The final schedule for this trimester will be different from trimester one schedule.Instead of the whole week being filled with finals, it will be an organized schedule of balancing finals to have students take no more than one or two finals a day.
The trimester one final schedule was overwhelming for students who had as many as five finals in a day. Although the schedule allowed teachers to choose any day during finals week to test, often students had multi-day finals in multiple classes. The trimester two schedule was redesigned to be more beneficial for teachers and students and to organize the time in a week more effectively.
In the new schedule there will be two finals per day except for Wednesday, March 5 when there is only one final. Students will have a 62 minute class period before each final. Instead of finals being every day like last trimester, they will only be on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Students did not like the trimester one schedule because of how many tests they had in one day, and because finals that were spread over two days were not always separated by material.
“The experience students shared with me is being overwhelmed by the schedule of the first trimester,and they had multiple finals in a day and were not sure what to prepare for when, and they were struggling and stressed,” Assistant Principal Michael Gizzo said.
Some students did not know how to balance studying and tests and ended up not doing as well.
“I felt that the final schedule last tri was more difficult than previous years because of having to study for three and up classes in one night, on top of having sports,” junior Gabby Vargas said.
The trimester two schedule is similar to to last year’s final schedule, but does not have any minimum days.“It was necessary for us to chunk finals so that you do not have more than two finals a day,” Principal Richard Nash said.
In addition to the finals periods. Each final has an additional one hour class period the same day, so each class will meet three hours on its final day.
Because of concerns about meeting instructional minutes, and limits to how much the schedule could change because of transportation schedules already in place, , there will not be any minimum days in the trimester two finals schedule.
According to Nash, there are no buses available earlier than 3:35 on Fridays and Wednesday is a late start, so there cannot be an early release.
The new schedule is not set in stone for third-trimester finals.
“If it is not beneficial for students, it will change again. It should help teachers as well in that they will figure out what to do in the beginning of the week because they all wanted finals to be towards the end of the week,” Nash said.
Poway High School teachers also had concerns with last trimester’s final schedule.“It was stressful for many because a lot of students had more than two finals, which we would never have had with the block schedule,” Psychology teacher Breezy Ambort said.
The new final schedule will start on Wednesday, March 5 and students will attend all periods for 21 minutes. They will also have a one hour 5th period class period and a two hour 5th period final.
Then on March 6, students will take period 1 and period 2 finals with a one hour class period before each. On Friday, March 7 periods 3 and 4 will have their one hour class period and two hour finals.. There will not be any minimum days and all days for finals week will end at the usual time of 3.35.
