Honor Society

I am here to claim my due.  Grandmother Bragging Rights are mine today!  My granddaughter, Robin, will be inducted into her middle school's honor society at the beginning of June.  Am I proud?  You betcha!  And here's why:

This young lady has only been in that school since January, when the family relocated to the Pacific Northwest from the Chicago area.   She had relocated in the Chicago area just a year or so before that, after a bit of a rocky bump in the road of her previous living circumstances.   In short, she was the New Kid twice in rapid succession, and an honor student in both places.  Middle school is the absolute worst when it comes to fitting in, yet Robin worked and worked to do just that, plus maintain excellent grades--twice.  Quite an accomplishment!

National Junior Honor Society (for middle-schoolers) and National Honor Society (for grades 11 and 12) are (obviously) national organizations that recognize students for certain exemplary qualities. Membership is not only an honor but also a responsibility.  Membership in the organization has no prizes other than recognition.  Maintaining membership, however, requires that a student's grade point average (GPA) remains above a certain level.  He/She must also attend meetings plus be responsible for a minimum number of service hours to the community per year.  Failure to maintain the standards excludes a student from membership in the group.

When I was still a teaching lady, I was the NHS Sponsor for my high school for a couple of years.  Just so you'll see the merits of Robin's achievement, here was our selection process, patterned directly after the recommendations of the organization at the national level:

1.  The Sponsor obtains a list of all students of qualifying age from the administration, along with each student's GPA.  Students whose GPAs are at or above the 3.5 (on a 4.0 scale) national minimum become potential candidates for membership.

2.  The Sponsor prepares a scoring sheet that includes the names of all potential members and distributes this sheet to all appropriate faculty members.  Each qualifying student is rated numerically by the faculty, each on his/her own merit, in the areas of scholarship, leadership, character, citizenship, and service.  (I personally don't remember "citizenship" being on the list, but I do note that it is on current lists.)

3.  The Sponsor collects these score sheets and computes a mean average score for each potential member, allowing for personality issues of teachers by dropping one of the lowest ratings and one of the highest ratings.

4.  The Sponsor then meets with a volunteer Advisory Board of three-to-five teachers.  Those teachers are given a "blind" sheet (meaning no student names are on it), showing the range and frequency of the mean average scores of potential student honorees.  The Advisory Board determines a cut-off score based on the frequency and other considerations (such as the size of the group of potential honorees).  This cut-off score decides who will be invited for induction into NHS.

5.  The Sponsor then issues an invitation to join the Society to all students who make the cut.  The students must then write a formal letter of acceptance.  The letter must include the reasons why they want to join. (Those who do not write the letter are not inducted.  Believe it or not, it happens.)

6.  The induction ceremony into NJHS or NHS is a formal process.  Parents and faculty are invited. Current members set up the tables and seating, provide the refreshments, and perform the ceremony--complete with lighting candles and speaking words about each characteristic standard of the Society. Inductees may choose a special someone, if desired, to pin them.  Then there are pictures and a receiving line, of sorts.  It is a proud occasion for families and students, alike!

The whole selection process happens the way it does to protect the sponsor, the school, and the teachers from accusations of prejudice from unhappy families if their child doesn't get picked for membership.  (Most people don't have any idea how the selections are made.) The Sponsor has nothing to do with who gets in, nor does the Advisory Board (since they don't get to see the names of the students in the process).  I did have one female student who had excellent grades but a negative attitude.  She was scored lower on the rating scale by her teachers than many other students whose grades weren't as good as hers.  As it happened, she didn't make the cut.  Her parents challenged the results.  Once I explained the selection process to them, they had no further recourse.  

One year, I was teaching 10th grade English.  One of the boys in my honors class came in bragging--or maybe complaining--that his custodial grandfather had taken away his car keys and newly-issued driver's license when he got in trouble with the police for driving erratically and bouncing pumpkins off of rural mailboxes with his buddies.  I said, "Victor, that kind of behavior will jeopardize the possibility of getting into National Honor Society.  Have you thought of that?"  Oh...no.....he hadn't, he said with eyes wide.  Eventually, Victor became un-grounded and got his keys and license back from Grandpa.  Two weeks later, Victor was killed in a fiery car crash that killed another of his classmates and seriously injured yet another.  It happened because of speed on a rain-slicked country road that happened to have a tree right at the edge of the pavement.  Does the potential of getting into NHS provide the encouragement to protect one's behavior and reputation by behaving well?  No, but it can...for forward-thinking youngsters who care.  Victor cared.  He just didn't make the connection, I guess.

Which brings me back to Robin.  I think she makes the connection.  I'm so very proud of her--not just because she works hard to be a good student.  And not just because she is my granddaughter (although that is reason enough).  But rather because she has overcome so many negative things in her life, with the help of her parents, to become the kind of kid that everyone would love to have.  I don't know what the future will bring for her, but for right now, it's enough.

Congratulations, my little Robin bird!  You are such a blessing!