The absolute buffoonery of finals week
Finals week is, in theory, the culmination of an entire year of work. One more assessment that is supposed to be the gauge of a studentâs learning. Itâs supposed to be the last half mile on a long hike or the plating of a home-cooked meal. And while that may be the case at the college level, in my own experience teaching middle and high school, finals are perfunctory at best. One of the schools Iâve worked for made their final worth a piddly 7% of the total semester grade. Admittedly, that school was an outlier, but even where Iâm currently working, the general practice is to toss the finals underhand.
But this post isnât just about the actual finals, but the way schools break down in those final few days.
With double digit hours mandated by the state remaining, thereâs not much we can do to get kids on task. While you can hold impending finals over them, the fact that finals may as well be a strongly worded letter means that youâre essentially relying on social norms to maintain anything that is some semblance of order. Some students are still swayed by the potential for grade loss, but many students know theyâre mostly locked in.
In addition to that, students get energized when the routine is broken, and not in a good way. Some students, even when faced with something as common as an assembly bell schedule, will act like it's a free pass to hang out in the hallway, cut class, or whip out their phones in front of administrators. You wouldnât think transitioning from first to second period four minutes earlier would cause such an existential crisis, but it does. This is exacerbated during finals when students are trapped with their teacher for a few blocks in the morning and potentially looking at more testing in the afternoon, empty classes slots that are present just to satisfy the minutes requirement for the State of Texas or, if the gods are good, a half day.
Outside of cutting class, there are other behavioral changes. Whatâs the penalty for being tardy to your next class? Nothing substantial, the school year is over. Whatâs the penalty in talking back to a teacher or administrator? You either get to start the summer early, or get tossed in in-school suspension for the day. It doesnât help that the more the students get amped, the more I want to just take a nap.
Earlier this week, I found a student who I had seen before sitting in the hallway during class. As usual, I asked them (politely) to please relocate to where they were supposed to be. On previous occasions, this student had just nodded and went off to class with an annoyed âheâs doing too muchâ under his breath. Not a great response, but I'm fine with letting a student I donât know bitch under their breath as long as they comply.
Today, when I found that same student, his response as he stood up was a halfhearted âI would slap the shit out of you.â Which, of course, means a referral and a suspension because thatâs a threat, even if I donât think he was being malicious, just stupid.
At the end of the day, the principal responsible for that student apologized for the behavior. (I'm quite lucky with my campus level administrators.)
I couldnât help but grin as I took a sip of my afternoon tea.
âHardly the first time Iâve been threatened. Probably wonât be the last,â with good-natured aplomb. dozens of parent phone calls and emails, harassing students over missing work, lost conference periods, and piles of end of year accommodations paperwork⌠It's a Herculean effort.
Almost out of the woods. Just another half mile uphill.
Thank you for reading, if you made it this far~