<p>To the Alfie Kohn discussion - some of you might enjoy Drive by Dan Pink [url=<a href=“http://www.danpink.com/drive]Drive”>Drive | Daniel H. Pink]Drive</a> | Daniel Pink<a href=“disclaimer:%20he’s%20a%20personal%20friend%20of%20mine”>/url</a></p>
<p>People at ds’s school had no idea ds was in Scouts until his Eagle announcement ran in the city newspaper.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, thanks for the link to Pink. I’ll read up.</p>
<p>Okay, I’m back from the big evening, and as promised, no rant from me. Even if I wanted to rant, I have nothing to rant about. The awards were handled beautifully. I thought the awards were all well thought out and well deserved. This was mainly a scholarship night so there was no favoritism involved there. As for my son, he got exactly what I thought he would get - Scholar of Scholars, Scholar Athlete of the Year and a scholarship from the USTA. I have no complaints other than that it was very long (there are over 700 people in his class) and because we were all crammed in the gym, it got a tad warm. I was so happy and proud of my son, I didn’t even notice. It was a great evening… :-)</p>
<p>OK - Back from awards ceremony number 1, the varsity awards dinner last night. It was way too long and their were typos in the program. The roster of my son’s team was completely wrong and he wasn’t even listed. Still, I can’t tell you what a GREAT night it was! S noticed that he wasn’t on the roster (but he was written about in the team summary) - and he’s only a freshman, so he’s got time. It was NO BIG DEAL.</p>
<p>To me, the night felt like a celebration of all the team accomplishments. Our teams did great this year – and the softball team arrived late after winning the LI championship. Sure, there were a few kids that won many, many awards - but they were so deserving and are really great kids. (PG - our big three-sport athletic star is going to play women’s lax at NU next year!). I was so happy for all of them. My D got an award, but in a sport that not many people notice (and her entire team wasn’t even there) - to be honest, a lot of that has to do with the coach. Still, it was an honor for her (which I knew about since October, but kept it a secret! Yay mom!)</p>
<p>The logistics were not great, but my first instint was to volunteer for next year (and I told the people running it last night to call me in the Fall about meetings). In this case, it’s the athletic sponsors so parents are involved. I realize with a lot of the school awards (which we have tomorrow night), that’s not possible.</p>
<p>I don’t know if some people felt slighted last night. I guess I’m just not that kind of person. Also, I think there’s a lot to be said about teaching your kids about self-satisfaction and not excelling for the purpose of the award. Of course it is nice to recognized, but in the end, it’s about doing what your passionate about and having a great life.</p>
<p>I’m sure we can all share stories with our kids about the sports stars from our high school days who are not exactly having MVP lives right now.</p>
<p>Now let’s see how tomorrow night goes…</p>
<p>LINYMOM0–“sports stars from our high school days who are not exactly having MVP lives right now.”</p>
<p>Exactly. Whether in their sport or in life! You never can tell what will happen.</p>
<p>And what about the sports stars now who were overlooked in HS, or hadn’t reached their potential yet!</p>
<p>Son was all state in his sport a couple of years ago as a senior. One of only 7 in any sport to get state honors that year in his high school of over 1000 students. The athletic director left his name out of the program listing the state honors at the sports awards ceremony . I asked his coach about it . She said she did not get the info to the athletic director in time. No real apology, never apologized to my son. My son did get MVP for his sport that night but the coach still did not mention that he had gotten all state and that it was left out of the program by mistake. However, as is often the case, I was bothered by all of this much more than my son seemed to be!</p>
<p>Then there was the year the yearbook (which comes out in August) had a two page spread listing MOST of the awards from awards night, but not all, and apparently randomly. My kid’s awards were, of course, omitted. </p>
<p>These things happen. Future researchers, looking back at my Nobel-prize-winning son’s HS record as shown in the yearbook, will wonder. ;)</p>
<p>Yearbook errors and omissions could be a whole new thread! In this year’s, D is mislabeled in every photo except the primary one on the class page. For some reason too, they used a font so tiny on her senior dedication page that no one can read it without a magnifiying glass. But I was just glad her picture was in it, since at least one kid was left out altogether! Actually, as a senior prank I think the staff puts in a photo of someone who’s not actually in the graduating class–they’re just not supposed to leave out someone who actually is!</p>
<p>A really nice touch at the recent award banquet we attended was they invited a man to speak, who as a student had been honored just like the invitees. He did a really nice job of validating all the students present by describing the characteristics they all share and the sacrifices he knew they all had made. He gave real life examples he had gleaned from talking to some of the parents and kids present that evening. It let the kids know that a least one person was aware of what they had thought and felt along the way, and knew about all the little things that went into their eventual accomplishment. I thought it was super.</p>
