Fish Awards

Yay! Today was Max and Luke Fish Award Ceremony; a ceremony held a few times a year to recognize students personal achievements during the school year. It is also their "Pep Fest"--you remember those, don't you?

The families of the students receiving awards were invited to attend, and unlike so many schools, this school does not give an award to everyone! That's right, you gotta earn it baby!

I do feel kind of sorry for the other students who work hard to be recognized and don't receive an award. Lucy is one of those students, an over-achiever, really. She works really hard in school, is basically a good kid and tries hard to be friendly to others. We told her that we see her efforts though, even if she isn't officially recognized for it by the school. It sounded better in my head than how it came out.

Anyway, Max's award was for personal achievement: last year he was very quiet, did not speak to anyone, volunteer for anything, was not a "book buddy" (the older kids team up with the Kindergarteners and read them books). But this year, he volunteered in front of his class to demonstrate how to use the calender and he was a book buddy to a little boy and read him a book! His teachers were so proud of him they wanted to give him a Fish Award to encourage him to keep it up.

We were very proud of him and cheered from we sat.

Luke received an award too, though his picture didn't turn out at all. I'm not even going to bother posting it, that's how bad it is.

His Fish Award was for standing up for himself for the first time. He finally had "enough" of being pushed around by the girls and told a little girl (who had told him that she didnt' like him): "That's mean, and it hurts my feelings when you say that." She looked surprised and said, "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't know--I won't do it again."

The teacher overheard and was so proud of how he handled the situation, plus he taught this little girl something about others feelings that her teachers had been trying to teach her for a long time! Believe me, knowing Luke, this took him a lot of self-control to talk to her like that!

Since I don't have a picture for Luke, here is a video of him receiving his award. (You will have to go to the actual blog to see it.)



And here is Max receiving his award: