Throughout the school year, there have been opportunities for students who meet certain grade requirements, all A’s and/or B’s, to participate in grade celebrations. Although this idea seems good in theory, many concerns have been raised regarding the process of choosing students and planning the events. The Blue and White had the opportunity to interview students and administration to gather insight about these celebrations.
In order to learn more about what goes into these festivities, we asked Mr. Heinz, Apopka High School’s principal, to describe the planning process. “We choose the dates at the beginning of the year, so the teachers can plan accordingly.” He explained, “We collect some information informally by talking to students at lunch duty to create the event. There’s a few community people that want to start sponsoring, so the events will get bigger because when we have sponsors now we have proper funding. SGA kicked in quite a bit of money for the DJ and the video game truck, which was nice, but they can’t do that every quarter. So now that we’re looking at getting some sponsors, we’re looking at it being even more extreme.” Mr Heinz deepened his description by explaining how students are chosen: “It’s the original report card date, the only one that was the exception was the very first celebration, because we didn’t have report cards to go off of. The plan for the first celebrations was going to be progress reports. The issue we had with that was the schedule changes that were happening, so not all students had grades because of that. So we chose the date prior to class changes.”
There are many different ways in which these celebrations can motivate students to keep their grades up, one of these being recognition. By showing students that their hard work throughout the quarter has not gone unnoticed, it is possible that they will continue their hard work. Kendal Taylor, a sophomore at Apopka High School, shared her overall opinion on these festivities: “I think the grade celebrations are an adequate way to reward students for their hard work throughout the quarter. The free snacks and ability to skip the end of day classes makes them even more enjoyable.” The anticipation of these celebrations can also serve as a motivator. Sophomore Adri Ramirez shared this thought and stated, “knowing that they will be able to get out of class and have fun with their friends is a great way to get students to do what needs to be done.”
While these celebrations serve as a form of motivation for students, many people worry about the pressure and poor self-esteem that may come from being excluded from these events. Sam Sauter, an Apopka High School junior, shared their opinion. “I think it makes self-esteem go down, especially if you’re a hard-working student, and you just happen to have bad grades. Overall, it hinders students’ abilities and makes them feel bad. It makes you feel like you don’t want to work anymore.” Alongside these beliefs, Sam shared how these parties can interfere with learning. “It hinders your ability because they don’t take your weighted GPA, they take your grades. Say the class you have a bad grade in isn’t your seventh, you wouldn’t be able to make that grade up because you’d be in seventh-period class rather than the class you need more support in.” Currently, these celebrations take place during seventh period which leaves students who dual enroll questioning if they can still go. Mr. Heinz stated that these students are “more than welcome. They have to come into student services and just show us their Canvas from Valencia. Then, we give them the ticket.” However, many students are unable to meet the requirements to attend. Junior Leah Pugh, shared how these celebrations can set unrealistic expectations, “In certain cases where you believe you’re trying your hardest and still don’t make the cut it can’t be discouraging. The celebrations aren’t completely fair, especially considering that children who put in a lot of effort tend to have harder courses, like AP’s. It isn’t always realistic to maintain As and Bs.”
It is clear that these quarterly grade celebrations have many benefits and work as a source of motivation for students. However, it is also important to consider how they can negatively impact students and make changes based on those findings. Overall, the well-being and education of students is what matters most.
