O'Neill Middle School held it's graduation ceremony for the first time since anyone can remember in the Downers Grove High School gymnasium. As a graduate of O'Neill and South, it was an interesting experience. I walked into the gymnasium for the first time Kitty Dukakis had done a speech on the campaign trail recommending that we students avoid the perils of drugs. A while later she was hospitalized for drinking rubbing alcohol. The gymnasium was a place I generally avoided as a student. I was a swimmer, so I did PE down by the pool after freshman year, either as a lifeguard/swim teacher or through swim competition. With 3000+ students, the gym was this loud place to be avoided during pep rallies. So naturally, I wandered to a place I was more comfortable, going down towards the pool.
Outside the Downers Grove South High School pool is a blue board with white letters. It's a top performances board. Listed there are the best performances of South students in Swimming and Diving. I wandered to see the board. At the top of the 100 and 500 still sat Steve Fetyko, I remember the 44 he swam at State in February of 1991. I remember him coming home and quietly sharing the 4:44 he had gotten at State in February of 1989. At the top they still remained. Doc Antonoff's 507.38 in diving in 1973 had just recently fallen to second place on the board. The board was filled with other names I remembered: Aaron Johnson's 1:02 and Keith Johnson's 1:05 in the 100 Breast, Nick's 52 in the Fly, other names I swam with: Mike Orseno, Eric Mateja, Dan Brady, Mark Hacker, and others. The board was a roll of honors, those that had achieved something remarkable. And 24 years after I had left, the honors were still rememberable to me. They were specific times, specific incidents, specific moments where something special had happened. To an outside person, one could look at the times and say honestly how special or not special it was. They were comparable points of data and in my mind moments of personal energy that culminated from months of hard work.
I walked back in the gym and looked up against the wall. There was a large blue cut out of the State of Illinois. Listed on it maybe 15 names. State Champions that had gone to Downers Grove South. Listed their were some of my classmates. I remember Mindy bouncing for hours on the the diving board warming up. I remember my neighbor Tina running each day as soon as the weather broke. I remember meeting Stephanie in the halls one day between classes. State Champions in diving, track, and gymnastics respectively. Names honored on the wall for specific achievements.
See, as we move to vertical learning, where students are challenged to push the boundaries of what they can learn and do hard things. The old system of honor roll may no longer make sense, if it ever did. See when high achieving students get material at their level, they may no longer get perfect scores. They could be learning trigonometry as an 8th grader and Calculus 3 as a Sophomore or Junior. If we give them the opportunity to learn at their instructional level, it may take them time to learn and achieve. So what do we do about Honor Roll? Do we honor the aggregate achievement of performance as we do now, regardless of the class taken? Do we make some mythical scale for adjusting the worth of Enriched Classes, Honors Classes, AP classes to calculate "GPA?" Does being an Honor Roll student at Downers Grove South, Deerfield High School, Lee M. Thurston High School, and Richland Center High School mean the same thing? Does it mean any more or any less depending on my high school? Does it mean equalized performance or are these honor rolls inherently unequal? Does it actually mean anything? I'm not even sure that a first semester A in Mrs. Lindahl's Chemistry class that I took is the same as an A in a first semester Chemistry class that I taught.
We do need to honor students for their achievements. We need to bring meaning to the accomplishments and recognize outstanding insight and performance. In talking through this with one of our bright Middle School principals, the idea came out of a role of honors. Recognizing students for outstanding performance, not in aggregate as a GPA does but in specific. Just as we do now, publishing a list of students who achieve at high levels, not in terms of general grades, but in terms of itemized specific performances. A student's name and the performance/standard that is being recognized, for example:
Jamie Doe - Life Sciences- Cell Structures, Musical Composition
Jo Winner - Engineering - Simple Machines
Tommy Marvelous - Musical Performance - Vocal, Spanish Preterite Tense
...
A simple list. Easy to reconcile based on accomplished standards and teacher identification. Student's performances identifiable by specific achievements on rubrics developed by student's and staff. Meaningful in terms of why a student is being recognized. A roll of honors that recognizes that we don't need to be great in everything to be outstanding in any one important thing.
I look at the board at South and there are achievements that have never gone away. Special moments outside the classroom. We can generate this within the classroom by simply creating the same power, honoring not a summation of the work, but rather specificity within the work. There could be boards outside the Math Department, Science Department, Music Department that honor similar specific achievements. What could generate more powerful learning, the honor roll or a roll of honors?
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