An Okotoks student said he has just completed an educational sprint, after spending his first two years of high school doing marathon-like learning sessions.
“I think the quarter-system has been very intense,” said Ziyad Syed, a Grade 12 student at Foothills Composite High School. “The semester-system is like a marathon while the quarter-system is like a heat in track and field – very short, very high energy and little bursts of focusing your energy in all of that.”
Foothills Composite switched to the quarterly system for the 2020-21 school year due to COVID-19 in an effort to reduce student-traffic in the hallways and to keep students in the same grade cohort as much possible. The first two-month quarter ended last week, and final exams have begun.
The quarterly-system has students taking two two-hour classes in each of four semesters— one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They still have the same amount of class time as they had in the previous two-semester system, which had four classes a day over four months.
Syed completed Math 30-1AP and Physics 30 on Nov. 5, more than handling the ‘sprint’ with marks above 90 per cent. He said there are pros and cons to doing high school courses in two months.
“Math and physics you have to do problems and the only way you improve is try to solve them until you get them right,” Syed said. “That takes a lot of time if you have two highly intensive classes like that.”
He said a benefit was he was able to focus on those two classes rather than the four he would typically have to study.
He said both his teachers, Cynthia Tarasoff and Kevin Jones, for math and physics, respectively, were able to mix things up to keep the two-hour classes interesting.
Final exams are this week, however Alberta Education has stated Grade 12 students in the quarterly system have the option not to write diploma exams.
Syed opted not to write the final exams.
His goal is to take science courses at either the University of Calgary or University of Alberta in the fall of 2021.
He is concerned that it will be nearly 10 months since taking a math related class when he attends university in the fall.
“With the two-semester system, I think it would stay in my mind longer,” Syed said. “It is a little bit of a worry, but I feel confident that the way the teachers made things interesting, it will stick longer.”
He added with the two-semester system it allows students a greater chance to bounce back if they have struggles.
However, he agrees with the switch at this time due to COVID-19.
“I think the fact Foothills hasn’t had to shut down means to me they have done the right thing,” he said.
Grade 11 student Madison Wakelin just completed Spanish 20 and Bio 20 in the first quarter.
“I thought I was going to hate it because having to spend so much time in one class,” Wakelin said of the quarterly system. “Having the two months is good and bad. It’s like you are getting the information quicker, so then you can move on and you don’t forget what you have learned in the beginning.”
She said her teachers have made things interesting over the two hours. As well, there are opportunities to catch up during ‘flex-time’ at the school.
“If I had to sit there and write notes for two hours, I would die of boredom,” she said.
As a Grade 11 student, she has to write her final exams. She said the quarterly system will help her.
“You’re not forgetting what you learned in the two-month span,” she said. “You’re not forgetting as much as in the two-semester system.”
Vince Hunter, Foothills Composite High School principal, said the school is considering offering both the quarterly and semester system in 2021-22.
“If we could pull that off it would be great,” Hunter said. “Otherwise, we have to play out the rest of the year, listen to our staff and students and parents and decide what we want to do.”
He said classes like welding, construction, students being in there for an entire morning is good because they aren’t suddenly tearing a project after a short-time period.
However, he added programs like band, music and drama may benefit to having it run longer over the school year as it provides continuity.
“If we could ever run a dual platform, we would look at what programs benefit from a quarterly system and what programs benefit from having semester system,” Hunter said. “Those would be questioned around teacher practice, teachers’ beliefs.”
Holy Trinity Academy and Oilfields High School continued with the semester system in 2020-21.
