Two years ago, The Lancer sat five teachers down in a room and asked them to trade tests. At the end of the experiment, the teachers discussed how admirable it was that students are able to study such a wide breadth of subjects at the same time, rather than focusing on only one. Recently, The Lancer gathered five teachers (with two familiar faces) to repeat the experiment and answer the core question of the original experience: When teachers are given tests in subjects that they do not teach, how well do they perform?

The Lancer: Whose test are you taking, and when was the last time you took a class in this subject?

Mr. Zachary Herhold: I think I’m taking a Religious Studies test. Metaphor for God [Ms. Bostrom’s exam]. The last time I took a religion class would have been in college, in 2012 or 2011. I could take a crack at it. I’m excited about it.

Mr. Matt Scharrenberg: English 2 Honors. The last time I took an English class was… let’s just say, in the 1900s.

Teacher Vanessa Staton: I think this is a history test. World War I… US History. I think I took a class two years ago about African American History.

Ms. Natalie Bostrom: I have an AP World History test.

ZH: It’s a DBQ, a document-based question.

NB: I don’t know what that is. When’s the last time I did something like this? Not ever. Never have I taken a DBQ.

MS: When’s the last time you took a history class?

NB: When did we take it? Sophomore year?

MS: I just said the 1900s.

NB: Yeah, mine’s the 1800s. 1880s. I don’t know… 1986 or 1987.

Ms. Grace Savinovich: I’m taking a Precalc chapter test, and I’ve not taken precalc. I took some math classes in college.

TL: Do you feel ready for the test, and do you have any last words?

MS: I feel ready because I usually take finals like this when I used to give out finals. If there were extra copies, I would always read over them. So I’m a little more comfortable looking at this because I’ve looked at something like this before.

VS: History was my worst subject because it’s a lot of reading. I have to read all the words…

NB: I do not feel prepared. Ish. I’m not exactly sure what to do.

ZH: I feel modestly prepared. I will say, it’s a different form of thinking. Every assessment, you have to prepare yourself for the type of thinking required, and I’m not prepared for this one.

GS: Um, yeah, less than confident. I maybe could try to do one of these.

TL: On a scale of one to ten, how hard would you say the test you just took was?

GS: Seeing as I did not know it, I would say, probably an eight, ten being the most difficult. I got one right.

NB:  I would say a six out of ten. Not that it was difficult. If I would have been prepared, like a student in AP World History, and if I would have known the format, and maybe a little more time, the content itself was not overly difficult to produce an answer, but it was just a little time-consuming.

ZH: I was going to give mine a six out of ten. I have been at Catholic schools for a really long time, so I felt fortunate that I have taken Religious Studies classes, and I knew something about God, but it was a kind of abstract thought and reflection that I haven’t done in a really long time.

VS: This was a six out of ten, mostly because I haven’t reviewed the Great Depression and the FDR policies in at least a decade, but overall, if I was reading the textbook along with the class, it would have been a very reasonable assessment of my skills.

MS: A two. This stuff is much like history. Read a passage and annotate and analyze. It’s just a different type of thing—Romanticism, I know some stuff about it. It’s not a different skillset, the way some other people had to do different brain thinking. If I had had to write more, I probably would not like it, if it was to write a Romantic analysis of something. Multiple choice.

TL: After grading the other teacher’s test, how would you say the other teacher did? If they were a student discussing their grade with you, what would you say to them?

GS: I think [Schuggs’s and my] worlds overlap a lot, so historically, if you are kind of aware of what’s going on in the time period. He did really well. I was kind in places, when I gave him credit for things.

NB: I would say that he did a very good job! The disadvantage [he] had was that in class we talked about the lighthouse being a metaphor. Had he known, he would not have chosen that metaphor. But he also gave a little bonus metaphor, which was good!

For reference, Mr. Herhold’s exam was on creating a unique metaphor for God. Though he thought his lighthouse metaphor was completely original, this was not the case.

ZH: Like Sputnik. Always there.

NB: I thought he did very well, and I know that in our classes, it’s really that reflection that can be challenging. Hopefully, we’re helping our kids do that. Overall, read directions. If he came asking for the grade, I would say, read the directions!

