New perspective on school awards

[Anonymous]

Our high school has undergraduate awards for music, art, science, math, language, history, the usual. But there is no honor roll in high school because they’re not five years old.

The math only had three awards for students who competed in math. The music department has a lot of awards, so did computer science.

What was unique about these awards is the mixture of students that were some of the top students in AP classes and students who had excellent grades in regular classes despite having a learning disability or anything else that got in their way.
They have the college book awards give to one student each. Then they have the achievement awards in each subject, curiosity wards, love of learning awards and wellness awards. These could have 4 awards given or 10. The teachers nominate the students and it’s not GPA related.

My son as a freshman has learning disabilities. He does well in his classes with As and Bs and help from tutoring. He got awards English Love of Learning and a Science Book Award.

They still awarded the top math competition winners, still awarded the prestigious College Book Awards but also recognized the students who the teachers thought should be recognized for the work they do under tough conditions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really like that my kids' school has awards for things like school spirit and community service and "good friend" and "helpful community member." Not just academics (ie grades) and sports.

Ours did this in elementary. As the kid who was sent to the office, nearly daily, did not win one of those!

Ours did too, and the first couple kids to win these awards were always the kids with horrible behavior. I think the school was trying to give positive reinforcement as their intention, but all it did unfortunately was turn the awards into a joke to the other kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really like that my kids' school has awards for things like school spirit and community service and "good friend" and "helpful community member." Not just academics (ie grades) and sports.

Ours did this in elementary. As the kid who was sent to the office, nearly daily, did not win one of those!

Ours did too, and the first couple kids to win these awards were always the kids with horrible behavior. I think the school was trying to give positive reinforcement as their intention, but all it did unfortunately was turn the awards into a joke to the other kids.

The pp was a joke by the way.

[Anonymous]

Well, we praise awards and effort.
But more of all we praise being.

Awards do matter. In life I want to pay for services from the person who is great at what they do, the one who cuts my hair well and doesn't just "try" to cut it, the one who does my surgery well and doesn't just get a gold star for trying, the one who fixes my broken pipe and doesn't just get an A for effort.