By Kira Yates ’16

Every March, students who have achieved Honor Roll and/ or Straight A’s, are granted a small token in first period, a ticket to miss third and fourth period.  During this time, students are supposed to go the Ertzman to watch some songs from Rock’n’Roll.  In between every few songs, the Educators of America Club chooses audience members to play games like musical chairs. While it’s meant to recognize students’ hard work, the assembly achieves the opposite.

Firstly, distributing the tickets makes kids who come up short academically feel inadequate.  The point may be to get struggling students to improve their grades, but the recognition is too rare to be effective.  In addition, the assembly wastes valuable class time.  With all of the snow days we’ve had this year, teachers are complaining about how much information they have to fit into a small amount of time, cut even shorter by the assembly.  Finally, some students find this as an excuse to skip school or these periods. If the school really wants to reward good grades, they need to find something that doesn’t drain academic time and will not make others feel inferior.