<p>At my daughter’s school every student who receives an A in both semesters of a class is given an academic excellence award. One student from each section (they have no course options other than a choice of foreign language, everyone takes honors, college prep, calc bc etc.) is given an award if chosen by teachers as the student who best exemplifies the ideals of the school through character, persistence, dedication to improvement etc. Athletic awards are defined as participation in all 3 seasons and maintaining a certain gpa.</p>
<p>This might sound like a lot of awards but it doesn’t necessarily work out that way - an A- will keep you from getting an acheivement award. There are roughly 40 kids in each grade level and some classes only had 15 getting any kind of award.</p>
<p>My daughter did not graduate with honors, just missing the 3.5 unweighted gpa; she and several of her friends did not think that any such distinction should be made since the school had always preached mastery of material over grades and the kids didn’t feel that those necessarily coinsided. It is interesting that one of the kids who also missed graduating with honors was accepted at a college with a 17% admit rate and another girl received a 20K merit award from her college even though she too graduated without honors. </p>
<p>I feel that our school has done a good job of rewarding effort in the fairest of ways, but - as my daughter and others demonstrate - no matter what they did they wouldn’t make everyone happy. I can appreciate the dilemma faced by schools as they try to reward effort to demonstrate their value of academics while maintaining a sense of inclusiveness for all students.</p>
<p>I can’t believe the $45/head dinner & dressup awards night!</p>
<p>Ours is in the school auditorium, the kids wear their gowns (no caps) and sit on the stage, and they serve really good cookies and punch afterwards. :)</p>
<p>missypie–I guess a college can come and give their award in person, but only WVa. came and did that. If every kid there got their scholarship award that night from their college, we’d be there all night!</p>
<p>My D’s school invites “honorees” and I’m not sure what that means. She is definitely getting hooded/corded for IB and that may be all, which is still a big deal to us. The kids don’t wear gowns or dress-up attire, but the principal inspects for appropriateness. People are sent home to change at every event we’ve ever been to. Then we have cookies and punch afterward.</p>
<p>I know!!! Being in a large metropolitan area, there are at least 10 schools within a one hour drive of ours. If even all of them showed up, it would take forever.</p>
<p>The military academy appointments are a double edged sword…they make a special presentation at the awards ceremony, get their pictures in the paper, it’s a huge deal. And last year, one of the guys lasted two weeks before he came home. Sometimes it’s better to have been annonymous.</p>
<p>Sounds kind of similar to ours. Getting hooded/corded for IB is a big deal. Congratulations. We have all the Valedictorians and those graduating with academic distinction. We also have all the AP Scholars through National AP Scholars. There are various awards and scholarships, the scholar athlete of the year, etc. With 700+ kids, it’s a long, long evening!</p>
<p>I understand your frustration, but when you put it that way, it makes it sound like you only care about your daughter and none of the other students at her school. Aren’t there any other kids – your daughter’s friends, kids from the neighborhood, or the offspring of some of your adult friends – that you would also like to see honored?</p>
<p>I realize that it would be nice if you knew in advance if your d. was going to receive an award or not. Perhaps schools should eliminate the element of surprise from these things, because obviously parents are frustrated when their own kids don’t win. I’m sure that many kids are also frustrated – but at least the kids are more likely to know the winners and sometimes are happy for their friends even if they themselves were passed over. </p>
<p>I guess maybe I see it differently because I did have a daughter involved with performing arts for so many years. There were always auditions where she didn’t get the part, always recitals and stage performances to attend where some other young person had the featured role. Sometimes my daughter’s part was “understudy” – she had to learn the part and practice, and then stand offstage while the other person danced the part she knew so well. Watching other peoples’ kids get most of the attention was just part of the territory. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m sorry you feel so disappointed and hurt. But I do think that Momfirst3’s posts represent the flip side of this. It may be that as a parent, unless you are very closely involved with your kid’s school activities, you may not see what the teachers and coaches see.</p>
<p>It’s a cliche to say that losing “builds character” but it’s true. There are a few careers - peforming arts and politics come to mind- that have a huge potential for almost constant rejection. It takes a lot of self esteem (ego?) to last in those lines of work. In a way, it’s kind of nice for a young performer to deal with not getting the part early on…if he falls apart, maybe he shouldn’t do that for a living. </p>
<p>We know a young woman who has tried to make it in acting for about 6 years. She is now holed up in a relative’s house, trying to recover from an emotional breakdown and trying to deal with depression. I can totally understand how so much rejection would take its toll. So best to deal with some disappontment early on.</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between not winning an award, or getting a part, or being a starter on a team, and not getting one of those things because unfair considerations were used to give it to somebody else. I think it’s reasonable for a kid–and the parents–to be unhappy when that occurs. I don’t consider that to be a very good learning experience–except that it shows that adults will sometimes cheat, lie, and manipulate the system to the detriment of kids.</p>
