Elementary awards--perspective, please
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Anonymous
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I have a WWYD for you.
My DD is in first grade. Her school holds an awards ceremony each marking period recognizing kids for things like effort, behavior, etc; the kids' grades on their report cards are used to determine who meets the criteria for awards (e.g. "honor roll" is Os with no more than 3 Ss). Parents are only invited to attend if their child receives an award. At the ceremony, most of the children in DD's class received at least one award. One child did not receive any. I don't know this child very well, but he and my daughter are buddies, and he seems like a sweet kid, and a typical first-grade boy. I was really uncomfortable with the fact that this child alone did not receive any awards. I understand the idea of recognizing kids for doing well, but things like "honor roll," etc. for first grade seem a little excessive. I also feel like giving awards out so freely means that the kids who don't get awards are essentially shamed, in a roundabout way, and I don't think that's appropriate for the early elementary grades. My question to you: this child's parents weren't invited to the ceremony, so they may well have no idea that this is happening to their son. While I don't know his parents, I do have his mom's email address. If you were this child's mother, would you want another parent to tell you about this? I don't quite know what to do. |
Anonymous
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2 things: first, I think you need to be careful not to project your feelings onto this little boy. It is likely he has no idea he is being "shamed". Additionally, from your description of who is invited, that means that ALL the other parents of the kids were there, and these parents were the only ones not invited? That seems unlikely, and surely any teacher worth their salt would notice this and rectify it.
That being said, yes, if this were happening to my DC, I'd want to know, not so much as to raise hell, but to find out why. |
Anonymous
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I think if I did anything it would be to talk to the school about whether or not having awards ceremonies is a good thing. (Every marking period? Our elementary doesn't even have one every year! Neither did mine growing up, so I don't think that my response is too shaped by being a concerned, hovering parent.)
Personally, I'd want to find out from the person in charge what the goal of the copious awards ceremonies are, and whether they are helping the school to meet that goal. I'd also bring up the example of the sole kid not receiving awards in the class (or do so in a hypothetical way) and express my concerns about the effect of the ceremonies on him. |
Anonymous
| Please talk to the administration. When my DS was in ES, his school did the same exact thing. My DS was one of the few that didn't get an award. He didn't care about the award. What he cared about was that I wasn't there when all the other kids' parents were there. Yes, PP, some schools actually do invite only the parents whose children get the awards. This is a horrible practice that needs to be stopped. It would still be bad if half the class got awards and the other half didn't, but usually there were only a handful of kids - usually special needs kids like my DS - who didn't receive the awards so they were really singled out to the other students and the other parents. My DS thought he was being punished for "not being smart". I started going to the awards ceremony even though my son never got an award. Some kids were visibly upset when they didn't receive an award. Most kids were happily hugging their parents after the ceremony while the few kids who didn't get an award - or who had parents who couldn't take time off work to be there - were standing around looking sad. Broke my heart. I complained but was really surprised that no other parents seemed to care. I guess when your kid is happy and smiling and getting an award, it is hard to see that there are other kids standing alone with tears in their eyes. |
Anonymous
| Our school does not give any sort of report card linked awards to kids in k-2. Those kids can get behavior or effort awards, often if the kid has had a particular problem they have worked hard on, like being a great listener. But only a few kids per class get awards, so the vast majority do not. All parents are told about the awards assembly, but if your child is getting an award, the teacher writes a note requesting that you attend. |
Anonymous
| I tell my kids the ribbons and tin trinkets everyone gets in elementary school and kiddy sports are meaningless and simply an Amnerican cultural obsession. They get it now. |
Anonymous
| I'd like to know, OP and would appreciate you emailing me. Even if it's just so I could let my son know that he's not defective! |
Anonymous
This made me sad for the kids! |
Anonymous
I was going to suggest to the OP to just butt out. But after this post, I changed my mind. I'd bring the topic up with the adminstration. As far as notifying the other parent...I might send an email just explaining that not all parents have been made aware of the ceremony and you wanted to be sure he/she knew about it. |
Anonymous
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At our elementary school, all the parents could go. But it was the same small handful of students who won all the awards, time after time after time. I could not figure out why the school would continue with such a lopsided way of recognizing students.
They also had school wide testing every week and only those who got very high marks were recognized and rewarded with a pizza lunch with the principal. Very disheartening to the rest of the kids, including mine. |
Anonymous
Yes, I'm not sure why the schools feel that they need to reward the students who would do well anyway (and according to Drive by Dan Pink and other info, such rewards probably lower motivation) while discouraging students who may be doing the best they can but will never make the cutoff for some silly reward. Sometimes I think the rewards are meant more for the parents than anything. |
Anonymous
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I would stay out of it with the parents unless you are friends with them and it sounds like you are not. My reasoning for this is that first off I think maybe they will take it the wrong way (that you are pointing out that their child got an award and theirs didn't). Also no lasting harm will be done to the kid. He may come home a little upset but that's it.
If anything I would take it up with the school administration and/or PTA. This makes me sad for the kids. Unfortunately this sort of thing seems to be how things are these days. Our school does a ceremony for good behavior but they do a decent job of making the other kids not feel too bad about that. And they do a good job with keeping academic achievements low key, especially in the early grades (at least as far as I have seen so far). |
Anonymous
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I would send a letter to the principal and the school board. 10:39 - I am so sorry for your son. I can not believe that any school would do this. Could you please post which MCPS elementary school did/does this?
Empathy is also a behavioral skill and one that school administrators should be learning themselves. The K-2 awards seem to be based on the learning skills not the academic skills. We have friends whose child gets mostly Os on the academic but can't get the I's due to the child's learning disability. Giving the child an accurate rating is important to maintain the IEP and services but the poor kid gets left off the school award each marking period. If almost every kids receives enough Is to get an award accept the ones with learning disabilities what on earth are these awards designed to do? They are not awarding excellence in any way for kids without learning disabilities since basically every neuro typical kid gets one. Its as if they were giving a medal in PE for every kid who could walk on two legs to the end of the gym and not giving one to the kid in the wheel chair because he can't get out of the chair. |
Anonymous
| OP here. Thanks to all of you for your thoughts. I think I will contact the principal and express my concerns to her (I don't have the highest hopes, since she's rumored to be resistant to parent input, but I'll never know unless I try). |
Anonymous
| OP, you might also want to talk to your DCs teacher. I suspect that you may have a better relationship with her than with the principal, no? That way, maybe it can be brought up at a staff meeting in addition to whatever you say to the principal. For those who say MYOB, this time it's someone else's child. Tomorrow it might be yours, and some kids don't say anything, they just get their feelings hurt and stop trying, and that's really horrible to watch. FWIW |