Every student is exhausted and anxious at the end of each school year, but it’s not just the students that have felt stressed.

Spanish instructor Señora Lauren Golaszewski says that teachers are also under a lot of pressure.  

Golaszewski is very familiar with Hershey High School and its end of the year routine. She was a student teacher at HHS during her college training, and she has worked at the high school for the last six years. Golaszewski enjoys teaching at HHS and says the kids are great.

However, even Golaszewski experiences stress at the end of school just like the students, but she explained that the preparation for the end of school finals is less stressful. Golaszewski thinks that the planning and creation of exams is straightforward. She said, “ [The] pacing [of the exam preparations] is less stressful because it’s easy to know what to do.”

Golaszewski believes that there are other times throughout the year that cause stress. The transition from one marking period to the next is tense because all of her students’ grades must be submitted at a certain time.

However, once the school year dissolves and summer begins to approach, Golaszewski feels a lot more pressure to make her tight deadlines. She said, “The end of the year has the normal stress of the marking periods changing, and then finals are thrown on top.”  

According to Golaszewski, her students’ final grades are due just one day after the students take their finals, a very narrow deadline.

Golaszewski also mentions that the end of year poses a lot of challenges which can add to the stress teachers already feel. There are several events, both inside and outside of school, that can make it harder to meet the due dates on time. For example, students miss class time due to Keystones and AP tests. She said that, “When you’re crunched for time, a student may miss [an important class], and then it’s hard to make up [work].”

Just like her students, Golaszewski has found methods to deal with stress. She has found that getting out of the school environment and moving around helps her calm down and focus. Golaszewski likes to go to The Hershey Gardens to grade her students’ tests. If she has to spend hours grading school work , she says that she’ll, “move around from place to place. The change in settings actually relaxes me.”

Golaszewski recalls her first year of teaching and her mistake of not realizing when a due date was closer than what she expected. Her advice for new teachers is, “Get a heads up on due dates for final exams. Talk and plan to the people in your department, and be able to wok with your colleagues.”

This advice can be applied to students trying to survive the end of the school year too.