Inside, students are revising between exam papers, the common area full of laptops, notebooks, and nervous chatter.

Outside, trees that bloomed in early April only to have their blossoms freeze overnight fight for their lives, flowers and leaves black but still clinging.

Over lunch, we talked about the idea that as people live longer, childhood has extended. In many ways, this is a good thing: It is no longer expected for children to leave school and go off to work at 12 or 14, nor that everyone is partnered and married in their early 20s. In other ways, perhaps not such a good thing: An extension of childhood seems to have translated to less conformity to social norms, many of which have to do with respect for others. I believe social media is at fault here for creating alternate realities that fit each user. Why, I imagine a user thinking-without-thinking in the brief moments that the real world intrudes, should I have to fit myself into anything at all?

It’s May and our grade 12 exams have already begun, with grade 10 exams following next week. Some aspects of my students’ school experience still match mine from many years ago, but there are also ways my students learn that could not be more different. The fact that students, unprompted, refer to “learning how you learn” indicates that some shift has taken place.

Considering how much of our daily experiences in the world are curated for us – think about music recommendations, subscription-based news alerts, personal feeds, and explore pages – I think it’s worth noting that the school exam experience worldwide is very similar. All students who take exams from a certain exam board go through the same process. All schools are obligated to fulfill the same requirements. Everyone opens their results on the same day. As a student, I knew this to be the case, but it always thrilled me when, upon meeting new people, conversation turned to our experiences in classes and with teachers. I was surprised to learn how different our daily experiences were, only having encountered my own. And somehow, we all had ended up at the same place.

Through many years working with students, I have learned that it is not the work that I put into preparing them for exams, but rather the work that students put into preparing themselves that matters. I spend very little time these days, and sometimes none at all, going over course material; after all, students have spent two years on course content and have access to whatever they need to review. Rather, exam preparation in my classroom takes the form of prepared activities in which students are actively doing something and I wait to answer questions that arise. It might be easy to listen to a teacher talk, but the work is in the thinking, and my students understand that I am not going to do this part for them.

They understand, too, that exams are not a measure of their worth as a person, but rather a step that certain elements of society has decided is necessary in order to get them from point A to point B. One aspect of German society that I really like is that almost everyone does some sort of internship during secondary school, and that there are many vocational pathways of how to become a productive member of society; sitting exams that allow entrance to university is neither expected nor required. So when my students say, “But what if . . . ?” it’s easy to point to other options. In Germany, only about a third of people hold a university degree simply because it is not required for the vast majority of career possibilities.

Wherever young people end up and whatever they happen to do, I hope they are happy and fulfilled. I hope they chase the dreams that make them feel whole, and I hope they give themselves enough time to figure out what those dreams are. I hope they have opportunities to learn from success and failure, to stand tall after standing up again. And if they remember anything from their time in school, I hope it’s about the world around them, about appreciation of others, about what it means to be a good friend. They’ll figure out the rest as it comes.

Outside, the air deepens with the feeling that spring is, actually, here to stay this time.

Inside, students approach their tests with a mix of quiet confidence and anxiety, an understanding that they’ve spent two years learning and now need to prove it.

A former student came in for a chat the other day, and I smiled when she said she hardly thinks about high school anymore because it’s just not relevant. A year ago, she was one of the students waiting quietly with blue or black pens and sharpened pencils before taking her assigned seat in the exam rooms. What a difference a year makes.