By Shannon Tseng | Staff Writer

In early November, math teacher Mr. Leon Lee held a meeting with several other Irvington staff members from the Curriculum Council to create a testing calendar in order to help reduce students’ stress.

“Stress has been a big topic of discussion for the last few years, and I want to make a difference and help our student population manage their stress as much as possible, but still maintaining rigor in all subjects,” Mr. Lee said, “I still have not gotten the logistics down, but if all goes according to plan, [the calendar] will go into effect second semester.”

The calendar will allow teachers to see when other teachers plan on giving tests so that they can schedule their own tests on different days. This way teachers can ensure that their students aren’t taking multiple tests on a given day. Although there are good intentions behind the calendar, Mr. Lee speculated that not all teachers will follow the plan.

“ I think there will be a handful of teachers that will not [follow the schedule]. I understand some of them because they plan the whole year out over the summer, and it just does not fit their calendars if their testing day does not fall on what they had originally planned,” Mr. Lee said, “I get it. However, as students are flexible with teachers, I believe teachers need to be flexible with each other, as well as the students. Life does not always go according to plan and we need to be able to accept change and be open to it. I believe it is a good thing, and we need to be excited about it.”

On the other hand, many teachers are eager and willing to follow the calendar.

“I plan on following the testing calendar,” AP Calculus and AP Statistics teacher Mrs. Rothfuss said, “I hope it will be effective. It depends on how much teachers are willing to stick with the schedule, but I support the idea of a testing schedule.”