<p>I got me one of them green tickets! Found out the parents who worked on the all night grad party have a reserved seating section at graduation, so we don’t have to arrive at the school gym 10 hours early to get a good seat. Somehow it’s always 90 and humid the night of graduation.</p>
<p>D will have an assortment of tassels and cords, but there is no recognition for anyone other than Val & Sal, and as I mentioned before, our Community Awards Night is pretty much just about local scholarships. My favorite piece of her grad attire is the red, white & green Italian National Honor Society tassel–it looks like it came off the curtains in a pizza parlor.</p>
<p>chintzy, hooray for the reserved seating section! And boy, I love the sound of the pizza parlor tassel. I think we need something similar, but perhaps more South of the Border-y, for our Parent Awards.</p>
<p>The “red ticket/green ticket” awards ceremony was not too obnoxious, but it was a bit silly. The Top 20 were seated in the green (special) section. Also, some local scholarship donors chose to award their scholarships at the ceremony…for example, if you got the Rotary scholarship, those folks came in person to present, so those kids were in the special section. However, if you won the Garden Club scholarship, that had already been presented, so those kids were in the red section. It was anyone who got called up for a special presentation…</p>
<p>The silly part is that three universities - Arkansas, OSU and TCU - sent reps to present their merit scholarships. So those kids were in the green section because they got called up an extra time. Thank goodness only three schools sent reps, or we’d still be there.</p>
<p>The most awkward part: The TCU guy came up and the kids going to TCU got up to get in line to walk across the stage. But the guy read the names of even the kids who had been offered scholarships but had declined them…those kids were suprised to be called. Quite awkward to be called up for special recognitition for getting merit aid at a school you’ve declined!</p>
<p>But overall, it was an okay ceremony.</p>
<p>Oh, one more priceless moment: The Sal’s 4 letter last name was mispronounced two out of the three times it was called. You may be #2 in the class, but we can’t be bothered to learn how to say your name.</p>
<p>Back from D2’s registration. Seemed to go well and she is set for fall classes!
She missed the local awards/scholarship program last night. She did receive a nice monetary award for her sport of choice in absentia. We had to laugh though as the local group tried to be PC and spread out awards (you can only win one award even if you are a super genius or athlete). They gave some of the sports scholarships to kids who hadn’t played since freshman year since kids may have won in a different category. The big surprise was scholar athlete. There were several who were fabulous candidates, multiple captains in multiple sports who take AP classes and are in the top 10% who have won multiple All-State recognition in athletics and Academics. Somehow they chose a student who has never won an academic or athletic award, never taken an AP class and is not in the top 10%. The kids laugh but now say the awards are a sham.</p>
<p>Sympathy and well wishes go out to all of you who are dealing with last-minute goofs on the part of school staff. They’re busy people, but one would think they could take the time and care enough about their jobs to get the details right.</p>
<p>
Here too, except for the ranking part. Kids are ranked by GPA, but it doesn’t matter if they got the grade for second-year calculus or an unsupervised “independent study” with minimal requirements. Then the faculty grumble about who should have been val but wasn’t, and about the seniors taking nothing more than the three required courses in their last year. <em>shrug</em> They made some changes this year saying that students had to take two of three higher electives to get honors and be in the running for val/sal. It’s not everything, but it’s something. Certainly made a big change in the school year for one of our students.</p>
<p>Looking at the clock, I see that geek_son has finished his last final exam, hopefully turned in his last projects and his last lab analysis, and is now on a bus headed for the local water park. That 11th-hour paper from last week? The teacher gave him a 99 on it, saying that 100s are reserved for God Himself, but the paper could only be more perfect if God had written it. Big-time mixed feelings here – happy for him, but more than a little concerned that he’ll take it as vindication for his last-minute ways! I’m certain that if I’d reminded him at 10pm, he’d have held up one finger. :rolleyes: Won’t say which one.</p>
<p>Most of the seniors will skip tomorrow and Friday, only showing up for the rehearsal and the all-school awards. I asked geek_son what he wanted to do… he will show up. In his words, “I love the school, it’s just my class that sucks.”</p>
<p>FallGirl, I too am looking forward to your account of your daughter’s 5-second stand. I would have a camcorder rolling! About this:
In our school, all the faculty get together the day before the awards are given out. They nominate students, then argue over which student will receive which award (and except for the students with one of three or four surnames, no student will be given more than one). Any faculty member can veto any student receiving an award, no questions asked. So if you’ve really annoyed one teacher who happens to have a petty streak, no awards for you. The only exception to this rule is in the end-of-year subject awards, which are up to the teacher who teaches each subject, but coordinated among teachers so that no student will receive more than one of those awards. The teachers have different criteria for those: Some give the award to the highest-scoring student, some to the most “passionate,” some to the struggling student who worked hard and barely made it through. Last year’s History award was given to a student who had no History classes that year.</p>
