Student Opinions on J-Term

J-Term is a one week long activity created by John Gibbons, the former principal of Weston Middle School. J-Term is all about having hands-on experiences and activities. The premise of J-Term is to learn to cooperate with others while creating fun projects, but do students really enjoy J-Term or not?

Out of the students I interviewed, every single student said that they enjoyed the experience of J-Term. “I love it; ten out of ten!”, said Lucas Wang, a seventh grader. Many students look forward to J-Term every year, and it helps you improve yourself. Ella Borden, a seventh grader said, “[J-Term] is great for improving your teamwork”. This is just one of many great things about J-Term. Another good attribute of J-Term is said by Aimi Lee, an eighth grader. Aimi said that she enjoyed J-Term because “It allows you to socialize with others”. 

In eighth grade, J-Term is replaced with a trip to Washington D.C. Most that were interviewed said that they would prefer going to D.C. Adrian Chang, a seventh grader said that “I’d love to go to D.C, especially if it had educational purposes”. Aimi said that “I’ve heard about the D.C trip since fourth or fifth grade, and I’ve also heard that it has some J-Term aspects”. This D.C trip helps build community and teamwork throughout the school, while still being fun and interesting.

Even though everybody enjoys J-Term, there are still some improvements that can be made. One problem that many mentioned was that in recent years, instead of being able to rank your choices, you could only choose them. Eli Vance, an eighth grader said that “Some people didn’t get their first choice because you weren’t able to rank your choices.” Because of this, many people didn’t enjoy J-Term as much as they could have. A solution to this would be to bring back the J-Term ranking system so that more people would get their first picks. “Maybe being given the option to rank your choices could allow people to get the choices they want”. Many people also wanted to see previews of the J-Term before being put in it. Lucas Wang said that “I would want to see a preview of the course before picking it, as some of the descriptions weren’t very clear. My J-Term was very different from what I expected”. These are some of the apparent flaws with the J-Term system.

Even with its flaws, J-Term is loved by all. One favorite thing about J-Term is that you have more freedom to do what you want to do. You can select the courses that you like and you have the freedom to do almost anything. Cole Maggs, a seventh grader says that “If you get into a J-Term you like, it’s a lot of fun, and a great experience!”.  J-Term helps bring community, and you can also have classes with people that you’ve never met before. “You get to work on projects with people with similar interests to you,” said Eli. “It’s a nice break after MCAS”.

Overall, it seems that everybody loves J-Term. It is an amazing experience, where people get to socialize and have fun, while still learning how to do amazing things. This week-long project is something that many look forward to every year.