The excitement that students have for the prospects of school cancellations is clearly palpable over social media. Although snow days provide a nice reprieve from another arduous day of classes they begin to add up and take a toll on studies. Classes can get cancelled, but AP exams cannot.

Due to the large amount of snow days, AP students are now feeling the effects of all of the cancellations. Teachers are doing whatever it takes to fit in any outstanding curriculum needed for the exam. Despite the sense of urgency that AP teachers are displaying to finish their last units in order to begin review, students are not reciprocating the same sentiments and would rather spend their snow days postponing their studies.

“I don’t do any work over the snow days, so I’m forced to cram the day before everything is due,” said senior Tim Ward.

The repercussions for every subject are different: teachers of courses like Calculus, Biology, and Statistics are required to shorten the rest of the units and combine chapters in order to give students adequate preparation for their respective exams. Teachers of courses like Literature and Government only have to make slight modifications to their schedules because they spend most of the year teaching students the proper strategies for the exam.

“I feel like it’s going to be harder for classes like Calculus because they are missing certain content. With Literature it is more recursive and all we are missing is extra practice, I feel like it is one way we have an advantage,” said AP Literature teacher Jenny Goransson.

Teachers have resorted to posting assignments on Blackboard in order to give their students the material that they are missing and so that they keep the mentality of preparing for the exam. This strategy requires the cooperation of students, which is not as reliable when their minds are wandering off on snow days.

“Teachers have had to cut out a lot of material because of the snow days. It makes sense that they post assignments on Blackboard but I just don’t want to do it. The motivation just isn’t there,” said Senior Emily Reba.

Teachers believe that there are both positives and negatives to the snow days. At this point the cons outweigh the pros based on the unusually large amount of cancellations that Fairfax County has had this year. It is up to the students to pull it together and fulfill their school responsibilities as well as fight back any symptoms of Senioritis.

“I think that I have a more motivated group of seniors this year, but I think that Spring Break will have a more negative effect [than the snow days],” said Goransson. “I think that students are actually fresher after the snow days. For students that already struggle with time management I think that it made it harder for them too.”

Goransson and other teachers claim that the biggest challenge that teachers faced with the school cancellations was missing back to back color days during the week. There were weeks where they would not meet with orange blocks and others where there were no blue classes. Obstacles like this forced teachers to adjust and adapt to styles they are not as comfortable with.

“I’m an advocate of social learning, I think that [my students] and I construct knowledge together,” said AP Government teacher Dr. Erin Wigginton. “With that said, the clock is our enemy, the calendar is our enemy. Teachers and students have to make adjustments that aren’t necessarily desired.”

With the exams quickly approaching, teachers are making the tough but necessary cuts in their curriculum to eliminate the more entertaining and fun assignments in order to create enough time to prepare students for what they will encounter on test day. Getting students back into the right mindset is critical for achieving success and teachers realize that when it is all said and done then it is the responsibility of the student to deliver.

“I think it’s all up to them, I have rearranged the course plan to allow for as much review as possible,” said Wigginton. “They’ll do fine, but if they continue with a less positive attitude then they won’t score as high as they can. They have everything they need, but they just have to do it.”