Graduation

Today is a day that high school students and parents look forward to with anticipation and a sense of accomplishment--GRADUATION! Unfortunately, the ceremony I attended today was a fiasco in more ways than I can count. Graduation is a time for celebration, of course. However, it is also a solemn occasion that allows students to be recognized for their hard work and acknowledges what lies ahead for them. The parents today ruined the ceremony for most of the participants and had several of them in tears. I personally was cursed at; the principal was called names during the middle of ceremony; parents were using airhorns and yelling so much that the graduates' names couldn't be heard. The ceremony would have finished 35 minutes sooner without the interruptions. Before the ceremony, parents were bum-rushing the door to get in without tickets and some of them even took the police officers to task for not supporting them. All in all, I will NOT attend another ceremony like that for any reason. There were several faculty there who had never attended before and I am sure that they got just a "wonderful" impression of what was supposed to take place. I will write more about this after I have a chance to reflect and sleep on it. I wish my students well but what a mess!