Christmas Break peace and happiness? Try panic and homework

Lily wishes that to relax and enjoy spending time with her family and friends was all she had to undertake this Christmas vacation. Instead, she feels as though she had to work on her stacks of homework and exam review guides to prepare for a week of tests. There may be two weeks to get them completed, but Christmas break needs to stay just that: a break from schoolwork and obligations.

“I don’t like having exams after break,” said Lily Kissinger, a junior at Jenison High School. “I don’t get to relax.” Lily isn’t alone. Teachers and students alike find it annoying that there are roadblocks to enjoying their time off. 

Teachers are in a similar boat as the students, drowning in exam preparation and the planning of how to cram all this knowledge into the hapless heads of their students. Kathy Deboer, a literature teacher at Jenison High School, says that “I do spend time grading work”. She gives some of her classes review guides, saying that it “really depends on which class.”

One major issue with having exams after the break is that students may struggle to retain information that is significant for their exams. This retention worries both staff and students. “The two-week break is much needed, and yet we forget so much during that short time,” says Mrs. Deboer.

Also concerning is the workload teachers put on students. Many of Jenison High School’s students take 6 classes a day, and the bulk of those classes require a written exam. Those exams come with massive review guides. While teachers provide time to work during class, time away from school is necessary to complete and study them in depth. Lily says that without studying “I would forget everything I learned.”

If teachers stopped to realize the quantity of the work they put on their students, then realized that five other teachers did similar amounts, they might reconsider exam review as a grade. Mrs. Maday is a history teacher at Jenison High School who believes in review guides as an optional tool. “The review guide is a tool for studying and each learner needs to decide how to use the tool in a way that works best for them.” Says Mrs. Maday.

“I do not give a grade for review guides because I think high school students need to study because they know it will help them be successful on exams, and not because they will get points.” 

There are benefits to having exams after Christmas Break. For example, students who get review guides before leaving school can study them over the break. The key phrase is “before leaving school”. Teachers hand out review guides before Christmas and after returning to school, therefore prohibiting students from working during their vacation time.

The solution to break exam anxiety? Moving the exams to a date that would satisfy both teachers and their students. By moving exams to before break students could worry less about forgetting what they know, or about having pages and pages of work to do. Teachers could leave school with two weeks to prep for next semester.

When asked her opinion on a before-break switch, Mrs. Deboer said that “Yes. I think the break would be a true break, and it would give teachers who teach semester-long classes a chance to regroup.” Lily agrees with the literature teacher, saying that “I would do a lot better [if exams were before break] because I would remember the material.”