Credit to Madalyn Bridgewater

Principal Jon Shultz awards Knights of the Round Table medal to student.

On Feb. 25, Knights of the Round Table was hosted by Knights of Excellence. This year, 97 students were honored by teachers and staff at the hour-long ceremony with a medal that they may wear at graduation.

“[The ceremony] was really cool because everybody got to get called up and take a picture with their teacher, which mine wasn’t there, but I got to take a picture with Mr. [Joseph] Brocksmith,” senior Kelsey Button, who was nominated by Samantha Soltysiak, said. “And everybody got recognized in a really cool way.”

​Each year, every teacher and staff member is allowed to choose only one student to recognize at the event. The students may be nominated for any reason and can be from any grade.

​“Every single kid that you give it to, there’s a different reason,” KOE sponsor Lindsey Scheller said. “It’s cool to look at the photos and see that some of the kids have been freshmen that I’ve only known for one year. Other kids have been seniors that I’ve gotten the chance to teach lots of times.”

​For seniors who are nominated, they often feel extra excited and may appreciate it more as they have seen their peers and friends be nominated in years past.

​“[When I found out], I was super happy, because throughout high school, I wanted to be nominated for it, so it was really exciting,” Button said.

​This event, while it means a lot to the recipients, also means a great deal to the teachers and staff who do the nominating, as they get to showcase the students whom many say inspired them to become teachers.  

“I feel like in teaching it’s really easy sometimes to get caught up when you might have a class of 25 kids, and there’s one or two that are causing you a lot of problems, and it becomes very stressful,” Scheller said. “But Knights of the Round Table for me is the night every year that just reminds me, no, this is why I do this. Because listening to all the different reasons that these kids have been nominated by their teachers, it’s just so cool.”