Every Lick student knows the feeling of taking a sit-down final: you walk into the gym, set your backpack down in the corner, and sit down at a cold folding table for a handful of hours to take a test on everything you’ve learned so far in that class. But more and more teachers are shying away from finals in this format, although not from comprehensive assessments. Ongoing discussions amongst faculty have focused on how the fall finals week takes the space of classes and learning in the short fall semester. These discussions have reached a conclusion: this coming fall, Lick-Wilmerding High School will no longer have a fall finals week.
Instead, the first semester will be capped off with a final exam experience unique to to each course, allowing for more flexibility from department to department. Randy Barnett, Assistant Head of School, said, “More and more teachers have been using different kinds of assessments, so really having that week off is less class time. I could do presentations, projects, that kind of thing in my class, instead of having one sort of final meeting in a week with all of your sections.” The decision has been a long time coming, and has been part of discussions for years, according to Barnett.
This recent change has been pushed forward by the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership Team (TLLT), which is made up of all the department heads at Lick, as Winifred Montgomery (Learning Strategies Director), the college counselors, Tamisha Williams (Dean of Adult Equity and Inclusion), and Barnett.
Many factors lead to the decision to abandon the official fall finals week, including a shifting academic culture around final exams and considerations regarding the stress load of Lick students. “We’re trying to move to more creative and contemporary assessments, using things that may more authentically help students express what they’re learning,” Barnett said. In some classes, that may be a final project or presentation. In others, it might be a cumulative test. Either way, the final assessments will still occur, they’ll just be taken during the additional class time.
