How does your school give awards?

cowgirlatheart
Fri, 17 Jun 2005 19:08:26 +0000

At my school, they have one award for each credit course. I think that’s a great way to do it, because it means that while the kid who excels in IB Higher Level Math gets recognized, the kid who bumped it up and actually tried in Social Studies 13 gets an award too (the 13/14 level courses are for the “academically challenged”). They also give out awards for the option courses - sports performance, foods, design studies, choir.

Then, after all the course awards, they do the major awards. These require both a teacher nomination and a resume review by the guidance councellors. These awards include things like “Best Male and Female Citizenship for Grade 10” or “Best Design Studies Student” or “Most Oustanding Grade 12 Science Student” or “Most Oustanding Grade 11”. The great thing is that there are enough of these awards and they do make sure that they are spread out… with a school of 2000 students, you can’t give everything to one person! Also, there are usually 40ish IB grads every year, and the top 10 among them definetly deserve a truck load of awards each. To be valedictorian, you need to be in the top 5% academically, present a speech to the grad committee, get interviewed by the admin, and have a resume review done by the gc’s.

That was only the academic awards. My school also has special nights for music awards, math contest awards, and athletic awards. On the last day of the school year at the end of june, there is also an honor society banquet… if you qualify, you can go. You need an 80% average (we don’t have letter grades, but I’d guess that 85% is an A) with at least one IB class, one second science or one second language (no mark lower than 70%). With only 300 honor society students out of 2000 at the school, this shows what it’s really like to go to school here (Alberta - no grade inflation!).