Site Council has created, approved and released a set of guidelines for Study Week, the week that precedes finals week previously known as Quiet Week.
The name change from Quiet Week, also known as “Dead Week,” to “Study Week” stemmed from Site Council’s desire to clarify the week’s purpose as a time for studying and preparing for exams.
Site Council is comprised of five teachers, four students, four parents, two administrators, and one classified staff member. The Redwood website states that the goals of Site Council are to “promote empathy, kindness, and respect for oneself and others, foster a safe environment that values both personal and academic goals, celebrates individuality, and cultivate tolerance and inclusiveness.”
The new guidelines are recommendations for the administration, counselors, teachers, students, parents and athletic coaches. These include limiting extracurriculars and adding in-class time for studying.
The new guidelines state that counselors, administration, teachers, and parents should not pull students from classes except in emergency situations. Additionally, students should limit social obligations and athletic coaches should minimize practices and competitions as much as possible.
The goals are to “establish a clear definition of the days prior to finals, alleviate stress and reduce anxiety leading up to finals (for studen
ts, teachers, and families), and outline policies that will help students focus on academics so they can perform to the best of their abilities,” according to the official document titled “Study Week Guidelines,” which was released Jan. 19 in an email from Principal David Sondheim.
Sondheim said that his own goal for the changes is to see students be successful on their exams while retaining their health.
“I’m hoping that we will see students be able to perform well on their end-of-semester assessments, whatever they may look like, in a way that still maintains their health and well- being during that time,” Sondheim said.
Students on Site Council presented the guidelines to a group of teacher leaders on Nov. 2 and to the full staff on Nov. 11. Although the teachers did not have to specifically approve the guidelines, as Site Council does not need approval to do work, Sondheim said the council was open to feedback from the staff.
“From some of the comments, some of the Site Council folks saw some very easy changes to the wording that will help emphasize some of the things that the teachers gave feedback about,” Sondheim said.
Site Council has been working to establish guidelines for the week prior to finals for the past 1½ years, as people in the Redwood community acknowledge finals week as a stressful time.
“I definitely believe that not teaching new material during quiet week is important for students. It’s really tough for me to keep up with new material as well as review a whole semester’s worth of material for a final,” said junior Sanjana Seshadri, a first-year member of Site Council.
Members of Site Council saw clear distinctions between the desires of students and the desires of teachers with regard to the new guidelines, according to Julie Norwood, a teacher on Site Council.
“We saw a lot of differences in what students and teachers thought [Quiet Week] was, and what they want it to be,” Norwood said. “Kids really wanted it to be a time where they didn’t learn anything new, where they just got to focus on finals. Teachers feel that finals are important, but giving up a full week of instruction isn’t necessarily the right thing to do.”
Although the guidelines for Study Week have been introduced for this semester, enforcement will be at the discretion of the students, teachers, parents and coaches.
“This is what we would want in an ideal situation, and teachers, coaches and parents have to use their best judgements,” Norwood said.
Teacher Ann Jaime believes that the new guidelines are suggestions rather than rules because they allow the teachers to do what they believe is best for their students.
“We’ve never really strictly enforced guidelines,” Jaime said. “Ultimately, the way a teacher teaches their class is left pretty much up to them. So what the site council was trying to do was offer some suggestions that they thought might make for a more balanced lead up to finals. But at the end of the day, how [a teacher] conducts their classroom is up to them.”
Additionally, the high standard of teachers in the Tam Union High School District allows the administration to trust the teachers to do what is best, according to Jaime.
“Mostly, in this district, we trust the professionalism of teachers to make wise choices,” Jaime said. “So what I think the administration is doing by offering guidelines is to say that if you are going to live outside the bounds of these guidelines, we trust that you are doing that for good cause, not to be subversive or harsh.”
Jaime also believes that by leaving the guidelines as suggestions, teachers are able to be more flexible to the needs of their students.
“To me, at the end of the day, it’s what is going work for kids. That’s the way I would use [the guidelines],” Jaime said.
The process of creating the guidelines involved choosing a topic of focus, giving out a survey, and basing the new guidelines upon the results of the survey.
According to the Quiet Week Survey Highlights released by Site Council, students who participated in the survey prioritized having no homework related to finals and having no new material taught in class, while their lowest priorities were having no mandatory athletic practices and no non-essential call slips out of class.
Teachers, on the other hand, selected not having field trips, no additional or extended SMART periods, and no non-essential call slips. Their lowest priorities were having mandatory days of review prior to the exam and having no projects due.
