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<p>Why would I be embarrassed to have my D’s classmates cheer for her getting a need based grant? D was a QB Match recipient which means you are under the $60,000 threshold. I am a single mom, should I or my D be ashamed for a single mom making less than that? She still competed in a scholarship match program and was one of 204 students of nearly 6,000 in the nation that applied. If my D’s QB match and Gates scholarship deem me as having (lack of) income, so be it.</p>
<p>Ga20, what about Pell grants? Should those "entitlement’ awards be included? The ones you mention require something more than low income, they require the student to apply, compete and are really hard.</p>
<p>This thread is amusing… My HS awards ceremony was three + hours (utterly boring…) and the same five kids got the awards. The valedictorian (who is a truly great person and a musician and etc.) won about 80% of the academic awards. He did not win the social studies award, obviously to his surprise because he was actually on his feet when they said the other student’s name. I like the fact that the social studies department had the guts to pick the truly talented social studies student for their award, rather than our generically awesome, well rounded val… </p>
<p>And as for “athletic” awards, they do those at the ceremony as well, in addition to other given throughout the year. I won the first and last ever awarded “Phys. Ed. Student of the Month” award for a class that technically wasn’t a real gym class… I had the highest average, and apparently no one ever got that kind of a grade in that class… But in any case, that fact the I got such an award was highly hilarious (I am NOT athletic in any way) and my parents and I laughed about this for a week XD</p>
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<p>I don’t know what things are like in your school – but try to see the big picture. </p>
<p>The class valedictorian is probably going off to a great college. You’ve got a kid going off to a great college – and the kid who finished high school math by freshman year is probably going off to MIT. </p>
<p>The special ed students and the culinary arts student and the kids in the alternative ed program may be looking forward to community college, at best – or enlisting in the military - or simply out looking for a job come June. This is their moment because they don’t have much else coming. </p>
<p>The high achievers got their awards in the mail in big fat envelopes at the end of March – and they have a lot more to look forward to. </p>
<p>I don’t know whether it is your school’s policy to try to honor the kids who are perceived as less fortunate with all of those special ed awards – or whether it just happened to come out that way – but in the larger scheme of life a high school award is pretty meaningless. Giving out awards for being the top, best of the best – like the valedictorian, the top grades in the advanced math classes, etc – is kind of superfluous. It would be like giving out school awards to honor the top SAT scores – or some kind of business award to honor the person in the community who is earning the highest salary. Those individuals already have won the real life “awards” – they don’t need the symbolic award of a certificate to recognize what they have already been given recognition for.</p>
<p>TheGFG, all I can say is that a year from now, if not considerably sooner, those silly high school awards will not make the teensiest difference in the world… unless you try really, really hard to hang onto the irritation and keep it alive in your kiddo. It’s not worth the angst. On graduation day, we all wave goodbye and move on to much more interesting and rewarding things.</p>
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<p>I agree calmom, and luckily it only took a short period of time for my D to get over being completely left off the program. When asked why she wasn’t being recognized, the response from administration was “Oh, wasn’t that already written up in the paper?”
The omission was hurtfulll at the time, now it is something she laughs about.</p>
<p>My irritation stems from the mushy-headedness of the whole thing–not from a bitterness over how D fared. She is a well-rounded type who is pretty good in a lot of academic areas but not super stellar in any, so neither she nor I were expecting an academic award. But I noticed the same silly “This is a really nice kid” descriptions given my son’s year too. The niceness may actually have had nothing to do with that child’s selection, but it still made it seem like so many of these were basically a popularity contest under the guise of an academic honor. </p>
<p>Now it WOULD have been nice if D had actually been mentioned for either of the awards she did receive previously (National Merit etc.) like the other kids who had received them were. That was inexcusable!</p>
<p>PS Oh, and by “niceness” the teachers generally mean that the kid somehow stroked their ego. Some of these are fawning, brown nosing types, and some are just the outgoing, talkative kids that it’s easier to get to know. Not that it’s not important and admirable to be able to get along with others in that way, but it seemed a bit self-serving on the part of the staff. More than one teacher mentioned that the awardee had laughed at his jokes, unlike most of the others in the class. </p>
<p>And yes, you’re right about the real life prizes. My son had commented that it’s funny how at his high school he couldn’t seem to get chosen for much of anything despite being as well or better-qualified than those who were, but at his Ivy full of super smart and talented kids he was nonetheless about to manage a few positions and awards!</p>
<p> 65% of awards go to girls, although the class is split evenly between genders.
Top ten are predominately girls.
