During first hour on Thursday, Dec. 11, high school students and staff gathered in the auditorium to watch as juniors and seniors received their academic letters and bars. Typically, the academic awards would be presented in a more intimate fashion, with a breakfast for the students and parents followed by a ceremony. These presentations would be held semiannually in the fall and spring semesters, and would give students a chance to be recognized for their good grades. High School Principal Bryant Bednarek organizes the events and decided that a switch would be made for the fall semester.
“I wish we could have gotten it earlier, but the start of the year is so busy. It kept getting kicked down the road into December,” Bednarek said. “I think it will be a nice mix-up. We will still do the same parent breakfast and presentation in the spring as we always have.”
The main change was an audience of all students and staff. Typically, the only students in attendance would be those receiving awards, but now, due to the usually lower attendance at the fall breakfast, a planned assembly was made so everyone could be there.
“It’s rewarding because it can help my peers want to push themselves, by seeing others getting awarded, because they want that too,” second bar recipient senior AnnaMae Clinch said.
For those who are only now receiving letters, further appreciation can be made as they’re presented in front of their classmates.
“I think that it’s rewarding because I could be seen as, especially for younger people, someone to look up to,” junior Arbnor Dauti said.
Though athletics and clubs can be rewarding, academic strivings have longer-lasting benefits.
“Academics are important to me because they get you much further in life than any sport or extracurricular,” Clinch said. “I feel like people don’t take them as seriously as they should, but, like I said, they take you much further.”
Though this change in the program may not be permanent, it was a way to showcase hard-working students, and to do so publicly.
“We felt we needed to do something different. The idea was thrown out to bring more awareness to the awards by including the rest of the student body, so that is where the idea came from,” Bednarek said.
