Well, I also discussed in that same older thread how D, despite being the best female athlete ever in her school and a recruited athlete to the best athletic program in the country, was NOT given any special awards at the senior athlete dinner besides the basic one everyone got who was senior and played a sport. It was so ridiculous that each time a winner was about to be announced, all the kids would look over at D and then laugh hysterically (sympathetically, because they thought it was absurd) when she never got one.
They’re correct in that she didn’t need it, and had already “won.” But then don’t have various top athlete awards if you aren’t actually going to give one to the stellar athlete who won multiple state titles and who the school sports historian determined was by far the most accomplished in school history.
Do they think they were fooling the kids? The one girl on D’s team looked so sheepish accepting the award because she knew there was no way she deserved it more than D and she knew everyone else knew that too. She felt awful and embarrassed.
Public schools tend to rely on incentives (external motivators) and I think that awards nights are consistent with that. My kids were embarrassed to get awards, actually- the more awards the more awkwardness with peers. I remember one kid who struggled in school and was given some certificate for improvement, throwing it in the trash as he left- a sad reminder that adult intentions don’t always match teen perceptions. The intention is to honor a diverse group of kids, but the end result is 3 hours that is painful for most everyone!
My kids school hands out awards during the day at the end of every semester.
There are academic awards (High Honors, Honors), there is one Fine Arts award which is the FA teachers picking the kid they liked the most that sem (FA includes Art, Music, Spanish & PE), there are “Most Improved” awards for each subject, and there are awards for kids who get the highest score in state standard tests.
I used to go - didn’t last more than an hour, if that. Now my kids tell me to skip it and just hand me their certificates. This is because moms are not cool anymore, I think.
If awards are properly labeled and the criteria are clear and basically match the student, then I think most people can just deal with it, even if there are 19 awards for freshman art. Kids and parents alike hate it when they perceive it’s a case of an “I just like this student because in some way he makes me feel good as a teacher” award. I can’t tell you how many teachers, when giving their speech about the award winner, said something like “This student always laughs at my jokes.” Great, but why does that make him the best student in physics?
@mathmom, my son single-handedly won the “Ohio Math League” for his 8th Grade Algebra 1 class (class is given a test, top 4 scores are submitted and then compared to other districts…3 kids scored 60, son scored 100 for an average of 70) and didn’t get honored as the top math student in 7th grade. Left public school for two years. The public school didn’t recognize the Honors classes he took at the college prep HS he was attending and didn’t adjust his weighted GPA making it impossible for him to be Valedictorian. Last night they handed out “the highest academic award attainable at Public HS,” being on the Honor Roll for 7 semesters. They didn’t include him because he’d only been enrolled for 6 - even though the threshold for Honor Roll was a 3.5 weighted GPA and his freshman GPA at the Catholic school was 4.25 weighted. The class Salutatorian did not receive the “highest academic award attainable,” even though 20 other seniors did.
They didn’t find time to mention that he was a NMF or present him and the Valedictorian with the huge flower arrangements that were on the awards table. They did give the Athletic Director 10 minutes to hand out the Archie Griffin HS Heisman Award, though. That particular award honors sportsmanship and does not have an academic component.
The school does have a spring sports banquet which I have attended in the past. My son has played baseball for three years and never been recognized at the sports awards banquet, presumably because he is not very good.
Yes, there is often an incredible amount of gerrymandering (greeninohio,mathmom), or favoritism (the GFC, Fallgrl)
and whatever else that is non objective in these things. At least if they tell you in advance of whether the student got an award, you can skip if you desire. I agree that in my experience many of the awards are of the “I just love this student” type. I prefer things that are clear cut (but not gerrymandered), eg. award for GPA above so and so for honors or high honors. Although when people are very short timers at a school and they do qualify to be val or sal, the others who have been there the whole time and missed by a fraction of a point take the opposite criticism. This goes with weighting of grades as well. In my own HS they did no weighting for AP etc. and the sal was not in any of those classes. For years it bothered me that I came third behind her. Eventually I realized that #4 and perhaps below that took more APs than I did and since it was calculated to the third decimal, would have likely beat me out if weighted. One of my own favorite pet peeves is schools that say they don’t rank (at least for college admissions), but do come up with a val for the graduation (based on grades). We could go on. I think the no awards starts to sound good.
I went to a small private boarding school that did no awards. I think the class president talked at the graduation. It didn’t seem to stop us from working hard.
The math award just was funny, because of course the high school wouldn’t give him an award since he wasn’t really a high school student. He got the AMC8 award - including in 6th grade, which was amusing since they had fought me tooth and nail to get him accelerated out of 6th grade math. (There were precedents, but not many.)
I long ago made peace with how rankings are caluculated. My oldest lost places because he took Latin (which had no honors sections because it was so small), because he took chem in the summer and because a schedule conflict meant he took regular physics instead of honors or Physics B. Youngest got an unfair (IMO) boost from getting A+s (unweighted, but they still improved his GPA) in two different orchestras every single year.
