Teachers unload five projects at one time while students lose time to study for their AP tests. This is a paradox that needs to stop. As we approach the end of the year, AP teachers should recognize the stress and importance of AP tests. Upperclassmen have tried to cram as much information for the coming examinations as possible, but find it difficult as countless teachers have distributed worksheets, take-home tests, and projects during the week preceding these important tests.

Students leaf through the end of text books each night  cramming new material instead of paging through review material. Solidifying the basic knowledge of the entire year benefits test scores and allows students to absorb more long-term knowledge than learning a few more uselses tidbits.

If teachers feel that their specific material needs to be covered before taking the AP test, they should skim more quickly so that there is no necessity to learn new information this close to the tests.

Students do care about learning as many facts as possible, but when these new concepts spill over revisiting old information, something in their education is lost. Another recent problem includes the massive projects that many teachers require.

Spending hours on a poster, machine, or Web page does not assist a student in preparation for tests and, in truth, never really helps a student acquire and maintain information. Students merely do the bare minimum slapping glue to a board instead of absorbing pages of useful knowledge.

Because so many teachers around BSM have assigned these projects, there are students who have to do three, four, or five projects in the week before AP tests. For many seniors, these include making a Website about an author, creating a wikipage, filming movie projects, putting together a complex machine, designing an urban plan, attending a church (with a paper and presentation, of course), filling binders with portfolios, five-minute presentations on students’ heroes, writing a personal pascal mystery, reading final books, and innumerable tests.

It’s not the idea of having a project that is detrimental, but rather the fact that we get a project in every class at the time of year when we should be focusing on reviewing for the AP test.

Next year, teachers should take this into account and lighten up on projects and focus on the point of the class.