| Blog Entry - Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 | Add / Read (3) |
Our school is starting a new chapter of the National Honor Society. Yesterday our faculty council met to determine selection criteria and bylaws. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that an honor society would have a stringent petition process (you're not allowed to call it an application). Our kids will have to be selected first based on their grades - probably a 3.35 cumulative GPA or higher. After they go through the grade screening to determine who's eligible, they'll also have to complete a petition that will include an essay (about how they embody the National Honor Society values of character, leadership, and service) and present their resume describing their service, their work, and their activities. Of course, they'll also be evaluated by their teachers, coaches, and administrators. As soon as they finish creating their petitions, we'll abstract out the names and evaluate the packets.
I'm excited about starting an honor society chapter at school - even though are kids are great, I think anything we can do to encourage them to value scholarship even more than they do is a good idea. I have fond memories of my NHS chapter, although I don't think we were all that active. I think my college honor societies were more active - I'm still a member of Golden Key International Honour Society and the national leadership honor society - Omicron Delta Kappa. ODK and Golden Key had us actually do some service activities for our school and community when we were students (I think - I have to admit it's been quite a few years - never you mind how many...).
I'm not the advisor for our NHS chapter - I'm just on the faculty council - but I definitely hope we will have our kids continue to do more of the kinds of service projects they already do during our Summer of Learning activities (SOL) - they do volunteer work, go to college campuses, work in possible future fields, and more.
Author: Libby Ingrassia
Posted at: 05:35:52 PM
