On Wednesday March 21, student representatives of the Challenge Success team Jenny Chen (11) and Darian Edvalson (10) presented an update on plans to reevaluate the testing procedures and bell schedules at the Middle and Upper Schools to the faculty.

Jenny and Darian were involved with the program from its onset last year after being approached by Upper School Head Butch Keller. In addition to students and administrators, other members of the Challenge Success team include parents and and both Middle and Upper School teachers, such as Chemistry teacher Mala Raghavan.

“We’re working with Stanford to try to reduce stress in students, try to make this less of a stressful and grade-centric environment,” Darian said.

The team will administer a brief survey during advisory period on April 12 to collect information on the students’ average exam schedule and the way they spend their time on school workload, including preparation for assessments. Other topics the team hopes to address include the number and role of graded assessments, as well as reexamining block periods, school start time, and the number of extra help periods.

“The ultimate goal is not to make us into something that we’re not. Challenge Success, the people from Stanford are not coming in and saying Harker should do this [or that],” Keller said. “We know what we want Harker to be the best at the goals that we’ve set which are to get [students] the best education, but to do it in a developmentally suitable way. And the argument is […] what does developmentally suitable look like?”

After listening to the presentation, English teacher John Heyes thought the survey would be a good way to provide a context for the project.

“I [think it’s] an interesting way to get some reasonably reliable concrete information, because for a long time we’ve been talking about stress overload,” Heyes said. “If students take the survey seriously as they tend to do, especially if it’s anonymous, then I think [we’d end up with enough information] to know what we’re talking about.”

Created by the Stanford University School of Education, Challenge Success is” a research-based organization that develops refreshingly practical curriculum, conferences and other programs for parents, schools and youth looking for a healthier and more effective path to success in the 21st century” (challengesuccess.org). The school began its project last autumn after being chosen to participate by the program.