With each new school year comes changes. This year, that means a new schedule that takes place across eight days as opposed to the old five-day schedule. As a result, there is no designated finals week.
Up until this year, the Upper School has had a week known as finals week at the end of each semester. During this week, students took two finals a day for three days in a row, completing one final for each of the six lettered periods. For example, during the first semester, A and B period finals took place on the first day of finals, and the other four over the next two days. The first final of each day would occur from 9:00 until 11:00 in the morning and the second would occur from 1:00 until 3:00 in the afternoon, giving students a two hour break in between the two finals each day.
“I think that the finals schedule that we had was really helpful and helped manage stress and studying in between [finals],” sophomore Sascha Keller said. “Even though last-minute studying isn’t the method that I use when taking my finals, studying directly before really helps me feel more confident.”
Due to the new rotation, finals week no longer fits into the schedule.
Instead, finals will come in the form of a “Synthesis Cycle” during the last eight-day rotation of each semester. This cycle will be used to review the skills and content covered in the class during the semester up to that point.
“Students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their learning – in a mode that best fits the class, students, and acquired skills,” Head of the Upper School Cory Zeller said.
In order to improve the school’s schedule, Parker hired Roxanne Higgins, the President and Senior Executive Consultant of Independent School Management (ISM) . ISM is a team designed to “strengthen private independent schools” and “enrich the student experience.” According to Zeller, Higgins stressed “the importance of moving away from traditional final exams” in order to enhance learning completed throughout the semester and up until the “Synthesis Cycle.”
“The goal of [this] year’s schedule is to increase student learning through skill acquisition and synthesis,” Zeller said. “No new concepts will be introduced, but teachers will be working with students to display what they’ve learned that will vary per teacher and per department.”
While the synthesis cycle will provide time for final projects, some teachers may decide to assign final projects before winter break and move on to second semester topics during the synthesis cycle.
If the teacher decides to use the synthesis cycle for its intended purpose, they can assign a final project anytime over the course of the first five days of the cycle. During the first five days, some teachers may use the long block in the morning for the final project because the 75 minute period will provide time to finish it. However, other teachers may schedule a final on the same day for every period of the same class, if they teach multiple sections.
The last three days of the cycle have perimeters of when blocks can have a final project. This is so that students are not overwhelmed with multiple finals crammed into a small period of time. Finals for E and B block can only be given on day six, finals for F and C block can only be given on day seven, and finals for A and D block can only be given on day eight. Additionally, no homework can be assigned during the last three days of the second semester, except for a class that has a final on the assigned final block the next day. After the final project has been given, the class will move on to the second semester.
Final projects will look different for every class. For some classes, such as math, there still may be a test for the final. However, teachers are encouraged to assign finals that allow students to apply their knowledge in other modes of assessment.
“There are some classes that give a test, but I think most teachers actually have you display your knowledge in a format that matches the discipline,” Zeller said. Examples of this could include but are not limited to projects, presentations, or debates.
However, some students feel negatively about moving away from finals week. “I think the breaks [during finals week] really helped a lot of people calm down and helped them be able to get food and whatever else they might need to feel fully successful on their finals,” Keller said, “Getting rid of the final schedule will increase stress because there are going to be other classes that you have to deal with while taking your finals, which is really stressful.”
Zeller recognizes that the transition from finals week to a synthesis is new, which is why letters and emails will potentially be sent out before the Synthesis Cycle occurs, further detailing how these new changes will work out.
