Suggestions for HS academic awards criteria

ReneeV
Sun, 05 Nov 2006 05:53:14 +0000

I see many valid points in these posts. My own view is pretty close to bing121086’s, but I definitely understand citygirlsmom’s concerns. This whole assembly program came about a number of years back…we had a principal at the time who seemed to focus on the bad things a very small minority of students were doing, calling the whole school to an assembly to be lectured about the “crimes” of a few, etc., and the awards ceremony was the outgrowth of faculty room lunchtime talk along the lines of “We need to do something to recognize the good kids.” Granted, it took a different turn from there, so that the focus ended up being academic achievement rather than other areas such as citizenship. The program is called “Honoring Excellence” and I think it has been meaningful to our community and students and not generally considered a waste of time, but I think there would be that danger if we were to start adding all kinds of awards in an effort to build or not damage self esteem. I don’t think that says exactly what I mean, but I really don’t know how else to express it. I think the whole self-esteem focus in education has been taken to an unfortunate extreme.

As for “Most improved,” that’s really not the purpose of this awards program. I only considered improvement in my one remedial class (as criteria for selecting the student to be honored), but the award was still called Excellence in Language Arts C (it’s an elective class which was designed for students reading three or more years below grade level, and enrolled students must also take the regular English class that corresponds to their year in school). The goal of the class is reading improvement, so in my mind a student who starts out at low 3rd grade level and finishes the year at 6th grade level has achieved more than the student who starts at 6th grade and moves up one grade level (or the student who is already reading above grade level but figured this would be an easy elective and was allowed to enroll on a space available basis).