<p>Am curious if this is standard high school practice: My child’s school had an awards ceremony last night where 15 or so awards were given, including ones for the best student in each academic subject area, best-in-class performers, a couple for sports and artistic achievements, etc.
I suppose it’s nice to honor kids for their achievement, but there was something about the whole thing that felt kind of unsettling to me: It seemed that, while a handful of kids got the “glory” and left feeling really good (especially the few kids who got multiple awards) so many more felt hurt, slighted and overlooked. Made me wonder if this kind of public display is worthwhile…
I realize, of course, that life is filled with awards ceremonies, and there are always winners and losers. But somehow this seemed, for a lot of the kids, to put a damper on a time should be celebratory for everyone. Would love to hear from other parents on their experiences.
PS - This isn’t a case of sour grapes. My child was one of the lucky awardees, though only one award, not several. ;)</p>
<p>Our HS has an awards night and a scholarship night. You are given a heads up if you “need” to attend. It is optional. You do know going in that you will or will not be a recipient. There is a class size of about 500 and quite a few more than 15 awards. They separated the scholarship night from the awards night, as it got to the point where the local scholarships all went to only those with documented FA, so they tried to have one night for awards, and a separate one for scholarships.</p>
<p>Our HS has a luncheon to honor awardees. Only winners and families invited. Seems a saner way to do things…</p>
<p>Our high school has an awards ceremony in the evening, by invite only. So if a student is there, the student is getting an award. Parents and relatives of those students, as well as most of the faculty, attend. This approach alleviates much of the hard feelings that might otherwise be generated.</p>
<p>We also have an evening ceremony, with kids who are getting awards notified in advance.</p>
<p>We have a morning awards ceremony for lesser awards (junior class college book awards are done then, AMC awards and some other ones.) Some kids who don’t get awards still go to cheer classmates, but mostly the audience is award winners and their parents. There’s also apparently a whole evening of sports awards, which we’ve never been invited to. And then there is the big awards night also by invitation. Given that our school has pep rallies for the football team and nothing for the Science Olympiad team or the Academic Team I don’t feel too badly about it.</p>
<p>Why isn’t it OK to lose academically but it is OK to lose in sports? I do not see a problem with giving awards for high academic achievement. In fact imo we do not recognize academics often enough in this country. When you run a mile race, people know exactly your time and your place. Why don’t we have problems with that?</p>
<p>Awards ceremony is during school. All students are there. Parents are notified if their student is receiving an award so they can make plans to take off an hour of work.</p>
<p>It’s hard to not get an award, since awards are given for Honor roll and Deans list (about 80% of the school gets at least Honor roll- 3.2 weighted or above), and also includes Presidential Fitness and stuff like that. Other awards are top student in each class (9th grade English, 10th grade Social Studies, and so on), book awards (I still don’t know what these are or how the decisions are made), art and music awards, and character awards. Students who did Boys State, Girls State, Rotary, Summer Leadership programs, etc. are acknowledged. I can imagine that there MIGHT be one or two families in each grade who do not get invited, if that.</p>
<p>My only wish is that they would tell parents what the award is, or at least if it’s an award other than Honor roll or acknowledgment for participating in a summer program, which parents should already know about, especially since this involves taking time off work.</p>
<p>All sports teams have their own banquets and awards ceremonies.</p>
<p>Ours is an evening program, by invitation. Problem is that they recognize all “honors” students at the evening, so they are ensured a nice big crowd to watch the teachers’ kids gets lots of awards.</p>
<p>As of tonight, we are done with high school. Yippee.</p>
<p>(Kelowna - we would have complained if the coach’s kid got more than he deserved, too, but we had some great coaches, and it didn’t happen.)</p>
<p>My daughter’s high school had a ceremony at night, and they gave notices to everyone who was getting an award. It’s optional. She didn’t go, and I was at play practice with another kid and didn’t think anything of it. Turns out she won a couple of things that she didn’t know about (she thought she was getting only one award that she already knew about). So now I wonder if she looks ungrateful for not going to get her awards! But from what I understand, there were a lot of awards, including many students being recognized for making the honor roll. </p>
<p>I heard that our elementary school did something last year which was pretty bad, though – they recognized many, many students at the fifth grade awards ceremony, I heard. So many kids were recognized that only a handful were not recognized for anything. So those few kids felt incredibly bad! At that point, where almost everyone is getting an award, it is hurtful to leave just a few kids out. Might as well figure out a way to include everyone at that point! So, I guess someone complained, and now the school decided to give no awards at all this year to the fifth graders.</p>
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This was entirely in keeping with the education dynamic present in this country. Reward mediocrity and “participation”. Punish or ignore excellence.</p>
