Winter Term made its comeback this year and utilized the first two weeks of MICDS’s second semester. The program gave students in grades 9-11 and teachers a chance to take and teach unique classes while students in grade 12 went off campus for career-oriented opportunities. As this school year is coming to a close, some upper school students and teachers are feeling the pressure.
“I’m trying to determine what I need to cut for my AP Music Theory kids,” Dana Self, AP Music Theory and Choir Teacher, said. “I’m trying to organize what is absolutely important to teach for the exam and how much I think I can trust them to make smart choices on answers that I may not be able to cover in class.”
The College Board has guidelines for what content is taught, so AP teachers like Self do not have a lot of flexibility in what they can adjust since the two weeks of lost time isn’t taken into account. Some AP teachers admit they are scrambling to figure out how to appropriately prepare their students for the exams, and some students are scrambling to learn the material at such a rapid pace, saying that this often comes at the expense of time that could’ve been spent doing end-of-the-year review.
“Not having enough review time for the AP Physics C exam will kill us,” Vikram Checka ‘24 said. “I remember the students last year, and they finished almost a month before [the exam]. We’re really stressed out since we’re learning stuff at a faster pace now.”
Self is worried about possible repercussions once the scores come back for the 2024 round of AP testing.
“I think this will be a critical year,” Self said. “What happens if the AP scores are lower? Is it going to be brought back on us as teachers that we didn’t do what we were supposed to do, and that we failed the kids because they didn’t do as well as those in years past?”
AP classes are not the only ones who are needing to make adjustments.
“For our Science 9 kids, we actually had to take out a full unit,” Brian Coco, Science Teacher, said. “The unit was longer than two weeks, but it wasn’t smart to try to cram it into a week. The problem was that we rely on some of that missed information in the second semester, so we had to teach some new things instead of refreshing them of things they already knew, which slowed other stuff up.”
So, why is this such a big deal? There was not much that the administration could do about losing two weeks of school, so Auxiliary (Aux) Periods were implemented to help combat the deficit. Auxiliary Periods have occurred during H Block four times throughout this school year and provide 45 extra minutes of class, essentially an extra half a block.
But, how effective have these Auxiliary Periods been?
“Genuinely, they have not been helpful whatsoever,” Narya Phatak ‘26 said. “At the beginning of the year we were told that these Aux periods would not cover class content, that they would include more random, frivolous, kind of unrelated things.”
However, the faculty knew that Winter Term was going to return this year far in advance. In fact, it was supposed to come back in 2020, until the pandemic happened.
“When the pandemic happened we put everything for Winter Term on hold, so we didn’t have to go back and reinvent a whole lot of stuff,” Dean Nicole Trueman said.
So, some of the student body is not receptive to the Auxiliary Periods that were introduced this year, and it is clear that students and teachers wish for some sort of adjustment so that Winter Term and the regular school year can coexist.
“I think overall, Winter Term was fun. I do wonder if there’s maybe a better time in the school year when that could happen,” Dean Trueman added. “But as we continue to think about it for next year, we’re acknowledging that some things were an issue and that some things worked really well.”
