Eva Yu, Staff Writer
December 8, 2023
Picture this: you’re standing in the halls of Shattuck, there is no dress code in effect, and everyone around you is abuzz with nervousness. You only have to be at school for two hours today, but that time seems to drag on forever. Your friend asks you if you need to know a certain formula for the test that you don’t even remember learning. Anxiously, you drag your heavy heart to the exam room ten minutes early to maximize your testing time. This is what a typical exam week looked like at Nobles in the past. However, with the new schedule comes a new exam schedule. As administrators examined the pros and cons of having these special days, they decided to get rid of this week altogether in favor of a more efficient tactic.
Upper School Director of Studies Shannon Clark said, “Years ago, we used to have cumulative exams both at the end of the first and second semester. The reason we built in an exam week was that it just felt like too much of a burden for students to attend classes and fit in adequate time to prepare for and take 1½ to 2-hour exams.” The old schedule, with shorter class periods, did not allow for longer tests, making exam weeks crucial for giving teachers flexibility with their assessments.
However, even with the old schedule, midterm exams were not really exams but more like longer unit tests. “In our Nobles academic calendar, the first semester is shorter than the second, so students felt significant stress after Thanksgiving break because of how little time there was before exams. In response, we moved away from longer cumulative exams in December and shifted to hour-long unit tests, although we kept the ‘assessment week’ after classes had ended,” Clark said. Time constraints for exams are less of an issue with the new schedule, allowing teachers to plan for a longer test without exam days.
Another reason Clark and others did not see a need for the exam week anymore was that fewer departments were utilizing the periods provided. Clark said, “A few departments opted out of giving traditional assessments in December [in favor of essays or projects], at which point we began to question the necessity of setting aside multiple days for only two or three departments to give tests during that final week before break.” With English, History, and Modern Language teachers opting out of exams in favor of papers or orals, the only departments that still used exam weeks were Math, Science, and Classics. This often meant most students were swamped with work the week before, so the exam week wasn’t relieving stress.
This year, instead of exam days, a new assessment calendar has been implemented. This calendar schedules the days teachers from certain departments can give tests. Starting after Thanksgiving break, each department has certain days set out for them when they are able to assess their students. This way, even the most unlucky students can only have two major assessments on a certain day. With this change, students will be done on Wednesday, December 13, and the break will start two days earlier than it did with the old schedule.
This new change also gives teachers more time to complete grades and comments. With the old schedule, Monday and Tuesday were exclusive test taking days, which gave teachers those days to start their comment writing process. To account for teachers now having to teach classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Dean of Faculty and Mathematics Faculty Maura Sullivan said, “We won’t actually have grades and comments due until later in the day on Friday. So we’re giving teachers all of Thursday and most of the day Friday which is why we’re not going to meet with advisees that morning.”
When asked about how the assessment calendar affects the Math Department, Sullivan said, “[It] changes very little […] most math teachers will still give a math test on one of those days, the difference is it’s not the only thing that’s happening that day for students.”
While the new calendar can seem daunting, the changes are beneficial for students and teachers alike. As a community, a lot of the stress surrounding the end of the semester will likely be relieved because of better spacing. With the new assessment calendar, every week is blocked out, so students shouldn’t have to worry about having more than two assessments on one day. While the new change in exam days can seem like it’s adding more to an already stressful week, the hope is that it will actually help relieve the midterm stress and allow students to have more time.
(Photo Credit: Zack Mittelstadt)