<p>Oy, the yearbook. They misspelled my first name, just as I suspected they would. There were all of 72 kids in the class, and I’d been in classes with the yearbook editors at this tiny school for six years.</p>
<p>My SIL still misspells my name, and I’ve been married to her brother for 22 years.</p>
<p>Senior Awards is this week in S’s HS. He has been extremely active in clubs throughout HS, VP of Key Club, hand picked for many school functions throughout HS. He applied for a scholarship based on community service - the nominating committee was quite impressed with him - yet he didn’t win. Why - because it went to the grandson of someone on the Board of Directors- even though this kid has done absolutely nothing his 4 years of HS. I am furious that my son took the time to apply and interview and then this happened. Also, he won’t be getting any awards at Senior Night - they focus more on GPA. His friend is getting an award for maintaining a certain GPA while playing a varsity sport. That’s because he dropped his most difficult class, which my son stayed with. Great messages for my son - nepotism is alive and well and taking shortcuts pay off!!!</p>
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<p>It’s not a bad lesson to learn - just a bit early to learn it! Our firm was invited to bid for some legal work and we spent quite a bit of time and effort preparing our presentation. The work ended up going to the CEO’s brother in law. Lesson: Next time, ask more questions about who the competition is.</p>
<p>Yds- same here. My name isn’t that hard to spell!!</p>
<p>OK, I’ve finished my popcorn and I’m back for a post. :)</p>
<p>The yearbook photo thing up-thread reminds me of something a mom told me earlier this year. She’s a picture hound to ridiculous proportions. I spent a lot of time taking photos during my son’s four years – not just of my son, but of all the students at our very small school, and I shared the photos with their families. My son and this mom’s last daughter graduated together last year. They’re friends and our families are close in a high school sort of way. Over lunch this year, the mom thanked me for taking all those photos of her kids and said that if it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have any at all. Seems the kids in the AV club didn’t like her kids, so they avoided taking pictures of them.</p>
<p>This kind of pettiness was rampant at the school, and part of it stemmed from awards. I think the faculty have done the kids a disservice by talking up their “character” awards and end-of-year awards as if nothing else matters so much and the kids who receive them are the cream of the cream… when, in fact, the “Respectfulness” award goes to the girl who never talks back to the faculty but curses a blue streak at them behind their backs and is snide and nasty to all her peers… the “Responsibility” award goes to the boy whose parents (both of them) stand outside combing his hair before the event… the “Honesty” award goes to the kid who has no tact (for being “brutally honest”)… many of you have told similar stories. The decisions are made by unanimous consent of all the faculty, so if your kiddo has rubbed one person wrong one time, (s)he will be mostly warming the seats for the rest of high school. On the other hand, if you lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same church, coached a team, went shooting together on weekends… your kiddo would be up and down like a jack-in-the-box. I don’t think that was malicious or dishonest; I think the faculty just knew those kids better, knew their personal accomplishments and disappointments and how much work (their parents said) they were putting in. And so they could and did advocate more for those kids when the arguments broke out.</p>
<p>There were many little unintended (I think) slights over the years… like the year our sal gave his speech, then the val gave her speech, but after introducing the val and having her walk on, the principal ran up in front of her to add, “I just want everyone to know that it was really, really close between these two.” In his senior year, my son was asked on the spur of the moment to speak informally to some prospective parents about his college choices. He told them that he would be attending Harvey Mudd College with a $10k/year merit scholarship. One of the staff piped up, “And another student got a forty thousand dollar scholarship!” Um, what’s 10x4 again? :rolleyes: Just smile and nod, and mentally bank the money. Things like this are just little adventures in thoughtlessness or cluelessness that happen to people everywhere every day, although they might seem cutting at the time.</p>
<p>Last year, I saw a young lady leave the auditorium in tears over a subject award that she’d virtually been promised by one teacher. No question she’d earned it in grades, passion, dedication, helpfulness, and all those “intangibles” that have been suggested here. But the principal was teaching one section of the same subject and had planned to give the award to a freshman in his section.</p>
