Unlike university students, who understand that the semester’s work gets more intense at the end, high school students often feel that they can begin to relax toward the end of the semester.
To be sure, there is a form of ‘senioritis’ at the college-level, but it is most severe at the high school level - and not merely among seniors, but among all students.
A high school can take several different approaches to the final quarter of the year. Whichever tactic it takes, however, must be taken by a unified faculty and staff.
One strategy is to celebrate the final weeks of the year with pizzas, field trips, classroom parties, and movies.
A different strategy is to emphasize the intensifying academic work, avoid all those fun and social events, and instead assign ever more written work, reading, and lectures.
Both of these approaches have advantages and disadvantages, but the key to both of them is that they must be embraced uniformly by the teaching faculty.
If different faculty members are using different strategies, then a consistent school culture at the end of the year is not possible.
The administrators should present both of the above options, along with other tactics if they exist, and work to build faculty consensus around one or the other of them.
