School of Hard Knocks

School of Hard Knocks is an achievement related to the seasonal world event Children's Week. Completing this achievement is part of the meta achievement.

It is considered one of the more difficult achievements to earn, particularly below the level cap (where there is a smaller population for the battlegrounds to draw from).

Strategy
Although you can solo this achievement, it's recommended to complete it with premade battle ground groups. You can all take turns completing the requirements until everyone has them completed. So that it's clear who is going when, it's also recommended to set up the order ahead of time. Be courteous to your other party members and avoid completing the achievement criteria multiple times.

In particular with Eye of the Storm and Alterac Valley, it may take several tries before you are successful, so have patience and try to be organized. But whatever you do, remind everyone to have their orphan out. Any time a member dies, remind the player to re-summon their orphan.

Warsong Gulch
Allow the other faction to assault the flag, then move as a group to assault the flag carrier. This is probably easiest to accomplish midfield where visability is good. It's likely that the other team will also have members attempting to complete the achievement, so the flag carrier may even be undefened. As a courtesy, you should send out a sacrifice to capture the other faction's flag.

Arathi Basin
The name of the game for this battleground is to only assault bases, not to capture or defend. Once a base has been assaulted move out quickly. With any luck, the other faction will move in to capture it, and you assault again for another quick achievement. Remember, you only get credit for the assaults, not the defense or the capture. If the other team is moving around as a single pack, split up into two groups. Similarly, if the enemy is spread out, you may have better luck moving as a single pack to easily overtake smaller groups of defenders, if there are any at all.

Eye of the Storm
For this battleground, you are primarily defending. Stick tightly as a group. Let the assigned person pick up the flag, and guard them ruthlessly while they return it. The following macro won't help with the achievement directly, but may alert the opposite faction to your intentions:

/wait /target Orphan /point /target last /wait

You only need to maintain one base for flag captures. If at all possible, keep some of the other bases at neutral standing to keep the game running longer.

Alterac Valley
You only get credit for this achievement if you capture one of the four towers and bunkers. You must actually be the capturing person to get credit.

There are two strategies - either stealth up solo, pop your orphan, cap and run. A stack of Lesser Invisibility Potion or a Gnomish Cloaking Device would also work for classes that cannot stealth.

Or you can go up with a small party, dps plus a healer is recommended, and capture the old fashioned way. Ranged dps is highly desirable to help get the archers down fast.

Bugs
During the 2009 event, players who had two Orcish Orphan Whistle at the same time were not be able to complete this achievement with either whistle. This bug may have been subsequently created because of the hotfix to whistles which allowed players to have more than one. If you experience problems completing the achievement while you have two whistles, try using your original whistle versus the additional whistle you obtained from the matron. It is currently unknown if this bug was resolved for the 2010 Children's Week event.