<p>My son was passed over, along with most of his classmates, over and over again. In the year when he looked like a shoo-in for one award, the teacher gave it to a student who had received that award the previous year and wasn’t taking any classes in the subject that year. Being passed over every time was a crushing rejection for him, because he didn’t understand that it really had nothing to do with him. In the end, he received a couple here and there – and parents who came up to congratulate him and talk to me often commented on how he could add this one to his massive stack from the school. Uh, no. They saw what he was and assumed he’d been recognized accordingly over the years. Who knows, maybe the faculty did the same thing.</p>
<p>Parental intervention plays a role, too – sometimes a positive one, sometimes a negative one. After one particularly contentious incident, the administration decided to stop giving out athletic awards.</p>
<p>As parents of high school students, I think, we can’t help but ache when our kids work so hard and do achieve the best, but then get rejected when their school community gathers to recognize “accomplishments” and “character traits.” Because what the school says it rewards often is not what it does reward. And to a 15, 16, 17-year-old kid, it really matters… school is the bulk of their job and their social life. In the moment, it hurts. Of course it hurts!</p>
<p>As parents of high school students, I think, we need to remember what counts and give our kiddos some adult perspective as EmmyBet did. Because as soon as they leave the place, it’s not going to matter one bit. Their world is going to expand dramatically, and they’re going to find (one hopes) that high school was an exercise in silliness and constantly comparing oneself to others is a path to misery.</p>
<p>My son saw the title of this thread on my laptop screen last night. He said, “Let me guess…” and summarized the key points of the thread. He seems to place more or less similar value on the awards he received and the awards he didn’t receive. He said, “Oh yeah, I think I have a piece of paper in my room that says ‘Scholar of the year.’ I go to Harvey Mudd College. We don’t talk about that stuff there. We’re all smart, so what? It doesn’t matter.”</p>
<p>And it doesn’t.</p>
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<p>I think that’s the whole point of high school though. There’s so much general cliqueyness (sp?), whether it’s malicious or unintentional, that I think it’s better just to act like it doesn’t matter – because, after all, it doesn’t. And I think the time is better spent doing the things you want to do and enjoying them, than trying to “right” the cliqueyness. </p>
<p>Would you advise your kids to pine after being chosen homecoming queen? No, because it’s all based on popularity among the “chosen” and those sorts of people don’t matter anyone, so let it go and go do something more important or personally fun rather than worry about recognition among people who don’t count. That’s sort of how I feel towards the whole enterprise. Honestly, I’m always a little skeptical of class-president type stuff too.</p>
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<p>Okay, that should win an award on this thread! If that happened at my school I would make appointments with the teacher and the principal just to make them listen to me rant. It wouldn’t change a thing but I think they would deserve to be subjected to the torture of listening to me. (I would also delight in making them articulate why that student was the most deserving, so my family could make fun of the answer for years to come.)</p>
<p>No geek_mom, it doesn’t matter. That’s how I raised my son and he held his head high after being overlooked time and time again. However, it was awfully special for him to receive Scholar of Scholars (Valedictorian). This was one award they couldn’t overlook. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter one bit, but it was nice to see him finally get some recognition for all of his hard work. Congratulations on Harvey Mudd. My son also got accepted there. He ended up deciding to go somewhere else but it is an outstanding university. Go Mudd!</p>
<p>It can sometimes be easy for the Valedictorian to receive no other awards. At our HS, all sports, band, drill team and cheer are double blocked, meaning they take up 1/4 of your schedule. These are unweighted credits. Often the tippy top kids take virutally all AP classes junior and senior year and no unweighted classes. We’ve had a few Vals and Sals with literally no ECs, so it’s pretty easy to understand why those kids get few awards. But it never makes me feel bad, because I figure they’ve worked hard for four years toward the ultimate award (Val + top college admittance.)</p>
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At my D’s school, the val and sal can win no other academic awards.</p>
<p>The only point of contention I had with my D’s ceremony (other than it being four hours long) was the number of awards that were awarded for specific criteria (everyone who did _______) for which some kids were acknowledged and some were not. If you’re going to give one award for something, fine, but if you’re going to award everyone who achieved a stated goal, then you should do exactly that.</p>