A school-wide celebration has been planned in response to West Shore being named a National Blue Ribbon School earlier in November. Normally this would be fine, but the celebration has been planned to take up 2 hours on Friday, December 14th; the final day before exam week.
As exam week fast approaches, much of West Shore’s population is stressing as teachers rush to teach before the semester ends and students hurry to study as exams quickly approach. Teachers normally use the last few days of class before exam week to review with students for the upcoming exams. For many students, such as myself, this teacher-guided review is significantly more beneficial than any independent study that could be accomplished.
Unfortunately, this brief time frame of extremely helpful review will be cut short as the planned celebration will cause all classes to be significantly shortened on that Friday, which, let me remind you again, is the final day before exam week starts. I understand that being named a Blue Ribbon School is an amazing achievement for West Shore and a celebration should occur, but does the celebration have to occur during a time where it is critical for students to be reviewing and preparing for exams? Why can’t the celebration be moved to some point later in the year? It could even be held right after winter break; everyone would be getting back into the pace of things and the celebration wouldn’t be a huge disruption.
During any other point in the school year, I’d gladly choose having a celebration over being in class. However, the days preceding exams provide extremely beneficial review and I, as well as many other students, do not want to simply give that up.
By David Anderson
