Middle school students honored during Night of the Stars event
Administrators, teachers and family honored 270 students at the May 16 Tonganoxie Middle School Night of the Stars awards ceremony.
The students got dressed up and were chauffeured to TMS in a limousine as part of the honor of attending the ceremony.
There was even a photography service that acted as the paparazzi and took pictures of the students, photos the students later could purchase.
“It’s like the Academy Awards,” said Steve Woolf, TMS principle. “It’s always a big entrance.”
The students dined on steaks donated by Community National Bank, along with baked potatoes, corn on the cob, salad and cheesecake, while their parents ate hot dogs and chips.
Woolf said he started Night of the Stars when he taught in Colorado and has been doing it at TMS ever since he moved to Tonganoxie. This year’s event marked Woolf’s final one as a Tonganoxie administrator. He will be principal at Turner Middle School next year in Kansas City, Kan.
The students were recognized for their academic achievements as well as for their actions and attitudes.
The top honors went to the students who won the Kansas State High School Activities Association’s Citizenship Award.
“It isn’t the kid that runs the fastest and jumps the highest,” Woolf said. “It’s the kid that shows the best overall citizenship; that has the potential to blow the world away.”
To qualify for Night of the Stars, students must either earn a school letter or they can be nominated by a staff member.
“Sometimes the cooks see different things than the staff does,” Woolf said about some students being nominated for the extra help they would provide to the kitchen staff without being asked. “I have no veto power; if they see it that’s the way it is.”
The banquet also gave students an opportunity to meet their new principal, Jill Dickerson.
“I thought it was a lovely evening,” she said. “I like the way that Night of the Stars involves the whole family and how it gets the whole family to celebrate.
Dickerson, who was assistant principal at Andover Middle School, said the eighth-graders from there would have an event called the Eight Grade Promotion where students would have a dance and also be given awards.
Dickerson said TMS already is on the road to making plans for next year’s event.