Dear Northwood High School Community:
Our NHS Challenge Success Vision Statement states, “our school community values engagement, balance, and growth.” We hope to continue our collaboration with all members of the school community to see this vision through.
While the road continues to be long and more challenging during the pandemic, we also found that we made small but significant strides in fostering the best possible learning environment for all our students. One of those changes was to move finals week before Winter Break, a practice that we are proud to continue this year. Our hope then, as it remains now, was and is to allow students and families to enjoy a true break, free from the need to prepare hurriedly for exams when returning to school in January, which traditionally had been the case.
We, as a staff, will do everything in our power to ensure a meaningful transition for all students when they return to finish the remaining days of the Fall Semester, but please know that our foremost goal remains to provide as safe and healthy a learning environment as possible for our students and families. In that way, we sincerely believe that continuing with this change builds upon the positive momentum we began last year.
Here are a few things to note:
- This year, Final Exams will be held over four days on the regular Hybrid schedule, except we will start on Monday with Odd-Cohort A. Friday will follow our typical Monday schedule (basically flipping the Monday schedule to Friday). Here is the finals schedule for the week: (Click here for a pdf schedule)
- Monday, December 14th – Odd-Cohort A
- Tuesday, December 15th – Odd-Cohort B
- Wednesday, December 16th – Even-Cohort A
- Thursday, December 17th – Even-Cohort B
- Friday, December 18th – Independent Day (typical Monday schedule with TA and Office Hours)
- Due to the Hybrid Schedule, we are concerned that some students will be required to take 3 or 4 final exams on one day. This is not consistent with our hope to provide our students greater balance. As a result, students who have three or four final exams on one day may petition to move exams to an alternate day. Students may petition for this by using this link. Students will not be able to request which specific exam is moved and must have more than 2 final exams on the specific day. This would not include the completion of long-term projects or in-class presentations. Requests will be accommodated based on availability and logistics to meet all current health and safety guidelines. In some cases, students will be asked to take their “moved exam” prior to their scheduled class. Student should submit their requests ASAP but the deadline for submission is Wednesday, December 9th. Petitioning students will be notified of the change by Friday, December 11th.
- Teachers will not be posting final exam grades until after the winter break. We ask that you respect their time as well by not contacting them in advance of or during the break regarding final exam grades.
- Final semester grades will post on Wednesday, January 20th.
- The first day of the second semester will be Wednesday, January 20th. The schedule for this week has yet to be determined. Students will be on break from Friday, January 15th to Tuesday, January 19th.
We thank you for your continued partnership. For more information on Challenge Success at NHS and for future Challenge Success events, please click here.
Sincerely,
Leslie Roach, Ed.D.
Principal
The 2020-2021 school year will be our third as a partner school with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education’s Challenge Success initiative. Through this unique collaboration, NHS continues to reflect honestly on our collective practices as we remain committed to ensuring balance between high expectations and student well-being.