So I go to a private school that used to be PK-8, and I’m in the first 9th grade class. Right now we’re having a debate about whether we should be able to take AP courses as juniors and seniors. We’re writing persuasive essays and giving presentations in assembly, either for or against it. One reason that a lot of people think we shouldn’t, is because we use a trimester system. Spring break is the last two weeks of March, and then trimester 3 is the beginning of April to the middle of June. This means that the AP exams would be right in the middle of the trimester.
My “creative” solution is that trimester 3 should be separated into two blocks. Block one would be final projects and exam prep. Block 2 would be extra electives, trips, senior projects, and days off for internships and college visits.
Obviously I don’t think my idea will be taken seriously, since I don’t know any other schools that do this.
But I’m curious, if you go to a school with a trimester system, do you have AP classes? and how does your school deal with it?
If you are looking for examples of schools with APs in a trimester system, I know of one off the top of my head…Skyline HS in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Public. Don’t have firsthand experience, sorry.
I found that school’s calendar. Their spring trimester starts during the second week of March. They have 2 weeks of school, then a one week break, then the trimester ends at the end of May. But thanks anyway.
Is there something specific about a trimester rather than quarters or semesters? Plenty of schools have classes scheduled into June and offer AP exams, with the tests falling in the middle of one of those divisions. The month or so after the exams are filled in a variety of ways - typically labs, projects or teaching advanced content.
The school my kid attended had both AP and IB classes with a trimester schedule.
Kids did a fair amount of summer work before school started to ensure they’d hit the ground running and be ready by exam time. One good thing was that the second trimester final was good review of material covered to date for the AP ot IB exam.
Yes, the time after the exam was still used for academics. Most kids were actually pretty engaged academically so didn’t stop caring after the exam, but itdid change the energy.
I like your travel idea or a service project or a performance or really anytime that made the subject come to life a bit. That time after the exam lends itself to that.
Seems like it is less about the trimester system than it is about the AP exam dates being about 5/6 of the way through the school year, so an AP course needs to cover the material faster than at a school where the school year is shifted earlier so that the entire school year is before the AP exam. Many schools on ordinary semesters have the same situation.
The other thing to consider is that AP courses are not offered, what would the offerings be for students ready to learn more advanced material? If they are other courses associated with external exams (e.g. IB), how would those exam dates fit into the school calendar?
The main problem is that the exams would be right in the middle of the trimester, where’s with a semester schedule you have 2 months between midterms and APs, we would only have 4 weeks of classes after our trimester 2 assessments, and one week would have to be just reviewing. Then we’d have the same situation between APs and finals. So essentially we’d only have normal classes for a few weeks of the trimester.
If we don’t have APs, we’ll just have honors classes, and kids will have the option to take the AP exams on our own if we want to.
This is similar to my sons’ spring schedule at a semester-based school. The main exception being that they have just three weeks after AP exams - two and a half weeks of class then two days of finals. AP review is during AP course class time or after school. It does not disrupt other classes. AP testing itself is no more disruptive to non-AP classes than any other school-day standardized testing.