At the end of a difficult year of preparation for standardized tests, IB and AP students and teachers are faced with a handful of “empty weeks” before graduation. Most IB and AP tests fall in a two week window in early May, while, at Hellgate, school ends in early June, so for most advanced classes, the curriculum is wrapped up a month before school gets out.
Principal Judson Miller said Hellgate’s instructions to the teachers for how to spend these last few weeks center around two words: academic engagement. He said, “There’s a lot of different ways that can look, and you probably see this in your classes.”
For some teachers, those weeks are the perfect time to go over a unit that they didn’t have time to teach while preparing their students for their test; while for other teachers it might be more difficult to find something to fill this empty time that lacks the curriculum or structure that the rest of the year has.
Most upperclassmen at Hellgate take at least one, if not several, AP or IB classes. Senior Ella Stone said that this year she took “…IB English, IB History, AP Stats, and AP Physics,” while Senior Lindley Erickson said that she took “…IB History, IB Spanish, IB Math, AP Physics, and IB English.”
With students taking so many of these advanced courses, the end of the year becomes unbalanced, with some classes simply filling extra time, while the rest continue with their curriculum and preparing for their final. Evidently, this time is welcome as a break to students who have spent the majority of the year studying for an intense standardized test.
Teachers also grapple with the debate of if they should give their students a final after their AP/IB test. The upside is if the final could serve as preparation for the standardized test, which results in it being given before the test, not doing much to help with the empty weeks afterward. The downside is then deciding on how to grade the final, especially for those who chose not to take the test.
“I feel like if you take the exams for a class, it should count as your final, because you spend so much time preparing for them and working towards them, and that’s basically what you prepare for for the whole year,” said Stone. Erickson agreed, stating that test takers should be exempt from their final. She said that she “…didn’t have any finals, except in math, [because] I took the tests.”
During these weeks, there is a fine line between overworking students and doing nothing.
“I feel like with a lot of the work I’m doing, I’m not learning new things, which is fine because it’s nice to decompress sometimes after a busy year. But I’d much rather be outside, doing stuff, rather than filling our time with assignments that are supposed to be fun but are kind of boring,” said Erickson.
That is one of the bigger issues for seniors, who are nearly done with high school altogether. Especially for seniors who are taking majority AP or IB classes, their days before graduation become filled with busy work that doesn’t feel as valuable as learning something new or preparing for next year, like underclassmen and juniors are able to do.
Senior Ella Stone advised that “…one of the best things that [teachers] can do is projects. With a project, you’re able to collaborate with more peers and it’s definitely more low-stress, but you’re also still able to get practice with presenting and learning more about a specific topic.”
That, or spending time outside as the warm weather begins to settle in for summer, as Erickson suggested, are two great options for how to spend the weeks after exams.
It is important to find a balance between keeping students busy, but not bored, and it is one that students and teachers must collaborate on to keep academically engaged while not working too hard.
