{"id":354410,"date":"2024-12-13T08:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/?p=354410"},"modified":"2024-12-09T13:40:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T18:40:35","slug":"should-pace-amend-their-exam-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/2024\/12\/13\/should-pace-amend-their-exam-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Pace Amend their Exam Week"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pace teachers hand out exams on exam day. Photo : Anonymous Pace Student<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At Pace, all high school students are required to take midterm or final exams in December for all five of their academic classes. Known as \u201cexam week,\u201d students take one exam a day and all students will take exams on the same subject at the same time. This year’s schedule has the Math Exam on Monday, English Exam on Tuesday, World Language Exam on Wednesday, History Exam on Thursday, and the Science Exam on Friday. For regular time students, their exams take place in the Inman center where there are strict rows and columns to ensure that students refrain from cheating. Since every student takes their exam at the same time, the Inman center is packed with students. The duration of each exam is two hours. For those who have extra time, they are in a classroom with few others in the room. Usually these students are given an extra hour to complete their exams, but those students who have double time are given an extra two hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Pace students responded to a poll about whether or not exams should be required, students responded with yes, but often added that exams should not take place in the Inman center but in a classroom. \u201cI think it should be in a classroom, because\u2026 [taking exams in the Inman center] is unnecessary,\u201d junior Noah Zinman said. While student\u2019s unanimously said that Inman shouldn\u2019t be a testing center, teachers had mixed opinions. Mr. Gannon, head of the Pace Upper School, was adamant that students go through a college-like exam experience to prepare students for college. \u201cI prefer the Inman center as a testing venue because, at universities, you\u2019ll sit in lecture halls with hundreds of other students,\u201d Gannon said. \u201cI had never experienced that myself in my high school life, so when I went to take my first exam in an auditorium with 300 students, it was a jarring experience.\u201d Meanwhile Upper School class dean and chemistry teacher, Mrs. Tarvin claimed that a classroom would be a less tense environment. \u201c[In a classroom] I feel like there might be a little more familiarity and less anxiety and maybe a less distracting setting,\u201d Tarvin said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before and during exam week, students’ stress levels are at an all time high, as each exam usually counts for around 25% of their grade in each class. When given a poll, over 70 percent of Pace students claimed that they shouldn\u2019t be required to take exams. \u201cI don’t think they are really necessary; they just cause a bunch of stress,\u201d Senior A.J Conduah said. The Pace Woodruff Library floods with students who are eager to prepare as efficiently as possible for their exams. Some students, however, enjoy the free time in their exam week schedule. \u201cWe have a lot of free time, and it\u2019s fun to get lunch after exams with friends,\u201d junior Jake Haggman said. Some students also argued that there should be exams, but a lower occurrence of them. \u201cI think that exams should exist, but only once a year so that [students] have a break, ” Freshman Ava Piduru said. While most students wanted either limited exams, or no exams, teachers unanimously claimed that exams should take place. \u201cWe strengthen memories by retrieving memories; a final exam asks us to retrieve memories across an entire semester which strengthens our long term learning which is the point of education,\u201d junior class dean Mr. Ewing said. Exams cause stress, and the Pace counselors provide many opportunities such as the stress free zone for Pace students to minimize their stress levels during the week before exams. Upper school counselor, Ms. Millaway, claimed that exams are beneficial to students because they learn to better handle high stress situations. \u201cIn the real world we have situations that cause us stress and we have to be able to tolerate them and exams are a way to practice how we handle stressful situations and there’s lots of things counselors can do to help if you are feeling stressed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public schools in the area often don\u2019t require students to take any form of Exam unless the student needs to improve their grade. This begs the question of whether or not Pace should maintain their strict exam week schedule and require students to take their midterm or final exams. Other students claimed that Pace should only enforce that student\u2019s take exams if their grades are below a certain level, but the level of that grade varied from a failing grade to a 95% in a class. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Pace, all high school students are required to take midterm or final exams in December for all five of their academic classes. Known as \u201cexam week,\u201d students take one exam a day and all students will take exams on the same subject at the same time. This year’s scheduleContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":354411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-grant-chase26paceacademy-org","post-354410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-whatsyourtake","category-pacenews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/files\/2024\/11\/Exams-RGB.jpg?fit=965%2C724&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TYqQ-1uci","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354549,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354410\/revisions\/354549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knightlife.paceacademy.org\/knightlynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}