School Honors Nights
 

Next week we have to go to a couple of honors nights and my husband and I were thinking back over years of attending them, both as teachers and as parents. You know how they usually have an award for each subject, like Outstanding Student in Spanish 1, Outstanding Student in Geometry, etc.

So one year we were teaching at the same school and Awards Night was truly the "John Smith" show. This one kid took every award in his grade, including Citizenship and other non-scholastic awards, except for P.E. Other parents were commenting on how they weren't sure why they even showed up, other than to pick up their kids' Perfect Attendance Awards. The next year, it was the "Joe Smith" show in which his brother took every award except P.E.

Some schools limit the number of subject awards that a student can win to 1 or 2. Others give them to the student with the highest average, even if it does lead to a Smith Show.

Which do you think is preferable?

Ditto to all of this. If the kid legitimately wins an award then he should get it, even if it's every single one.

Agreed.

Back when I was in high school, each department gave awards to the top 3 or 4 students. So while a school honors night could still "sort of" turn into a "John Smith show", there were plenty of other students getting awards - e.g. the math awards would go to John Smith, Rose Tyler, and Martha Jones, while the science awards would go to John Smith, Donna Noble, and Amy Pond.

At my high school, awards were also listed in the commencement program and read out when you got your diploma. We all got little cards that we'd hand to the announcer. If you hadn't received any awards the card just had your name on it. If you had received one or more awards, they were listed on the card, e.g. "Recipient, Social Studies Department Award, English Department Award - Sarah Jane Smith". There were always three or so people who raked in a lot of awards - usually the valedictorian, salutatorian, and class president, who were the last 3 to walk - and it was traditional that the class would count their awards. "Recipient, Social Studies Department Award - " - "ONE!" - "Math Department Award - " - "TWO!" - etc. I think I hit 14... I understand that they did away with this the year after I graduated - all the awards are still printed in the program, but the only awards that are announced are valedictorian and salutatorian.

Exactly.

aephialum, maybe that's the answer. I have mixed feelings on this whole thing. On one hand, you should get the award if you're the top dog. On the other hand, I can see where the parents came from who got an invitation and then had to sit there for the whole program after their child got Perfect Attendance and that's all--and a lot of them knew their kids were in close competition for the awards.

As a teacher, I know that usually several students are in close competition for the awards and maybe if they even gave top 3, it'd work. I don't think that everyone on every team deserves a trophy--we do far too much of that. On the other hand, there were those Smith Shows that went on and on forever and there were 4 years of those for each brother.

BTW, everyone really liked John and Joe and they are now thirtysomething lawyers.

My school only did the top student for every class and the valedictorian and class president. The teams were also mentioned (debate team, student body council, winning sports teams, school paper and a/v crew).
Really liked it that way because this way a lot of students were mentioned.

We had Senior Awards, but the only awards were things like valedictorian, salutatorian, national merit (semi)finalists, state scholars, major scholarship recipients, community service honors, etc. I don't recall any department awards. For the awards we had, though, it was common that a number of students received honors. Still, I would say many students did not receive any awards. They didn't give out perfect attendance awards, either.

Around here, your child gets an invitation for Honors Night if s/he is going to receive an award. It might be a biggie (department or overall award) or just Perfect Attendance. I'm picturing what Awards Night would've been like in the early nineties at ole MHS without the Perfect Attendance awards- hahaha! For 2 grades, only the "Smith" parents and a couple of others would've been invited instead of the usual 60 per grade or so.

ETA: every time I type about these boys, I accidentally put in their real names and have to go back and redo it.:mad:

The way it was done at my high school was that every student who was nominated for an award received an invite, and the "reveal" was done at the banquet. The banquet also served as an induction for the new NHS members and the giving out of chords for graduating members. Overall, those two groups tended to overlap, so almost everyone got something.

I don't recall anyone "sweeping" the awards, but several people got more than one.

When I was in college, however, there was one student who won all of these awards on campus, was generally the "darling" of everyone, had a ton of press coverage (then and now) etc. I overheard a faculty member say, "well, why did we all bother to get dressed up? you could have just had her do a press conference."

Whiiiich was pretty much how I felt at that point, because it was pretty overwhelming.

I teach middle school. When it comes to the subjective awards, the team teachers get together to coordinate and make sure the same student is not sweeping all of the awards. But not every kid receives an award--it's not a pizza party for a t-ball team!

I always got pretty angry about the Perfect Attendance awards, because they basically punish kids who take Jewish/Islamic/whatever else holidays off of school.

I don't like them (or any programs that honor perfect attendance, such as letting the awardees ditch finals) because kids who are as sick as dogs come hacking and sneezing to school and infect everyone else. Not to mention that some of those kids actually come to college never having taken a final and they try to do everything they can to get out of theirs.

Oh, yeah, that's even worse. It's like companies that pay out unused sick time at the end of the year, so everyone shows up with the flu.

Students should be given awards even if they really weren't the true high achiever in the category. That way they can expect to get into the top tier sorority on their college campus too. :rolleyes:

I don't remember much about school award nights from high school (other than the fact that there was delicious cake involved), but I liked the one for seniors we had in college for the students that had the highest GPA in each major + significant contributions to campus community (so, the president of SGA, Panhellenic President, IFC President, Activities Programming Board, etc. were all recognized).

That meal was fantastic.

Everyone was invited to come to the Sr. Awards at my HS. Didn't mean you were getting an award. I think Perfect Attendance awards are stupid. I don't care if a kid has perfect attendance. If anything, that's setting them up for a pretty much totally unrealistic expectation later in life. In real life, most college students miss a class or five, and most companies give you sick days.

I hate the idea of perfect attendance awards. Much of life may be showing up, but that doesn't mean you're actually doing a damn thing with it.

Award went to the top 5% of each class. If it was a massive subject, that could be quite a few, if it was a small class, then only 1 person or so

Yes, nix the perfect attendance awards.

My daughter's hs only invited those kids/families who were receiving an award. My son's school invited everyone. We sat thru the awards ceremony his senior year and watched the younger hs students get their awards while not one senior got a thing. When I mentioned it to a teacher, he said that the teachers had all had a discussion and decided that the senior class had been such a premier class that they felt that the lower grades deserved their own spotlight. Besides that, they were graduating and going off to great schools. I said that that was fine, but it would have been nice to let the senior parents know this and we would have all just stayed
Home

My son's middle school tried something new this year and I liked it. First, no perfect attendance awards! :) Second, they had separate ceremonies on different nights for each grade. :) Third, they called each team up individually and each student got a folder with *all* his/her awards in it and they announced those as the student was walking. For instance, "Joe Smith: Honor Roll, Most Outstanding in Band and Science." Then onto the next kid.

We were out of there in 57 minutes! This was a ceremony that had lasted as long as 3 1/2 hours in the past..I clearly remember that year because I was hugely pregnant and after sitting on hard bleachers all that time, my legs wouldn't move. BlazerCheer and Ballerina had to almost drag me out a side door.

Wow. We only had Awards for senior year, and only seniors and their parents were invited. We didn't have any awards in middle school or grades 9-11.