When my son was 12 or so the middle school head brought in someone from Johns Hopkins to talk about their camps and programs. S thought it sounded neat so he took the test and won some awards. We live nearby so it wasn’t a big deal and we all went out to lunch afterwards. S did it so he could try out a robotics camp, which he did attend. The middle school head, who was a major weirdo, came up to tell me that it didn’t mean S was all that smart, and he probably wouldn’t make it to calculus in high. So I told him to take the notification down off the bulletin board and to not worry, we would not blame him nor give him any credit for anything S may achieve.
That was the end of S giving two you know what’s about awards.
BTW…he made it through AP Calc BC, minored in math in college. He didn’t win the math award either.
Our school keeps the senior athletics awards ceremony separate from the academic awards ceremony. We had to go to both but I think it is the right thing to do. But like I said earlier I enjoyed these last high school moments.
All of our seniors who have maintained an average of 90+ and who played two sports in their senior year will have their photo and college attending in the local newspaper. The full-page ad stands out and is paid for by the parent athletic organization. It’s usually evenly divided between students going to SUNY schools and those going to privates.
Our high school has an Awards Night for grades 9 through 12 and it’s by invitation. We also have an Awards Dinner for seniors only. We all watch a DVD showing seniors from their early years all the way through high school. Every senior receives awards that evening. Families leave happy and there are very little hard feelings. At the senior graduation ceremony, scholarship information is provided based on what each student and family provided. The ceremony is filmed.
“Your kid will graduate and you will pretty much never think about awards night again.”
Ha! Not so for my kid who craves recognition, lol! She was hoping to win the “female athlete of the year” at her middle school in 8th grade. She had it all planned out ahead of time, because she insisted on participating in two sports because that was a requirement for the award. She was 100% sure she would get one of the four basketball awards. Well, in spite of being one of only two eighth graders on the basketball team, and playing all but two minutes of every game (no one else on the team came even close as far as playing time - so she was obviously making an important contribution to the team), she didn’t get the most improved award, best defensive player award, best offensive player award (the awardee was a horrible bully with a bad attitude who no one on the team liked - but she was big and tall!), or the MVP award (that went to a talented 7th grader who had to sit out two games because of not meeting academic standards - my girl had a 4.0 GPA). Then she didn’t get the “female athlete award” even though she played all but two minutes of every bball game, and placed in the top three of every track event she participated in at every meet. To say she was disappointed was an understatement. Two years later she is still burning with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns at the injustice of it all.
As for my Senior - she has been notified that she will be receiving an award at either the academic award night or Senior night - I can’t remember. She thinks it will be the “Best Work-Study Student” award like she got when she was a sophomore. Her school has academic awards where top students are recognized for EVERY class offered. From the whole range of standard/honors/AP courses. So there are tons of kids who are recognized for high achievement in the least challenging classes while kids like my daughter who is a pretty darn good student has, in four years, never been recognized for anything other that being a good teacher’s helper (and she’s taken nothing but honors and AP courses). BTW she will be attending Bryn Mawr College and there are only a couple of other kids that I know of in her private college prep high school besides her who will be going to a college with a admission rate of 40% or less. So I guess that does prove the fact that college admissions is a “holistic” process - Bryn Mawr must have been impressed with those work-study awards!
Last year at my recognition craving sophomore’s academic awards ceremony, we watched one of the most evil girls in her class receive multiple awards for athletics (for her outstanding attitude and effort) and academics (my daughter tells me she cheats on her homework). My kid did get a couple of awards though, but was ignored again by her high school basketball coach for any athletic award even though it was the same situation as middle school - she played almost every minute of every game as a freshman (again - no one else had her number of minutes due to injuries and academic suspensions, but of course the big girl with attitude problems - not the same one as MS - got an award for hanging in there for the entire season and not quitting! And no, it was not because the kid was going through a difficult time or anything - it was because the team sucked and the coach was glad that her biggest player decided to stick it out so they didn’t suck worse. Not kidding.
Our high school did the same thing. The supposed reason was that this lent an air of mystery to the whole affair - you know, like the Oscars! We eventually suspected that the actual reason was that few people would have shown up if they’d known ahead of time which award they were getting.
@FallGirl - Odds are definitely against us being in the same high school, but who knows! I’m getting the impression that a weirdly imbalanced awards ceremony is pretty common.
@frazzled1 - Thanks for digging that up. I’m off to read more of it. I definitely could add some more to that!
I’m a senior in high school and our award ceremony is in the middle of the day so that students can see the seniors accomplishments, and parents come too. That is so crazy that they don’t announce those big scholarships because that recognition really does make a difference.When I was an underclassman watching the awards I was inspired by all the scholarship money the hard working seniors earned from their colleges, and that made me want to do well in high school. I loved forward to senior award day every year. I go to a Christian school and so there’s also character awards and in-house awards from teachers. I really hope the parents in your school district can get through to administration because those kids should be recognized for their high achievement (of course I mean not just ivy kids, but also those who have been awarded by their college)
@Skapambwe - I think it’s great that your school celebrates the accomplishments in front of the whole school and that it inspired you. I wish my kids’ schools could see this and change their policy of having athletic awards in front of the student body and academic awards being hush-hush. As a parent, it would make me feel a lot better about the schools (and voting in favor of tax levies) to hear that sudents are getting into top schools and earning big scholarshps. Only hearing about a bunch of community awards of a couple hundred dollars isn’t really inspiring.
