Today members of the eighth grade “graduating” class were recognized for all sorts of academic achievements ranging from placing in the CO2 car races to spelling bee participation to maxing out the state test scores.
There were the expected “highest GPA” awards and whatnot, but there were unexpected awards, too. The parents of one student who has improved drastically thanks to teacher-parent communication received a “best parents” award. The new title “official school greeter” was bestowed upon one mentally challenged student whose ride left him in the office early every day, where he would then greet every teacher he saw. Each of those presentations brought the sixth and seventh graders and eighth grade parents on the bleachers up into standing ovations.
I was glad to see that overall the presenting teachers exercised a restraint neglected during the seventh grade assembly, where nearly every one made apparently obligatory comments about the difficulty of choosing just two students to award and spoke at great length about how special they feel about their students.
I wouldn’t say I’ve had too many warm and fuzzy experiences this year, and picking two of my students to receive awards really wouldn’t have been that difficult for me, so I chose two students who probably wouldn’t receive any other awards yet certainly deserved recognition for his “hard work and dedication to English and Reading” and her “inspiring personal readership” (I noted her “thirst” for vampire novels).
At church a few days later, a parent who had attended the ceremony thanked me for my brevity. Hers was one of the students who could have received every award, so I explained to her my logic, as I also later explained to some of my students: “They’re not self-esteem awards. I was looking for something specific, and those students had it. You get your awards every time you receive your report cards.”
I would have liked to give each of my students an award, though, something to take home and put on the refrigerator for their grandmothers to look at.
So I’ve made a plan for next year: I’m going to give each student not only the quote I’ve traditionally handed out but also a classroom award. It’ll be small–all on one half sheet of paper–but I hope meaningful nonetheless.
The quote:
The (highly customizable) award:
2 Comments
A
Great idea, Christopher! When do we get the family awards?! =)
Second Sister
C- this post makes me cry. Why? well, because first of all, affirmation, true affirmation is a rare thing. When this topic is taken into the "real" world of society, there are so many stinkin social awards that you can get for behaving "correctly" socially, but truly being yourself and following your giftings/call(whatever) doesnt necessarily get you those. You can still be an outsider/misunderstood freak.