Student of the Month

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Do any of you guys on this board remember having some kind of award program like this at school? This "Student of the Month" program was used in my middle school and high school. Each school, however, differed in how the program was implemented. For example, in middle school, the students who won the award would have their names announced over the public address speaker, and would then walk down to either the library or the auditorium, or whichever room was used to take their pictures or receive their awards, I cannot recall exactly, where they would receive their prizes and have their pictures taken, and when those students got up in their classrooms to go down to have their picture taken and receive their prizes, their class would applaud them.
In high school, the process ran in reverse, and took longer as well. In this school, the selected students would be told the day before the day they would receive their award by one of their teachers to go down to the principal's office at some specified time. Then they would go down to the principal's office the next day, receive their prizes and have their picture taken, and then have their names announced over the public address speaker a few hours or days later.

Now, here's my story about this award. I first found out about this award in sixth grade when I was sitting in reading class and the announcements came on and announced the "Outstanding Stars of the Month." That year, and years before that, my behavior and attitude were mediocre at best, so I obviously did not get it in sixth grade. I even got two detentions in sixth grade. One was for telling the teacher that I would accept a test grade (I got a failing grade on that test), and the other was for making a ruckus about being unable to find the lunch my mom had packed me, and I eventually found that it had been crushed by the books in my backpack. The ruckus went on for three hours and was very difficult to stop, and so I landed a detention with my reading teacher. Seventh grade, I started on the right foot. Aside from turning in my summer reading report a day late (and getting yelled at by my parents for it), my behavior started out pretty good. Until late september, I had little to no outbursts, and most of the kids were nice to me, and the ones that had been mean to me the previous year pretty much left me alone, which I liked. However, this was the year I became obsessed with the Student of the month award. It started out with me discovering my good behavior, which caused me to get my hopes up for getting student of the month. THis at first got me excited and tensed up in a good way on the inside, but then the probability of not getting the award got in the way and made me cry, which resulted in me having to leave class, and then I ended up making it into a habit of constantly leaving class to talk to my One-on-one aide about things I was not interested in, but not about school. EVen so, I started constantly asking my homeroom teacher to nominate me student of the month. In eighth grade, my behavior and attitude took a turn for the worse, and I completely lost interest in the award. Ninth grade, my interest in the "Student of the Month" award came back a tiny bit for a brief period, but then I lost interest in it again because my behavior and attitude in all of my classes was not up to snuff. In tenth grade, winning School Spirit Day got my obsession with "Student of the Month" up and running again, and I started "Campaigning for it," where I would ask every single teacher of mine if they would nominate me. Eventually, I got my art teacher to nominate me, and was very happy when I won.

Does anyone else have any experiences with anything similar when they were in school? I would be more than happy to read all your stories here.

I was Student of the Month in May 1998, the month I graduated from high school.

Tim

We only did it in elementary school. However, in Freshman year, (I only went to that high school that year) they did this award called The You-Make-It-Happen Award, which is something you earn if you do something really special for the school or community and it's very hard to earn. Only about fifteen people out of over 3,500 got that award all year and I was one of them. I got it for helping out with the special ed. gym class and for designing the school's T-shirts, which always sold out immediately. So here's exactly what happened:

In September 2003, my friends and I were watching the morning announcements and saw the first award that year given out. I remember telling my friends that I bet I was going to get that award. They said that I wouldn't have a chance since there were so many students at that school, and I was only a freshman. However, I still stayed positive.

Fast forward to February 2004. That morning before I went to school, I knew something good was going to happen that day. Sometimes I can just sense things and that morning, I definitely could. So I decided to wear a very nice outfit (and it's a good thing I did, too!).

I was in first-period Biology when it happened. I (as well as the whole class) was doing an experiment figuring out the probability of things. What we had to do was shake pennies in a big box and figure out the heads and tails difference. It was very simple. Since my seat was in the back of the room next to the door, I was the only one hearing people talking outside of it with a video camera. Since it was only 7:40 AM and I was still tired, I brushed it off thinking "whatever". But then they came into my classroom and stated, "And the You-Make-It-Happen Award goest to Heather ----------. I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was in a state of shock. I had wanted that award so badly that year and I had finally gotten it. In fact, I was the only Freshman in that whole school for the whole year to earn that award.

Instead of getting harrassed and beaten up that week, I kept getting "congratulations" (I had gotten, like, 180 of those on the first day). More people were talking to me than ever before and wanting to be my friend. In fact, this one class started calling me Miss You-Make-It-Happen. All the other kids who received the award never got this kind of attention. It was just me! Because of that award, I earned a bunch of new friends. Some of them just wanted to be my friend because of the award and some wanted to be my friend anyway, because I seem like a cool person. That week was the greatest week of my entire high school span.

I've never been student of the month because people and teachers don't know me that well. I am not that gregarious.