<p>I know that awards seem so arbitrary and very unfair. I also feel we never know the whole story behind the decision. We love our children so much we see them through “mom goggles” or “dad goggles” I never really know if that filter obscures the reality for me. I think my son is gorgeous, bright, talented, truly exceptional and an honorable, mature person. He recieved an award for crew at his BS. No academic or “character” awards, I don’t know the students well at his school but 100% are going to 4 year schools next year. Pretty good schools too, at least very popular here on CC. I would have loved to see him win an award, but he was really happy about the kids who recieved the awards. He is attending the school he wants to go to next year, he is a happy secure guy, all is right in our world. </p>
<p>But I still would have enjoyed hearing his name called! Oh well…</p>
<p>Pizzagirl -"Didn’t he already win the honors of being sal, vice pres, scholar-athlete and all-state? Are these awards meant to give yet another award to kids who have already racked up awards? That seems pointless. “Kids, gather round while we give awards to the people you elected and who have already won multiple awards! No room for you!”</p>
<p>He did not win one of those awards at his high school, in fact, no award for being the Sal, the President, the scholar-athlete or all-state. None. He was not recognized by the school for any of them. That is what I had a problem with. Even though he achieved all of those, he was not recognized for any of them. Not a huge deal, but very appropriate for this thread.</p>
<p>Hunt, if you think that “getting a part” is part of a “fair” process then you just haven’t been there. It is a hugely subjective process. It wasn’t “fair” when my daughter was 5, and it wasn’t “fair” when she was in high school. On the rare occasions when she did get cast or selected for a part… well, that wasn’t altogether “fair” either – good news for her, but it invariably meant that some other girl who was arguably equally deserving was being passed over. Someone had to make a choice, and that “someone” invariably had a their own set of eyes and sense of priorities.</p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t care about seeing other kids honored, it’s that we’re financially strapped and simply can’t afford to spend money for a fancy dinner like that. As a family we never go out to eat because it’s not something that fits in our budget. Therefore, since my first obligation is to my own family, we’ll make sure at least one of us is where we need to be so our children feel supported. But if they want us to support other people’s kids, then they’ll have to honor them in a less expensive fashion. There is another banquet this month that costs $35 that we’re also supposed to attend. This time only I will go. The first senior awards assembly was in the early afternoon, which required that parents take off from work. In this economy, that’s not something everyone can afford to do–not only because of the loss of wages for hourly folks but because in times of layoffs, absences from the job can get held against people. </p>
<p>What I suggested to D’s counselor was that the school be clear about the purpose of the event and the reason the parent was being invited. I think it would be helpful if the letter stated the general information about the event and went on to say something like: “Your child will be recognized for his/her membership in the National Honor Society.” Or “Your child will be receiving a special award.” Then let it to the parents to decide whether they can afford to buy a ticket or take off work or not.</p>
<p>CollegeDad, Pizzagirl’s point is that being Sal, being President, being scholar-athlete and all-state are RECOGNITION in and of themselves. </p>
<p>If I won $10,000 in the lottery, that would be a big prize. If the next month there was a awards ceremony in my community with an award for “Luckiest Person in Town”… and they gave the prize to some kid who found a $50 bill on the sidewalk instead of me… I still would have my $10K.</p>
<p>Sometimes there really are things going on in the background, like someone who has it in for one particular kid, or a mistake that was made. I know that in my D1’s class, there was a concerted attempt made to spread around the awards (val and sal couldn’t get any other academic awards) and in the attempt (Dolly could get both math and science but Billy could only get science, so give Dolly math), a couple of kids were overlooked who were meant to be recognized.</p>
<p>I am reminded of the scene at the beginning of *All That Jazz when one of the dancers says of the director, "@$! him!" The other dancer says, “I did and he still didn’t cast me.”</p>
I understand that. You said that the parents are charged for tickets but the kids get in free. In your situation, I would have told my d. that we couldn’t afford to come and hope that she would understand that is why we would not be there in the event she won an award – and then I would have sent her on her own. (Same way I dealt with the problem of not being able to afford the travel costs for college visits).</p>
<p>I actually do remember situations of banquet-type celebratory affairs over the years, with all the performing arts stuff, where I just didn’t have the money to pay for an adult meal. (Usually those things charged for the kid’s meal, but there was a huge differential – such as $30 for the adult and $10 for the kid). Fortunately, even when my daughter was quite small – there were other understanding parents who offered transportation so that my d. could be included even when the parents couldn’t come up with the cost of their own admission.</p>
<p>By the way – this year my daughter won an honor and was recognized at an event that I very much would have liked to attend – but because of the timing of the announcement I couldn’t afford to go. Of course she is now a young adult – but it would have meant the world for me to be there, and it just didn’t work out that way. (But she has assured me that the event was quite boring.)</p>
<p>I do agree with your suggestion to the g.c. about the nature of the announcement.</p>
<p>One funny casting story. When my D was little, she tried out to be one of the Von Trapp children in Sound of Music. She had white blond hair and big blue eyes and really looked the part. But the part was given to the daughter of a man whose name you all would recognize - and of course, that family paid for the costume rental for the entire show. If *I *had been casting the show, I’d have done the same thing!</p>