A person’s High School years are already some of the most stressful years of their life. High School is the time when one decides what they are going to be doing with the rest of their life as well as who they are as a person and how they want to continue to be as a person as they grow up. During High School, student’s are expected to take five to nine 50 minute classes five days a week, as well as extracurriculars and part-time jobs. This can also help to build up that amount of stress in a High School student.
As a teenager is going through High School, all these stresses tend to add up, which can lead to a decline in their grades.
Teachers who decide to have their tests the last week of the quarter or semester, as well as tests in multiple classes on the same day or putting all the grades in at once, seem to only add on to this list of stressors, and it can tremendously affect their academic performance. There are plenty of easy ways to fix this issue that can relieve stress off of not only the students, but also the teachers.
If teachers were to schedule their tests on a spreadsheet similar to how they schedule their STAR testing, they could avoid having all their tests on the same day. This could not only help with having tests on the same day but to also decrease the amount of tests students are taking at the last minute. This solution would give students prompt time to study for each subject, instead of having to cram multiple subjects at once. Most students are either in an extracurricular or have a part-time job, and some even have both. Getting home after six or seven o’clock and studying for multiple subjects can be extremely overwhelming.
Teachers would also be able to plan when their tests are going to be more. There seem to be plenty of teachers who do not know when they are going to give an exam until the week of or the week before. Students like to know when they are going to have to take a test just as much as teachers do.
Having the test dates planned out on a spreadsheet would also help to solve the problem of evenly spacing tests. If English teachers all collectively decide to schedule their grammar tests every other Thursday, for example, then students would know they have a grammar test every other week and not three weeks apart in one unit and then two in one week the next. It would also help even out a student’s grade in a sense. If a teacher grades by weighted sections then having more of these grammar quizzes can bring up the quizzes section, leading to a better grade overall.
Now, when it comes to when tests are, no one wants to take a big test right at the end of the quarter that seals in your final grade. Ultimately, the last week of the quarter should be for make-up testing or retakes and possible extra credit for the students with grades that are lacking. Having tests the last week may cause a student who was otherwise confident in their grade to be anxious about what their finalized grade will be. This student also knows that in most classes that allow retakes, a teacher will not allow them to retake it once the next quarter begins, meaning that if the teacher does not put the grade in right away, their grade may suffer.
When a teacher does not put in a grade right away, it simply looks bad on the teacher. Students do not necessarily need that grade in right away, the same day the test or quiz was taken, but within two weeks, or perhaps even one week depending on how long it will take to grade, seems to be reasonable. If students are expected to get their work in within a reasonable time frame, teachers should as well. It is understandable that teachers typically have five classes, but so do students. And students are typically taking six entirely different classes, within entirely different subjects.
Students are pushing for a good grade and when there are a bunch of grades being put in at the last minute it is hard to maintain that ideal grade.
