Spring Break

For many people, this is the time of year that students look forward to a week's worth of debauchery and drowning whatever little information they've gained over the year up to this point.  This is also the time when I  openly admire my colleagues in the liberal arts who enjoy assigning large writing assignments over the extended break.  There is untold joy to be found by taking a walk through the campus library in the middle of the break and see the harried and frustrated students surrounded by books or typing away on their laptops.

For math teachers, the situation is a little more delicate, in my opinion.  Sure, you could assign a project over the break.  However, having to deal with a lecture hall's worth of students who can barely compose a text message, much less organize a project, does not sound in the slightest bit appealing to me.  It works better in higher level coursework, but I avoid it for freshman classes.

There is a temptation to give a large exam the day before spring break.  However, there will be all too many people hounding you with excuses to miss the exam, some with "legitimate" reasons that would not be worth proving false.  You do not want to have to deal with makeup exams for half the class, especially if the makeup will happen after spring break, screwing up the timing of everything.

On the other hand, you might want to give an exam the Monday after spring break, claiming that students can "study over the break," knowing full well that almost none of them will do any such thing.  While it won't be as big of an issue, there will still be plenty of people doing their best to weasel out of the test.  While these can often be deflected, it's not worth the trouble when there are better alternatives.

The best thing to do was discovered by a peer who stumbled on it accidentally.  (The fool was actually trying to be reasonable toward his students, and it went disastrously.)  If you want to utterly brutalize your class, while making it seem like you're being reasonable, schedule an exam for the Friday after they get back from spring break.  Then you get the advantage of them having forgotten almost everything over the break, but since it's several days after they get back, they get this sense of security that they will be able to study.  While a few students can handle it, most will not make up for everything they've lost over the break.  The average on that exam will be gloriously abysmal, and they will have no excuse at all for doing poorly.

To add a little bit of sugar on top, I suggest you also have a quiz on the Friday immediately before spring break.  If it's a quiz but not a test, you can declare that there is no way to make it up, and so you can still penalize the large number of students who will be gone.  The lazy and distracted students will fall into both traps, and will come back just about in time to have to face the final drop day and decide what they will do with the rest of their lives.

These little things can even make teachers that are otherwise popular with students twist the knife and make anyone but the best students suffer.  And ultimately, that is what we all want.