Over 300 kids in the school have won an academic award and been recognized for their incredibly hard work! On Wednesday the 6th of last week, we had an academic award assembly. An assembly that recognizes what all of the students have been doing, going above and beyond in school. They also recognize the academic athletes and more extracurricular awards that go to students. The students who get recognized have worked incredibly hard last year and were able to maintain a GPA of 3.5 or higher all year long. They also give awards to the athletes who are in 3 or more sports because they have worked hard to stay on top of not only their academics but also their performance during their sports.

We were able to get with our principal Mr. Bollinger to dig deep in the preparation for this assembly. He starts by talking about the weeks of prep that not only he but multiple administrators help with, “We start at the beginning of the year. We have to run everyone’s GPA and it’s not a cumulative GPA. It is just from the last year, so it takes a lot of work to get every kid’s GPA for the calendar year. So we have to get a list for all grade levels, then we’ve got to figure out whether that kid has lettered in the past. So we know whether to give them a bar or a letter. Then we get that list of kids. We print out a postcard for every parent of every kid, and we send a postcard home to every parent of every student that is getting recognized. Then the week before, I develop an agenda of the speeches and who’s talking and we make sure we get certificates for everybody, whether it be for FCCLA or, you saw the three-sport athletes, and all of that stuff, we get all the certificates done, we print certificates for everybody. And I get writer’s cramp signing all of those because we have so many kids doing wonderful things and lettering. We have those all prepared. We bag them all so they’re already in alphabetical order by grade level. Then the day of the assembly we let the gym teachers know that they didn’t have access to the gym that morning, set up the gym, we had to prep the teachers for where they were sitting with their classes. We put the teacher’s name on the bleachers. And so the parents know where they are sitting. So there is a ton of work put into it prior to the assembly.” Who would have known that an assembly could be such a big thing for a school and its students.

Seeing all of the students who get an award for doing good and keeping up and not letting the worst get to them helps other students realize that they can do it too. Let’s all keep working our hardest and keep our heads up!