes to an end, senior students are closer to leaving. The official last day of school for non-exam exempt seniors is May 15th, which leaves 3 weeks left of the school year for other students. AP statistics is heavily a senior and junior-based course, so once seniors leave, the final has already been taken, and there’s no more content to learn. With this information, many teachers create end-of-year content to use as filler for the remainder of the school year while also teaching students to apply their knowledge from the course. 

   AP statistics teacher Tracy Kalinowski previously came up with a complex, yet exciting, end-of-year project for the juniors who still have three weeks left. This project consists of students individually creating their own question and answering it through the power of statistics. Juniors have been informed of this upcoming project and have strong feelings. 

   Some students feel confident with incorporating stats into their project, but struggle with the idea of collecting information. AP statistics student Olivia Nowaczewski, ‘26, stated, “I’m not looking forward to getting all the responses because it’s hard to get people to respond to a Google Doc, but I think it will be fun to use stats on something I can do on my own.” 

   Students have been told to begin brainstorming questions to use on their project. This is a difficult decision for some, due to there being a large variety of options in the world to choose from. AP statistics student Noah Pinter stated, ”I’m not really sure what my question is going to be yet, but since I’m a sports guy, it’s probably going to end up being sports-related.” 

   Despite other challenges within this project, Kalinowski attempted to make grading as easy as possible. Kalinowski stated, “I grade off of a rubric for this, so if students follow every step, everyone should get an A or a B.”

   Instead of being left with nothing to do, juniors receive the opportunity to do a project based on their knowledge and creativity. Giving students a sense of freedom in an academic project inspires them to want to finish the project.