By far, I find December and May are the most stressful months of the year. I actually think this fact is just as true for the students as it is for the teachers. It's no coincidence that those two months mark the end of the first and second semester of the school year.
A number of things make them stressful. May is especially stressful because it's right before summer, and I coach softball, so the season is still going and the extra time demands make it tough.
What else makes these months so stressful, and why does it show we're probably doing things wrong?
1) Stress over Final Exams and Final Grades
I think determining final grades gives me the most anxiety out of everything. In fact, I would not be surprised if about 99 percent of complaints about me stem from grades. Even when students say "I don't get it" or "I'm so lost in this class," I think a lot of that perception stems from students' current grade or prediction of what their grade is going to be.
Even though I would say that my grades are fair and accurate for the most part, there has to be a deeper problem if I always have the sinking feeling that I did something wrong at the end of the term.
Students are really stressed as well. Even students who struggle in math class can calculate and re-calculate what they need to get on the final for a certain grade or what their GPA will be. That stress that I can see in the students seems to elevate my stress level as well.
2) Can I retake... ?
By far, most reassessments are requested at the end of the term. The days leading up to the final deadline that we set for accepting re-dos is the worst. It's very clear that some of the students still don't get the point. They think the point is to re-take the test. They only want to do what is necessary to re-take the test. They really don't care about understanding (because that's what should have happened a long time ago...). It's just a game of point accumulation. They don't get that if you put the work in to really understand it, the grade on the test will take care of itself.
Sometimes it's so painfully obvious. A student will just ask if he can re-take some tests, and I will imagine blowing a gasket, and then hopefully not appear too angry when I ask the student that he needs to tell me a specific test and we need to make sure that he understands the material that that assessment is actually testing.
The sheer number of students that show up is overwhelming. I literally need to tell students to get out of my face, or I will ask them to leave. They would have had plenty of attention from me if they came three or four weeks ago, but it's frustrating to students that my attention is really divided because they waited until the last minute.
3) Regret
There is nothing worse when you're helping a student try to re-assess something or when you're trying to help a student preparing for the final exam than feeling like "I haven't taught these kids a damn thing all year."
When I look at students who are failing, I wonder why it didn't work out. In what ways did I fail to connect with this student? I didn't do (fill in the blank) for that student. The cloud of guilt that surrounds me is really disheartening.
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In order to fix this, we really need to ask ourselves some difficult questions:
1) Why do we have final exams?
Lots of other people ask this question, like here. The more important question is "How do final exams benefit our students?" The only one I can think of is "It prepares them for college" or "It teaches them how to study for them." But, as even colleges consider the same question, this could become less and less relevant.
Even a couple of my colleagues at school have asked some form of this question. Our Algebra final was a disaster and a half. Out of the four of us involved in the course, two of us questioned whether how the questions and the exam affected the students' grades was fair. One of us bemoaned students' poor preparation for final exams. One said it did accurately reflect their lack of understanding. But even the one who cited poor preparation as a reason (which, by the way, I do not disagree in the least about students' poor study habits and preparation, nor do I disagree in the least with their lack of understanding) asked the question "what's the point?"
My personal feeling was that the low exam scores are just another instance of "blame the student" mentality. However, I really struggle in how to successfully toe the line between "not blaming the student" and "holding the student accountable." Swinging too far in either direction creates problems.
I would say pretty confidently that a very significant amount of non-honors students (forgive me for overgeneralizing) do not study for their final exams outside of class.
Another problem is that there's an expectation in place that you spend at least a couple of days reviewing for finals. Often, you plan a few more. The finals are spread over a little more than two days at our school. Therefore, that's probably about ten instructional days per year. I can think of a lot of things that I would love to do with my classes with ten more days.
2) How do we create a system where students focus on continuous self-improvement and always doing their best, instead of just doing what it takes to get by?
Jon Hasenbeck, a professor who extensively uses standards-based grading, doesn't seem to mind that a lot of evidence comes into at the end of the year, even though the last week did end up very stressful. This is pretty much the opposite of how I feel at the end of the year. The last week is very stressful, and not at all rewarding. There has to be a shift on my part personally, and hopefully in the whole school as well, to make this a more worthwhile experience for the both the students and the teachers.
Another idea I like from a recent Global Math Department is not using the word "re-take" or "re-do," as I see how that word can imply that the first one can just be a "practice" and doesn't need to be taken seriously.
I have some more specific ideas, which I will outline in a later post.
3) (I hope???) We really did accomplish a lot this year. We really did learn a lot this year. How do we turn this into a celebration instead of a high-stress event?
At least some students realize it. They've told me.
I would like to more deeply explore exams that are a vehicle of reflection, more than a "remember all eighty of these different things we learned." I loved this from David Theune.
It would be great to see the final exam as a showcase of things that students learned and how they grew throughout the year, rather than a punishment for things that they couldn't remember at that moment or for things that they really weren't ready to learn but we tested them on it anyway. Furthermore, it would give students control over being able to show what they have learned, rather than it being based on the luck of which questions appear or don't appear on the exam. I think I would have to structure this very carefully, however, to still ensure that the big ideas of the course are being hit.
Reflecting on what I have written above, I think the common theme is students have very little control over when and how they demonstrate what they have learned. I know we are held to certain standards, and I know that students need to be pushed.
However, I always ask the question: if a student can do something that he wasn't able to do yesterday, if a student can do something this year that she wasn't able to do last year, then hasn't learning happened?
And so we have some very important questions to ask and conversations to initiate if we want December and May to be the joyous occasions they deserve to be.