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<p>Like when? Maybe if you’re in the Olympics or something. Most adult awards are a tad more discreet - a pay raise, a promotion, a kid thanking his mom for always being there for him…</p>
<p>edit: (Oh wait - I think I once won an award at my garden club for member with the most service hours. LOL)</p>
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<p>I dunno, Curm–you’re saying all but a handful of “mediocre” students in this fifth grade are “excellent”? must be Lake Woebegone territory, and a few wannabees wandered in by accident.</p>
<p>I think a better choice woulda been to have just a few awards. All but a few seems deliberately hurtful, but that’s just me.</p>
<p>Well my solution to the fifth grade honors ceremony is to recognize groups of kids – hey, it’s fifth grade, might as well be a feel good thing. Anyway, call up groups of kids for achievement in various areas – academics, leadership, uh, maybe school spirit or something – just make sure everyone gets up on the stage to have their moment. And then recognize the few standouts with the tradtional special awards. But hey, nobody cares what I think!</p>
<p>Our high school has a variety of ceremonies. </p>
<p>First of all they have 3 “assemblies” during the year, Fall, Winter and Spring, to introduce and honor the atheletes. Sports is king at our HS</p>
<p>To appease the academic types, a few years ago they started having an Academic Awards Ceremony for all grades where they invite and honor all 4.0’s, all kids with “all A’s” (a little more exclusive group with AP weighted grades making the 4.0 possible with some B’s), each department gives awards (for each grade level and/or subject; example Freshman English versus Calculus,versus Vocal Music); They also give special awards such as The Harvard Book, U of Rochester Social Sciences, Cal Tech, HOBY, Boys State, etc. and finally, the give one Senior Medallion for each department for kids who had the "best 4 year cummulative record in the departement. </p>
<p>In June, there is a Senior Awards Night, where other scholarships and awards are given for seniors only. Here is where the NMS’s are honored etc.</p>
<p>Each program has awards banquets too. </p>
<p>We are big on awards I guess!!!</p>
<p>My kids’ school gives senior academic and service awards during graduation – it takes up about half the time. Maybe a quarter of the class (of about 550) gets some recognition. There are separate in-school assemblies for athletic awards (although one or two graduation awards include athletics as a component), National Honor Society, and junior awards, and there is a separate luncheon for about 50 seniors receiving various classes of a service medal. Sometimes they invite parents to these and sometimes not; the practice seems to have changed over the past few years. At graduation, kids know in advance that they’re getting some sort of award, but not what, exactly (well, sometimes they know some of it).</p>
<p>The prestigious private school they used to attend abolished all academic awards four years ago. It was (and remains) controversial, since they retained athletic awards, given at an athletic banquet. It is a school known much more for academic than for athletic excellence, by the way. The faculty felt strongly that it wanted to get out of the business of academic award-giving, and that awards for academics did not comport with the school’s values. They feel differently about athletic awards because (a) sports is about winning and losing, (b) the coaches, not the faculty, do the choosing, and the coaches didn’t mind, and (c) athletes don’t get a whole lot of recognition there in the first place compared to other schools.</p>
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Why would I , of all people I might add LOL, ever say that? </p>
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<p>Garland. I agree with you. 
I was decrying the idea that “if you don’t like the way we’re doing it, we’ll just kill the whole thing” decision rather then bringing it back to something rational, like real awards for real accomplishments, worthy of praise. Not participation and feel good awards.</p>
<p>I find the awards, eh…and it is so different from sports awards</p>
<p>Many teachers “pick” the winners, if not directly, then by how they grade the students</p>
<p>Often it is not just a pure #s thing, and if anyone read any other threads on this, many of the winners had parents who “did stuff” for the school, while other obvisouly more deserving kids got nothing</p>
<p>Fortunatley, this event is just two annoying hours in a life, and by the next day it is forgotten</p>
<p>My D won’t get anything, because much of what she did was not “counted” by the school</p>
<p>But she knows in her heart and head what she did, as do I </p>
<p>I do agree with the OP and I find the awards things just not “fair” in that fairness is often not the criteria for getting something</p>
<p>I also don’t like that most often, just the sports teams get their banquets, lunches, etc</p>
<p>What about the newspaper, and the other groups that do things that change lives, or what about the chorus and orchestra?</p>
<p>Nope just the sports teams get to use school resources for a big dinner</p>
<p>Are violin players, who play year round, somehow less deserving than a runner?</p>
<p>Seems so</p>
<p>My son got a letter that begins: “Congratulations! You are the recipient of an award.” </p>
<p>The letter then proceeds to invite him to the awards ceremony on June 11. i just have to laugh at that introductory sentence – it’s so purposely vague! Some kids get five or six or ten major awards, and some get one measily little award. So going in, you really don’t know what it is.</p>
<p>Our sports team have awards banquets, but they are completely funded by the parents. No school resources involved.</p>
<p>I’m mixed about awards, particularly when there is subjectivity involved. So many deserving kids are overlooked and do leave crestfallen. Of course it is a life-lesson, but it is still sad at times.</p>