Congratulations Seniors!

This week we celebrated the wonderful seniors at graduation in our city’s indoor convention center! I try to always make it to graduation at the end of each year to see my seniors off and get photos with them to hang on my senior wall. This year I especially made sure to go since I couldn’t make it to prom. In the half hour before the procession begins, all students and teachers meet in a large conference room to take photos and allow the seniors to get organized in their lines. I always try to get as many photos as I can with the seniors in my AP Calculus class during this time!

This year we had the most graduates ever in the history of my school - it was around 430 students! Back in my earlier years of teaching when we had around 250-300 seniors graduating, we could use one of the big side rooms. When the procession began, teachers would walk out first followed by students in rows of two, one row male students and one row female students, lined up in alphabetical order. The females wore white robes and the males wore red robes. Teachers always wore (and still do wear) black graduation robes. When the female students made it to the stage, they would be handed a flower by the teacher who was the senior class officer before walking up onto the stage. The students all sat on chairs on the stage, the teachers sat on the floor level in the front rows, and parents and guests sat in all of the rows behind the teachers. With this set-up, the class officers and student speakers sat in the very front row on stage. We used to also use the two top-ranking juniors - the junior class marshals - wearing yellow robes and holding tall baton maces/staffs - to tell the student rows when to stand up and sit down. The females, on one side of the stage, would all get their diplomas first, followed by the males, on the other half of the stage.

One thing that I liked about this set-up was that it was really easy to see the seniors as they sat up on the stage, especially when they walked across the stage to get their diploma. Many things have changed since Covid, including the robe colors - all students now wear red robes, and they are just sorted alphabetically, not by gender.

In the past couple years, our school had to begin using the arena where sporting events are held. Now when we walk into this arena, the students walk out first in rows of two followed by the teachers, who now sit in the back. The teachers and students sit on the ground level, and only the administrators and student speakers sit on the stage. The jumbotron is on to allow everyone to easily see the students as they walk across, get their diplomas, and shake hands.

Afterwards the tradition is for the staff to meet at a nearby restaurant for dinner, cake, and drinks. The principal always says a little speech and people hang out as long as they want - remembering that the next day is still an early morning school day :)

This year we had speeches from the principal, mayor, superintendent, valedictorian, salutatorians, class president, and a school committee member.