ZH: If you’ve ever taken an AP class, one thing you have to do is learn how the assessments work, because each assessment has these expectations and a rigor to it, and I imagine Mrs. Bostrom would have done much better on mine had she known what the structure and expectations of the assessment DBQ are. They’re highly specific, and that was the only reason that [she] struggled a little bit with the assessment. But I will say, having read it, you’re very creative, and witty, and make great observations with the use of the documents, so you’ve got natural potential. Give us two weeks, and we could turn you into an AP machine.

VS:  I don’t think Ms. Savinovich did very well on my Precalculus test, only because it was the trigonometry chapter where the unit circle is imperative to getting all the questions right, and I think the average adult does not remember the unit circle from high school, which I think is valid, pretty normal. All things considered, Ms. Savinovich figured out how to use a graphing calculator and got an entire question correct.

GS: I actually didn’t even use the calculator.

MS: I would say Teacher Staton would be like most of our kids. Multiple choice, there’s a couple ones where I would say, let’s do a little bit better. But the short answers, there was a lack of actual data or reading the material.

VS: Which wasn’t provided on the test.

MS: Right. The idea that it was faked enough to say, I can kind of talk about it without proving a point, so a lot of partial credits for being in the ballpark, but not getting to the next point of actually knowing what the history was about. So, “FDR [not] preventing WWII,” I mean… okay, yeah, but… And one of the criticisms was vague generalities.

TL: How would you say that you did on your test? Did it match your expectation of how you thought you would do coming into it?

GS: Yeah, I thought I would do horribly, and I did. It helps to know the content.

NB: I think I did a little bit better than I anticipated, because AP classes are rigorous, and I know our students get stressed over it, so I felt like once I got over the anticipation of it and the horror of AP, then I was like, oh, I can do this. That probably has something to do with me being alive for a long time.

ZH: I feel like I did okay. It was reassuring to me that many of the lessons I learned in Religious Studies a decade and a half ago are still there, and I can still converse about God and His presence. It was refreshing to have an alternative type of assessment, where I was doing some sort of reflection and abstract thought, as opposed to my type of assessment, where it’s like, you have to get this multiple choice question right.

VS: I did worse than I expected, because I think I have a general understanding of the history of the United States, but I don’t have a specific knowledge of history of the United States anymore. So I did not as well as I expected, but I’m okay with it.

MS: I did what I expected, almost to the number, I think I can take standardized tests. That’s something that we grew up with. This is the SAT all over again, and I can do it with some basic knowledge.

TL: Finally, having gone through this experience, is there anything that you would like to say to students?

GS: Failure isn’t as scary as you make it out to be. I know my consequences are different, but it also makes me excited—I will genuinely go to their class, and try to learn this, because math can be fun.

NB: I would tell students to enjoy the learning because they’re just about getting from Point A to Point B. “I’m here, and I just want to get the result.” The learning part is interesting. If they enjoy the learning, and prepare and participate, the grade will come, because they’re ready for it.

ZH: I was going to say something similar. I think this experiment is a fun one, because you’ve actually removed the consequences of the grades from us. There’s no consequences if you get a zero or a hundred, for us. So it is kind of fun to look at this material like oh, I vaguely remember learning about this, it was fun to learn about this, this stuff is interesting, it engages me. And when you’re an adult, especially a teacher that teaches one subject, you silo yourself in your subject area. And I think for kids, it’s cool and important to remember that school is genuinely fun, and you’re in an atmosphere that you will only get for a brief period of your life. You get to look at all these different subjects evenly, equally.

VS: I feel like Ms. Bostrom and Mr. Herhold took what I was beginning to think about and put it so eloquently. I don’t have unique words to say, so I’m just gonna say what they said.

MS: For me, this was doable. I look at it, and I rushed it, and I deal with it. I am completely accepting of all the mistakes I made, and I’m moving on. I think sometimes they worry about what’s gonna happen… Alright, 16 out of 25, what’s next? This is done, and maybe it goes back to, we never grew up with retests. If I want to get better next time, I better read the actual question, because I skipped a word or added a word, so that’s on me. What’s next? They’re just grades.

TL: Mr. Schuggs, that’s a lot more thoughtful than what you said last time.

MS: You gave me a bad test last time. But yeah, move on. People are so focused on the numbers on these things. Move on. W, I, N. What’s important now?

NB: We should do a trivia night together.