Winter break is a two week vacation from school which can provide students with an opportunity to forget everything learned before the break started. This can be most pronounced when a test is taken before winter break, with the retest after break.

“It’s not an ideal situation, but the retest itself is already a privilege for students to do so they will just have to do a little bit more work to get ready for that retest,” geometry teacher Kelli Duckworth said. “I think teachers, if they give a test this week, they should probably wait until after the break to go over it so at least the students have kind of seen it and it’s fresh in their minds again and they have a better chance of doing well on the retest, but I think, again, it’s not ideal but it’s a privilege anyway so at least they still have that opportunity.”   

According to OnlineSchools.org, pausing for a moment to relax and reboot is essential for achieving productivity, success, and a positive outlook on the future.

“I think one of the reasons is because we feel like students will be a little bit more successful before the break and because they’re not going to study, chances are, over the break,” Duckworth said. “So if we come right back and jump into a test, they’re not going to be remembering what we had learned as well than two weeks before so taking the test for the first time, I think we see a lot more failures and lower grades than we would by doing it before.”

The situation isn’t ideal for students, but one that can’t be avoided with the current school calendar and the first semester ending after winter break.

“I don’t think it’s really a good idea because by then we’ve probably forgotten everything,” sophomore Ruth Wang said. “I don’t really think there’s a good solution to this because everything is planned. The time and everything. I was thinking that maybe a teacher could have a tutorial to review once before taking the retest.”