Our high school had two awards ceremonies - one during the day for the less important awards including all the junior year ___College book awards, and one in the evening for the more important ones - all senior awards except for the one junior who gets the RPI medal.
In my experience, the teachers say that instead of saying “This was the only student out of all your sons and daughters who appeared to have any affinity or love for Physics, whatsoever…”
At the end of every sports season, the athletic department holds an awards night. These are generally not too bad, except sometimes the female coaches of sports like cheer leading and dance struggle with the idea that they have to actually give the MVP trophy to one girl. Either they end up awarding it to two players, or else they ramble on and on incessantly about how hard it is to pick one girl because it’s a team sport and they’re all so good. I think many teachers are philosophically opposed to the idea of singling out the best kid or kids, since they are people people and don’t want to hurt feelings. So when they are asked to do so, they balk and make odd decisions. In our experience, trouble starts when they try to handicap certain students based on their perception of the child’s natural talent, socioeconomic situation, and level of family support. It’s way too complicated to control for those factors unless you’re omniscient and they aren’t, so often they end up making the assumption that if a student is very, very good, then s/he must have had the “unfair” advantage of natural ability. In my kids’ sport, running, the coaches always praise the kid who grunts and groans and practically collapses at the end of the race, thinking that means he’s trying so much harder than the others. That’s pretty silly, and more often than not means he’s been skimping on his practices and is not in as good shape as he should be!
In contrast to the art awards and my oldest son’s lack of recognition (at one point, I turned to my wife and asked if we were sure he was the Salutatorian), my freshman son received an award for being the top student in a Freshman Social Studies class. The department head read a short tribute written by the teacher that both recognized my son’s achievement and encouraged him to challenge himself more in the coming years.
They do not tell the students what they will be recognized for, nor do the invitations mailed home disclose that information to the parents. It was a nice surprise for us, and for him - especially since he has lived with, “Oh, you’re _____'s little brother!” for so long.
I know that many awards that others might dismiss can be meaningful to the recipient. Hopefully being one of 19 award winners for Art 1 won’t be the highlight of anyone’s academic career, though.
my son and daughter go to different high schools. long story.
my point: Son is at TOP #1 public in the ( small midwest) state; lots of national merit kids, 57 kids out of 500 had 32+ on ACT, 23$million in scholarships, etc. My son did fine at school, but i was very concerned about going to honors night as he was not one of the big shots.
honors night was actually great. every kid who had a 3.5 or higher was listed in the program, and the announcer only read the first two or three achievements, and then said “and many more” as we’d look at the list. Got in and out of there in less than an hour. it was so simple, and not overdone.
OP, while its over now, perhaps you could mention to your school some ideas how to keep it shorter, as May is the busiest month for all. Have each kid be named, say the first award or two, and then say “and many more” for the rest. everyone is recognized, but not multiple times.
interesting; the valedictorian (2400 & 36act & MIT-bound) just had an award for highest honor roll. The awards listed were what the students submitted; she submitted nothing.
Good timing for this thread. I attended my S’s 8th grade awards assembly last night. He got an academic achievement award for having a 3.5 GPA (as did many other students).
The whole event was done in an hour but they could definitely trim it further. Rather than just select the top student in each academic area they give out three consolation prizes, too. So four awards for math (both Blue and Silver teams), four for honors math (Blue and Silver), four for band, four for orchestra, …
The students definitely enjoyed the photoshot movie set to music afterward to remember their time at the Middle School.
We have a problem analogous to the 19 art awards. Every student in each grade level is recognized for a cumulative GPA of 4.0 or higher. We have a crazy weighted average system with AP A’s=6.0, honors A’s=5.0. Out of the senior class of 500 or so, about 200 were recognized. It’s really a little nuts.
Also, there is a ceremony specifically for academic achievement. Part of the ceremony was to recognize seniors who received scholarships. Make perfect sense, right? What rubbed me the wrong way was that significant time was spent recognizing the students with an athletic scholarship.
My high school had an award for “taking multiple languages.” Guess what was the only award I got after sitting through an award ceremony for three hours?
It wouldn’t last a day, because the same parents who hate the word “gifted” would complain! Seriously, though, my kids have experienced some pain when they have worked their tails off, putting in all kinds of extra time and effort to do well, only to see the under-achiever rewarded instead because the teacher likes him better, feels sorry for him, or for some bogus reason thinks he’s trying harder. Some adults feel very uncomfortable with disparity in ability and try to level the playing field in ways that are detrimental to the high achiever. My favorite is when the coach asks the faster girls to be in the race but not truly race in order to let other runners from their team beat them for a change.
Best award I have see is the goat award at West Point for the graduate with the lowest passing GPA. Every senior donates a dollar and this pot is awarded to the goat. Takes serious planning to pass and end up at the bottom with an award averaging around $1200.00.
