Wednesday, March 20 was SAT day. This year, MCPS made the test free to provide each student with an opportunity to take it. After three hours of juniors taking what most consider the most important test in their lives, schools still decided to take attendance and have instructional learning for the rest of the school day. While some classes used it as a wellness period, other classes like Honors Physics, for example, introduced a new topic. Similarly, On Thursday, April 11, and Friday, April 12, freshmen took MAP M and MAP R while sophomores took ELA 10 MCAP for both days. Both are county-mandated tests, spanning two and a half hours. On Thursday and Friday, we had four classes each day spanning 40 minutes.
This isn’t acceptable. While school is important and it’s something that shouldn’t fall out of habit, it’s also important to take breaks. Many adults criticize students for having a lower attention span and refuse to admit that forcing anyone to take a straight test for anywhere from 90 minutes to 195 minutes is taxing on anyone, no matter the age. Yet, we are still expected to retain new information almost immediately after.
If students miss one period, even on testing days, they are considered behind because work was most likely assigned. During the AP exam month, students taking the exams will be excused from the rest of the day. Those who decide to relax after taking a three-hour exam will only be rewarded with more work from classes they opted out of attending. The brave souls who soldier on will be rewarded with burnout that probably won’t be resolved until the end of their high school career.
While this may be an exaggeration, school now feels so anti-break. MCPS only allows two snow days in a school year; this year, we had three. On the third snow day, some teachers posted classwork and homework, treating the day as an asynchronous learning day. Monday, April 22, a given day off, has now transitioned into an asynchronous day. Teachers are required to post lessons and assignments for students to complete.
Instead of giving students a day to relax or start studying for APs, we are thrown right back into new material that might not even matter to some students.
Morale is low, but effort is still high. Overworking students isn’t going to help them. It instead hurts grades and increases stress among students. Junior year is known to be one of the most, if not most, stressful high school years. From spending the entire summer before junior year studying for SATs to spending the rest of the school year studying for APs with other classes only getting harder.
Academic pressure in our culture is at an all-time high, it’s causing depression among students that many adults chalk up to phones. We are in a school that preaches mental health yet we are still expected to “lock in” when we mentally can’t anymore. These breaks are necessary to help us learn in the long run.
