Senior Awards

Last night I went to a high school awards night. The school seems to do a really good job of sending off the seniors. One thing I really like is every senior teacher writes a personal note to each senior they are teaching. Each note comes individually in the mail. Call me old fashioned but in today’s world of electronic communication, I think these handwritten notes are an invaluable statement to the students.

In the graduating class 55.5% of the students will graduate with honors meaning a GPA of 3.3 or above. Doesn’t that sound quite inflated? It also seems to take away from the honors designation.. I taught at a school that had 12 valedictorians and 3 salutatorians in a class of about 60. The principal and I both thought it was a sham and meaningless but that was the school’s academic policy that everyone with a 4.0 was a valedictorian. There were students who had no more than Algebra II who were called valedictorian.

Michigan also offers a Michigan Merit Award which is a college scholarship. At the end of the night, the principal said that every graduating student would qualify for the award so they had every student stand at the front and the counselors read off the entire graduating class roll five names at a time.

Next week is a Michigan high school graduation and a SC high school graduation the next night. SC is very far away so even though I won’t be there, my heart will be.