Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Where I currently teach (a Catholic high school), we have FAR too many awards ceremonies, in addition to 2 school Masses twice per month. The ceremonies are usually attached to the end of a Mass and so we often times sit there for 2-2.5 hours:
Fall/Winter/Spring Sports Awards: After a Mass. The athletes all get their varsity letters and/or pins while the athletic director reads a 5-minute recap of the team's entire season in the most monotone voice possible. Most students don't care, even the ones getting the letters, because we have already sat on the gym bleachers for all of Mass. These usually go well beyond the scheduled time frame, due to the inefficiency in calling the names and the dissertation-length recaps the coaches provide. Few parents can attend because they are all held between periods 2 and 3.
National Honor Society inductions: Again, few parents can attend because this is held directly after homeroom. Each of the 4 officers gives a speech, and they are usually full of superfluous language and metaphors that no one can understand because they are all the top of the top of the class and have their own inside jokes. This year, all were far longer than necessary. Then there was also a guest speaker.
Academic & Music Awards: Held between periods 2 and 3 again. Students in clubs and activities that have a competition get varsity letters. The descriptions are shorter and usually more interesting, but it still goes on too long. The band and chorus give short performances, and this year it also included the dance team. Again, few parents can attend because it is during the day.
Student Council inductions: Held right after Homeroom and few parents attend. Both the outgoing and the incoming presidents give speeches, as well as each class advisor. I am an advisor this year and gave a short 2-minute spiel which was both funny and tugged at the heart strings (so I gather from the multiple comments I received from both kids and staff afterwards!). The new members are sworn in and then there is also a guest speaker.
These are all in addition to the annual travelling Shakepeare performance assembly, prom etiquette / don't drink and do drugs assembly (that the whole school attends), and of course the always-exciting Homecoming and Catholic Schools Week Pep Rallies.
We have far too many assemblies for a high school. A recent faculty meeting we discussed ways to shorten them. Most people were in agreement to completely get rid of all sport ceremonies, NHS should be at night so parents can attend. Student council, of course, must always be during the school day and seems appropriate that way.
Our graduation? This year, 220 students plus 40 or so faculty and about 30 dignitaries from the Diocese plus all the families. I'm not sure how many tickets each student gets, but we have a large gym. With hard, wooden bleachers with no backs. And a balcony. Almost every seat with filled. Oh yes, no air conditioning, and yesterday the temperature was hovering around 90 for most of the day and the humidity was just as high. It was brutal. About an hour and 20 minutes and 2 student speeches, plus some remarks from the principal and priest. We hold it in our gym so we don't have to rent any place, however, since we are inner city, we have terrible parking and a 4-block radius basically shuts down for this every year since people double park. It's chaos.
My high school graduation back in the 90s was in our gym. Gym sat 2,000 maybe for a grad class of 240 kids. Plenty of room, non ticketed if I remember correctly.
My high school suspended the positions of val and sal back in the 80s when the #2 student in the class sand bagged her senior year course wise so she could position herself ahead of the #1 who was taking all AP courses senior year. AP courses were and never have been weighted at my high school. Kids still were doing this though by the late 90s for some reason. So instead of a val and sal they just had the top 10 students in the class stand up and be recognized. I couldn't even tell ya who our speakers were.
****that night after graduation my buddies and I broke into the football stadium with coolers and lawn chairs and got hammered on the 50 yard line Dazed and Confused style**** To be 18 again haha.
One Val, picked by what metric (I don't even want to think about the lawsuits, and yes that's happened) or just one speaker (see previous about lawsuits)?
As far as AP classes go, if the standard is highest GPA then that's it. My school tried to do that one year when the Val had zero AP classes while the Sal had several, she just got Cs in them. Didn't work.
Let the kids each get two minutes, cut out the guest speakers.
For the underline, because they're Administrators. Plus parents would ***** about the cost.
Nine kids who never in four years got a grade lower than a full A? If that is the case, they should all be valedictorians or else the grading system is too easy.