Our high school has two invitation-only honors nights. There is an “Honor Cord Dinner”, for those students who have earned an honors diploma (more rigorous requirements than a regular diploma). And there is the Awards Night, for combined sports, academics, extra-curriculars, etc.
Our Awards Night has the “air of mystery” that others have mentioned. I don’t like that aspect. Way back in the dark ages when I graduated high school, I didn’t go to Awards Night because a co-worker wanted to trade shifts with me so that he could go. I didn’t know that he was getting a band participation award, and I was getting something more unique. I disappointed a special teacher by not being there. But nobody told me!
I don’t know what D will be receiving at her Awards Night. She is valedictorian and National Merit Scholar. But I think it is fine if she doesn’t receive the top math student, top English student, etc… it’s not a nice feeling when one kid sweeps a bunch of awards.
My daughter’s very small high school has Academic Awards that all 7th-12th graders attend, during the day. It goes about 1.5 hours. Pretty good, some annoyances, like when almost the entire 7th grade is on the “A Honor Roll” (can we say grade inflation?). Senior scholarships are announced at graduation which is doable because of the class size.
Thankfully the Sports Banquet is a separate evening event (tomorrow night in fact…yay). That one is loooong because they have decided to have one dressy banquet at the end of the year to include all sports. We limit each coach to 10 minutes, but there’s always that one coach…!
46 I went to a school with about 300 per class, three classes, and a big auditorium. We had an all school awards assembly during the school day that was primarily for seniors (now and then an underclassman would win something big for music or debate). Like you, I remember sitting in the audience and thinking "could I do that?" when I heard the awards announced.
We were also fortunate enough to have a city paper that published all sorts of school news with pictures. Yes, it was a pretty small city, maybe 50K people, two high schools.
Just ordered the missing honors cords for my kid online because the adviser doesn’t know what happened or where they went, and doesn’t appear to be willing to make it right for the dozen or so kids who got stiffed on theirs. It’s not rocket science to get on there and order them.
One job, Steve Harvey.
Our awards night had the air of mystery that instantly dissipated the minute they received their name tags-with assigned seats.
First two rows=superstars. Everyone else=hoi polloi.
To be fair, D said she enjoyed hearing her accomplishments read out loud and shaking the hands of the admins, so it was worth all the aggravation on our end.
Our school has an evening academic awards ceremony about a month before graduation. The format has changed since my kids have been in this suburban public school/400ish grads per year. Those being recognized receive invitations (so the other half of the class doesn’t have to sit through it). All certificates are put in an envelope with the student’s name on it. A program lists all the names and the awards each kid got. A few departmental or special awards, and memorial scholarships (not in program) are announced. Only those getting these “surprise” awards go up to the stage. They used to read each kid’s name as he/she walked across the stage to receive the envelope, but that took too long. Now they pick up envelopes before the ceremony. It has always been up to the audience to read the program to see what each kid got. They used to list "college scholarship " but many couldn’t distinguish between need-based and merit aid so they stopped listing that. Groups of students are recognized together and asked to stand (“We had 40 AP scholars this year. AP scholars please stand…” clapclapclap) Names are read for NM, and Governor’s/Presidential scholars. The program explains the criteria for each award. This year about 50%of the class was recognized. Then there is a musical performance by a student/students. All pretty quick. Many sports teams or other groups like orchestra or Thespians have an end of year banquet or ceremony, too. Only top ten students are recognized at graduation, and there is another senior ceremony at the school the day before graduation with a few more awards and speeches/musical performances which are by audition. The principal will rattle off the bragging points of the class as a whole and read a list of colleges kids will attend (but not who is going to which college). Only thing that really bugs me is they add up all the scholarships “offered” to the class, not just the ones the students are actually taking. The principal brags about that, but it only represents how many applications were submitted. And there is the problem of need based vs.merit aid, again. I don’t really care that my kids weren’t recognized for merit scholarships. The $ is its own reward
My kids’ HS has changed formats over the years and the current one is that there are three different invitation only evening ceremonies. There are departmental awards, sports night and community awards night. My district has never announced scholarship amount other than the local community awards. One or two community awards are announced at graduation. The graduation speech is given by a student from those who submit their essays anonymously; none of my kids has chosen to participate.
It’s been many years since my Ds were in high school and we had to attend awards nights. This thread has brought back memories of how little fun or good will they engendered. There were always some parents and kids annoyed with who the recipients were, how the awards were announced, what was allowed to be announced, etc. And, yes, the memory of the sore butt from sitting on uncomfortable bleachers or folding chairs for hours. Very happy to be long past those days!
Awards night is next week. Son was invited so he’s getting recognized for something, but I can’t imagine what. Most improved in Calc? Ha! Will report back next week.
Went to the awards night for D18 (a junior) this evening. I think they’re generally too long but also think it’s good for kids to be recognized for putting in extra effort. That’s what we want, right?
D just received an invitation to awards night and it seems they’ve already made one improvement over when my older kids were there. The students will now be seated on stage. That’s good, because one reason the event was so long in the past was that we had to wait for each student to get up from his seat and out to the aisle and then walk to the stage when his name was called for an award. That alone was tedious. I never understood why they didn’t do that before, since that was the format for NHS.
but I think it is the right thing to do. But like I said earlier I enjoyed these last high school moments.
