As finals week creeps up on students at Air Academy High School, ways we study now are much different compared to years when COVID prevented in-person classes. Zoom calls are much different than an in-class experience, but effects from those years have made it so students must relearn studying habits all around the U.S.
Interactions with teachers are one of the most important ways that students get help studying for finals. Whether it’s just a plain question or help on whole parts of class, interactions help to affirm a teacher’s answer and get the most benefit from the information you gain.
“Being able to ask a teacher a question directly is very helpful to get the answer immediately,” Assistant Principal and Athletic Director Kali Maxwell states.
Talking to a teacher face to face presents easier interactions to ask questions and get straight answers than if you were on a call or emailing. While interactions with teachers is one of the changes made in the last couple of years of finals, many students had to adapt to studying in new ways than in COVID. Studying time during COVID may have been easier or harder for some students, but stepping up to in-person finals must’ve been a challenge for most people.
“I had a lot of trouble with my finals freshman year, because most of my older friends made me think studying for it would be easy and it wasn’t,” sophomore Sam Anderson exclaims.
Juniors and sophomores at Air Academy had some of the worst freshman years, being the following years when COVID died down. Expectations for easy studying and easy assignments were shattered quickly, and test scores around the nation have to show for the effects it had.
“Students in most states and across almost all demographic groups had experienced troubling setbacks, especially in math, because of the pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a gold-standard federal exam,” in her New York Times Article, “U.S. Students’ Progress Stagnated Last School Year, Study Finds,” Sarah Mervosh states.
Mervosh brings statistics to the table that provide evidence that students’ studying habits and exams scores reflect off of the skills they learned from years of COVID. Lack of in-person interactions and helpful study tips leads students to have a false perception of how studying for final exams actually is. Low test scores from current years proves how badly this has affected students. But how has all of this affected teachers?
“It’s much easier to read their faces. I can see the looks on their faces to know if they understand what I’m teaching them or if they’re confused,” AP math teacher Amy Cofield affirms.
Teachers have an easier time understanding what you need help with, not just from being asked questions. Like Cofield, by being in person with her students, she can recognize different faces to know when to help students who are struggling with math.
By switching online to in-person so quickly, most students needed more time to adapt to the changes of studying for finals. With the nation’s test scores at an all-time low, students need to learn helpful studying techniques fast to benefit on their test scores in the future.
To read more from Sarah Mervosh’s article, “U.S. Students’ Progress Stagnated Last School Year, Study Finds,” go to this website: U.S. Students’ Progress Stagnated Last School Year, Study Finds – The New York Times.