I don't even remember who the valedictorian was for my class, and it was a small school, a small graduating class. All I remember is that 4-5 girls had all quite by accident chosen the same dress to wear. That was kind of funny.
We wore caps and gowns, so other attire was not really noticeable.
Nine kids who never in four years got a grade lower than a full A? If that is the case, they should all be valedictorians or else the grading system is too easy.
But that is just barely believable.
I can see it happening.
If the grades are translated from a percentage to a quality point, like many school systems do, then the kid who gets a 90% gets the same point, a 4, that a kid with a 99% gets.
I recently attended my brothers Community College "graduation" and it was a 4 hour long event replete with some of the most awful virtue-signaling-laden speeches I've ever heard. Those people (including the deans and whatnot who spoke) would never be able to say anything meaningful in the world outside of academia.
I have no idea why I had to go to this, he already has a 4-year degree from years ago and was just getting some additional certificate. Also: aren't you almost 30 little brother?
I'm just glad it was only 4 hours long, imagine if the other 2/3rds of students showed up (about 400 of the 1,200 or so walked across the stage). They were smart to be no-shows.
The speeches were the worst and had either one of two themes, or both. The first theme was about needing "to embrace change" and "support diversity" blah blah blah, and the second theme was about how that particular student "overcame" some obstacle or hardship that wasn't really all that difficult or terrible at all. Oh really, you overcame being a high school student with.....anxiety! Wow, go you little guy, you're totally going to make it in the real world!
Nine kids who never in four years got a grade lower than a full A? If that is the case, they should all be valedictorians or else the grading system is too easy.
But that is just barely believable.
I can see it easily with the right mix of kids and a typical grading system. My kid's school has a weighted system and still has several kids in contention all the way through. Just due to local demographics, a huge percentage of kids come from families of doctors, engineers, scientists, and quite a few where both parents have PhDs. So, yes, if the school didn't weight, I could easily see eight to ten kids each year with unweighted 4.0s.
My son's middle school had 8th grade Continuation as they call it this week. I agree, it's a time to mark a transition, and an end to their time together as middle school students. In our district, we have school choice so this group of kids won't all be continuing on together to the same high school, and it was their last chance to have this kind of shared experience.
It was about an hour and 15 minutes, including handing each student a certificate - not a diploma, but something that acknowledged their time as a student at that school. There were 4 student speakers, the 8th grade teachers gave out various awards and other certificates of recognition such as earning honors all three trimesters. The school director gave a short but nice speech.
IMO, it was a completely appropriate way to recognize this milestone.
Our kids had 8th grade graduation. We thought it was stupid and asked why it was done. The principal said many (most?) of the kids would not graduate from high school, so this was the only graduation they would ever have. (We lived in a minority majority city where poverty was pretty high).
When we moved to a wealthier area, there was no 8th grade graduation ceremony. There was no question everyone was gong to complete high school and pretty much everyone goes to college. (Partially due to the failure of our schools to acknowledge trade school/apprenticeship as a perfectly respectable, well paying and honorable career path). Since everyone is going to college, maybe they sholud just skip high school graduation too?
Another funny thing I forgot about earlier. In recognition of the elimination of gender in our society, the school went from having boys in red robes and girls in white, to all red robes. In what may have been a form of protest, nearly all the girls wore white dresses and unzipped their robes for the after graduation gathering on the school lawn.
My daughters PhD graduation seems to be pretty important to her. She said she will fly back from whomever she is teaching to "walk" at her graduation. We found a seamstress who makes garb for SCA members for her job who will make my daughter some affordable robes at a reasonable price. However the patterns are not available. The robe companies with a monopoly on insane prices are not about to release patterns.
Just because you're valedictorian doesn't mean you should get to speak. Have them all come up with a speech and then let a teacher/principal committee pick the best. Easy peasy! Oh - they don't want to hear all of them? - neither does anyone else!
I graduated from HS in the early 70s. Big suburban school, about 600 in our class. No valedictorian(s). There were 10 or so who got to wear “honor cords”. I have no idea how they were selected - I certainly wasn’t under consideration - but they were definitely the brightest kids in the class.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
