As the cold begins to settle itself in, students are working away at their end of the semester performance assessments. Unlike the traditional Linsly exam week, the school is willing to try and test out a new approach to exams. Two years ago marked our last exam week before covid and after the virus hit, our finals for the 2020 school year would be canceled, and there would be no exams at all the following academic year.
It’s going to be a challenge for both students and teachers to adapt to having these end-of-semester assessments again, but the administration at Linsly used this as an opportunity to try and improve the workload and to make this transition back to midterms easier for the private school. Mrs. Leone, the upper school dean, explained the reasoning behind the change, “not having exams last year made us think about what exams could be and should be,” she explained. “We wanted to give teachers more of an opportunity to do performance assessments rather than pencil and paper tests. For classes that can’t really do this, we wanted to break up the exam so that it wasn’t done in just one hour or class period.”
This allows students to learn more than memorize answers for a multiple-choice test. They can also use creativity to outline their growth in a class as well, and put time into a project they are knowledgeable and passionate about. However, the decision to try something new also came from the analytics from the previous year’s exam results. “I think we know the data from [previous exams] were not good, and the scores were not good. I think we are hoping that this process of taking more time to lead up to the assessment will better the performance,” says the dean.
The administration wanted to give students more time in their busy schedules, but this new change is going to rely on the student body to see if it is really worth a permanent change or not. Many students already dislike the change, mostly because the new schedule brings back-to-back exams for classes, instead of an appointed day and time for each exam like the old schedule did. Students also are pointing out that they have less freedom and also less time to unwind after a tough examination. Students also have to arrive at the regular time every day, instead of whenever their first exam took place. Having the exams spread out was less stressful for students overall, and to be honest many looked forward to exam week because of how different it was from the day-to-day schedule. It allowed time for socialization with others and some extra studying, also group studying was a lot easier to do since the exams weren’t relying on class periods, so everyone taking a course would be in the exam room at the same time.
Only time can tell how this schedule is going to go. As for the student body, we will hopefully be able to decide what works best for us. Giving something new a chance is always a challenge, but being able to respond positively to a change and adapt appropriately encourages lifelong learning.
