With the 2024-2025 school year coming to an end, many students are looking forward to summer break, but they first have to make it through second semester final exams. After ETHS had its first finals since last semester, teachers and students are in the process of figuring out what works best for them. While the majority of teachers don’t plan to change their finals much this semester compared to last, some teachers found room for improvement.
Many teachers were satisfied with how finals went last semester and are not planning any major adjustments for the spring.
“[Finals] will be about the same length and difficulty,” said physics teacher Daniel DuBrow. “Last semester, I think that because students weren’t quite sure what to expect, maybe they didn’t prepare in the right way.”
Similarly, Rosette Ochoa, a chemistry teacher, said, “the structure and content were well received by the students, and we [the science department] all felt it was an effective way to assess their understanding. As a result, we’ve decided to continue with the same plan for this semester.” Ochoa felt that everything went as planned in the first semester and no modifications seemed necessary. “I haven’t heard of any significant changes to how finals are being approached, though some might experiment with alternative formats, like projects. For our chemistry department, we’ve decided to stick with the traditional exam format.”
Some teachers, including math teacher Thomas Draganski, think that finals should be weighted differently to better prepare students for the future.
“I think that the goal of finals was to prepare students for taking finals in college, but I think they’re worth too little. When they’re worth 10%, they’re worth less than one of my regular tests– they’re more like a finals quiz,” Draganski said. “If you really want to simulate the pressure, I think they need to be worth more like 20 or 30% of the grade to really get the feeling of a true final exam.”
Draganski acknowledged that this approach to a final exam might not be as effective in other departments. “Finals are a good idea for math…the math department had finals for years and years before COVID, so we’re pretty familiar with the structure,” he said. “There are subjects where it is not necessary to have a comprehensive final…in a subject where the class is more project-based, a final is absurd.”
Dr. Patricia Delacruz, an English teacher, has also “been at ETHS long enough to remember what finals was like.” Delacruz felt that although the process of creating finals was somewhat rushed last semester, the collaboration between teachers and administrators was successful when administration allowed teachers to modify final exams to suit their teaching styles. “Could we do it better?” Delacruz said. “We one hundred percent could.”
“I think the final exam experience can be valuable for students who are going on to any type of institutional experience after this,” Delacruz said. “We just need to rethink and make choices to make final exams really representative of what we’ve done…we need a cumulative learning experience that really focuses on students.”
Finals week and the weeks leading up to it can be a challenging time for students, but with faculty working together to find the best system, it should go smoothly. It is clear that it will take some time to find what fits everyone’s needs best, but ETHS is working towards it. Students, we’ve got less than two months left— we’re almost there!