<p>As frustrating as all this is for parents and students, it can be just as bad for faculty and administrators. No MVP/sportsmanship/improvement awards were given for our spring sports this year because a number of parents complained in the earlier seasons, why wasn’t their kid (who tried so hard, never missed a practice, yada yada yada) given an award? So rather than deal with the fussing parents, they just dropped the awards.</p>
<p>In the grand scheme of things, at least at our school, a cheap piece of paper and a round of applause based on high school politics just isn’t worth getting all worked up. I’ll be happy for geek_son if he gets something this Friday, but neither one of us would be shattered if he didn’t.</p>
<p>Have we figured out the latest graduation date yet? RochesterMom’s 6/25 sounds pretty late to me! Will the margaritas and assorted fruity drinks be on tap until then?</p>
<p>My niece and nephew graduated from a school that has seniors wear three different colors of robes – white, red, and black – at graduation. These represent GPAs, and the students are seated by color and, hence, GPA: white, red, black, in that order.</p>
<p>When I first learned this is how they would be seated, I was horrified. (In this case, both of them sat in the “black” section.) I know the seating/colors are supposed to honor the high achievers, but that could be done at special awards assemblies, such as we’ve talked about here.</p>
<p>Our school marks in the program and gives out colored cords for honors, high honors and highest honors. The recognition follows these guidelines:</p>
<p>President’s Education Award
Granted to graduates with a cumulative grade point average of 3.5 or better and a score of 85% or better on the ACT, SAT or PSAT test.
Graduate with Honors
Granted to graduates who have an Honors Ranking or are ranked in the top ten percent of the graduating class (regular ranking).
Graduate with High Honors
Granted to honors graduates with a score of 95% or better on the ACT, SAT or PSAT.
Graduate with Highest Honors
Granted to honors graduates with a score of 98% or better on the ACT, SAT or PSAT, and 45 or more core classes taken at the AP or honors level.</p>
<p>Every year people complain that a kid with a 2.0 GPA can graduate with Highest Honors if they do well on ACT or SAT. It happens enough that it gets quite controversial. I guess people think ACT/SAT scores shouldn’t have anything to do with graduation/HS honors.</p>
<p>We have the colored cords too. Not sure of the criteria, but I think it’s based on GPA and number of credits – and, as of this year, to get the top honors they have to have taken the 2 of 3 higher electives. Test scores definitely aren’t considered. Including test scores would be kind of weird imho.</p>
<p>
Well, that’s different then! How much did the administrators charge you for that value-added service? ;)</p>
<p>We were not so worried about awards. I would love it if my son were duly recognized as being as wonderful as we think he is, but neither I nor he were particularly concerned about what HS guidance counselors thought. </p>
<p>We had gone in freshman and sophomore years. Junior year, he got a book award from a college, and had to go collect The Collected Works of William Shakespeare from the school office. [Not the ideal gift for a highly dyslexic kid]. My son consciously skipped the senior award ceremony, where he did get some awards, though nothing of great significance. At graduation, they basically announced the two kids with the highest GPA. My son was either 3 or 4. He didn’t care. He decided against accepting the offer to join the National Honor Society junior year because he thought they would waste his time doing meaningless service stuff.</p>
<p>So, feel free to ignore my gratuitous advice to just not worry about what the less than sensational (fill in whatever description you like) folks at the school decide. So what if they give honors to certain families. None of that stuff matters that much in the end.</p>
<p>We visited Amherst again today, to meet with the Dean for Disabilities Services. Very nice. Not as knowledgeable as some we met with but really intent on helping my son succeed (which is the most important thing). She gave us very good advice on advisors and some suggestions on how to make the first semester transition easier. She suggested he take a summer course that teaches him how to skim as some of the humanities courses have 800 pages of reading per week. [The alternative is probably to skip the courses with that much reading]. My son and I are generally very pleased.</p>
<p>I thought our school system was too sports oriented and too arbitrary but after reading most of the previous comments I must admit that our awards tend to make sense. All the GPA’s are weighted with AP classes included, no test scores are incorporated except as national merit awards and the only thing done at graduation are cords for differing high GPA (magna, summa and cum laude). I have very mixed feelings about these award nights. Even though both my kids were honored, I don’t think it’s worth it. Too many bad feelings caused by too much silliness.</p>
How much did the administrators charge you for that value-added service? ;)</p>