In the math and science departments, most of the effort awards go to girls and most of the actual achievement awards go to boys. This seems to be a pattern in other areas, also.</p>
<p>My DS has never received a single award in all four years, although I dont know if he will this year. Yet hes one of only a few seniors who will be attending a top ten college (okay, some of that may be due to finances), hes a NMF, AP Scholar with Honor and has several other important achievements.</p>
<p>— Rant from a bitter mom. (Not really bitter, but exasperated at our schools.)</p>
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My irritation stems (or used to stem - we’re done with awards night by now :)) from the combination of how endless the evening was, and how mechanical. It was rare to see a presenter who did anything more than drone the name of the award and the recipient. For a few awards, some vague criteria are read aloud, but most of the time you’re left wondering how the selection was made. And seeing 600-plus (yup, 600) awards presented in an evening is mind-numbing. It’s great to see 50 kids called up for Scholastic Art achievement awards, or the Science Olympiad team honored for each individual accomplishment at the state competition, but it’s not very meaningful to see a mob milling around onstage. Our Latin department, which has exceptional results in the National Latin Exam, has broken off to do its own awards night. More intimate and less time-consuming (though it is one more thing to put on the calendar for May - eek).</p>
<p>Exception: when the mother of a student who’d died from cancer presented the annual scholarship award in his name. He was in school with my older kids, and everyone was aware of his struggle with his illness. The award is presented in large part for character, and it’s certainly one of the most highly-esteemed awards at the school. When we attended, the recipient always received a standing ovation. Well deserved, and also a nice opportunity to get the blood circulating in the lower extremities.</p>
<p>Much of the evening is taken up with kids getting up and down between their seats and the stage. Since the organizers pattern the surprise announcement element after the Oscars, I always thought they should also seat the kids most likely to win multiple awards on the aisles so that there wasn’t the same shuffle in the 15th row of the auditorium every time an award was announced. </p>
<p>My own little rant - the principal mangles most of the unusual last names, and there are a lot of them read out at the ceremony, often multiple times. Same deal at graduation. He finally got our last name right with the third kid.</p>
<p>I think it all boils down to the need for more objectivity in the process. And honestly, I disagree that the top students don’t “need” the acknowledgement of an award! Huh! How do any of us know that! It is either a top academic (or art or music or woodworking) award or it isn’t. The “top” student in that area should get the award with as much objectivity used in the process as possible. </p>
<p>And yes, of course, special needs students should be acknowledged with awards! Make the awards relevant to the students receiving them.</p>
<p>“My own little rant - the principal mangles most of the unusual last names, and there are a lot of them read out at the ceremony, often multiple times. Same deal at graduation. He finally got our last name right with the third kid.”</p>
<p>Now that is inexcusable. Names are important and the principal of the school NEEDS to get it right. I mean really, if you don’t already know your students after four years, shame on you, but for goodness sake, take ten minutes to practice the names before you make a fool of yourself and embarrass your students and families.</p>
<p>^^^ I suppose I could have been proactive and called him about it, but I never realized how irritating it was until immediately after each time he mispronounced it! And then I’d get distracted by life’s other little irritations.</p>
<p>To be fair, it’s a weirdly spelled last name. I was very impressed one year when a student who was reading my d’s name aloud at another ceremony asked her in advance for the correct pronunciation. This never occurred to the principal, apparently. :D</p>
<p>Many of the same issues have cropped up at our local HS. Just curious: Do the awards at your child’s high school seem to be given on a different basis from the awards at your own high school (x years ago), which might have set your expectations?</p>
<p>Also, re the comment by geek_mom: Yes, it seemed like a big deal at the time, but now, three years later, entire days go by when I do not think about the HS senior awards. :)</p>
<p>Oh coureur!–I wasn’t referring to your post as misrepresenting anything…I meant the misleading format of the scholarship presentations, going from smaller to larger, and people naturally understanding that as better scholarships going to ever better students. </p>
<p>Sorry if you misunderstood my possibly cryptic wording. </p>
<p>frazzled1–Our seniors who are honored receive invitations to the evening and all sit on the stage in their gowns (no caps) so they are handy to the presenters. It’s all run as efficiently as possible, it’s just…long.</p>
<p>My senior son has steadfastly refused to attend any awards ceremony for the last 4 years. In fact, this year, I can’t even get him to pickup the piece of paper in the guidance counselor’s office (he did before so we could put them on his college apps). I couldn’t FORCE him since I knew his response would be to make sure he never got an award again, but I sure would have enjoyed hearing our name mispronounced :-).</p>
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<p>If that’s said in a light-hearted, humorous fashion, what’s the big deal about it? Sometimes you can’t take everything so seriously. Relax.</p>
<p>Way back in the day, I won senior awards in three of the 6 different categories offered, but I was only third in my class - due to a B in Gym. The eventual val and I both were getting B’s in Gym; she apparently went and complained and had it changed and for whatever reason I didn’t. (As you can see, it’s impacted my life terribly, LOL.) I don’t understand why you would assume that the winners of the awards were necessarily the valedictorians.</p>
<p>On kids not getting awards because they want to spread the wealth around–</p>
<p>I still remember son’s 6th grade end of year awards assembly–He got top student in one subject but not in another one that I KNEW he was tops in (small school, you know exactly where you stand). The teacher explained she didn’t think it “fair” if he got both awards so they gave it to another kid! </p>
<p>I was assuming my kid hadn’t been doing his work or something, and I was about to get annoyed with him. Poor kid…it wasn’t his fault. It still irks me. I didn’t say anything at the time cause I didn’t want to be “one of those mothers” but you know, unfair is unfair.</p>
<p>Sometimes one kid does deserve all the awards, esp. an outlier in a low-achieving school.</p>
<p>One year our school’s Science Bowl team got slaughtered by a school we had never heard of, because they had this one kid who was a whiz. He is probably working on his PhD by now…</p>
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<p>Same thing at our HS awards night: induction of NHS members, presentation of language awards achieved on national exams, outside language awards if any, book awards. If there are winners in the national math tests, they cite them also. I’ve actually never thought about it before, but I don’t know why they don’t do the state/regional/national science fair awards then too. It would make sense. They also give the senior awards for each individual language department, probably just to keep them together. The rest of the senior awards are given at Class Day (including the overall language award, which normally goes to one or two students who have achieved at a high level in two languages).</p>
<p>Our HS does not give annual awards for each subject area or class, just 4-year awards for seniors.</p>
<p>The book award recipients are chosen by Guidance, and a lot depends on who is doing the picking. Most of them, of course, are girls. :rolleyes: Our former GC always gave the Phi Beta Kappa award to whomever had the highest GPA at the time, even though the award specifically states that it is to recognize intellectual curiosity BEYOND the classroom. High achieving students who took independent studies and studied subjects in other venues out of sheer intellectual curiosity were always ignored in favor of the grade-grubber who had never taken an independent study, much less an outside class. The awardee was always the same kid who got the Harvard Book Award. Luckily that GC is gone, and this year I noted things were different.</p>