It took us a while to wind down from all of the end of year celebrations, and to gather all the photos.
*First his little high school.
He attends a typical high school and classes, but he also attends their "Experiential Program" in a different building. There are smaller classes, he calls his teachers by their first names, and they have old-school college style class scheduling.
The big draw for us is that one week out of every year he picks his own curriculum called Interim, and the last semester of his senior year is called Walkabout, where he determines what he'll do for 2 eight-week sessions. It's also a tight community of less then 150 students for the whole school (compared to the main campus high school that has close to 2000 students).
It's a beautiful and quirky Tudor style building down the road from the district's 2 main campus high schools.
One more time up the tree! Can you spot him?
The Saturday started off with the students sharing a 15 minute talk about their own Walkabout. (Then we could listen to up to 5 other student's talks.) It was really interesting to see how the students grew over their time doing something so different then just school.
Here is Parker talking about his time doing voice acting. 8 weeks with a coach and 8 weeks on his own.
After a lunch break they started the wonderful senior recognition ceremony. It was very personalized. Each Senior invited someone, often a member of the staff, to share something about them and introduce them to the audience.
Parker had an English teacher that he's become pretty close to over the years to talk about him. He shared some class jokes and some heartfelt kindness. No kid has it easy, our kid definitely hasn't, but it was nice to hear from a teacher who is on his side.
Then this is totally different, the students circle the audience and they stretch a ribbon on their shoulders. Staff members come around and snip the ribbon, so each student gets a portion of the ribbon. It's symbolic of them being in the community and then being released I think. I'm trying to get the video off my phone, it's cute.
*Ok, that was a very long, emotional Saturday. Sunday was a quiet Seminary graduation where I didn't take any pictures. But it was a tricky 4 years of seminary-- early morning seminary is always tricky. I'm going to write about it here just for preservation, if this doesn't make sense, that's ok.
Freshman year-- because of where we live, it wasn't clear where he'd attend seminary. Most of the high schoolers in our ward congregation attend a different high school and we were also a relatively new ward so we didn't have a teacher. So we found the students who attend his main campus high school in a different ward, he didn't know most of them. Over the year (as often happens and it's understandable) a bunch of kids dropped out. Then mid-year the teacher moved from just a few blocks from the high school, to a very inconvenient neighborhood.
Sophomore year-- a new hope. A few new families moved in and it looked like we could make the suggestion that we have our own seminary class. An amazing teacher took over, it helped that he lives in a perfect spot for the high school. But as things go, students dropped out and over time, Parker was pretty much alone by the end. (Greg often attended so they wouldn't be alone.)
Junior year-- the amazing seminary teacher stuck with Parker! Then the pandemic and yup, Parker and his teacher kept seminary going over zoom. Now it was called Zoom-inary. They moved the time to 9am and I started attending with Parker. All this and they switched curriculums around at some point so Parker hasn't had any Old Testament for seminary, which is a bummer to miss out on.
Senior year-- we lost our amazing seminary teacher but got 2 new amazing ones. They were determined to make it work through the pandemic. Our school district was all remote, and the other school district was hybrid, so between the two them they had 2 classes, one at 6am, one at 12noon. This way students could decide and go to the one that worked best for their schedule each day. This also meant there were lots of students attending, including Mimi!
They kept it this way through all our changes (remote, hybrid, remote, hybrid, all-in). When both school districts switched to all-in, there was just a few weeks left in the school year. They continued all classes at 6am over zoom and the teachers switched off weeks. Parker kept going, even though his schedule was bonkers with play practice, working a few days where he could, Walkabout, and a few classes at the main high school. But that's what youth is for, right?!
*Monday and the main high school graduation.
It wasn't clear until about 2 weeks before that day where the graduation would take place. Normally it's held in the convention center on a Sunday, both big high schools, one right after the other during the day. But a couple years ago we were told we would have to move to Monday or Tuesday night at the University's basketball stadium because of construction. I think this actually proved to be a plus, because there's less demand for a Monday or Tuesday and we were able to keep the basketball stadium, where other school districts had to do drive-through graduations in the high school parking lots like last year.
What do I like least about graduation?
Crowds- no problem! Everyone was limited to 4 seats because Covid restrictions were still in-place.
Families cheering so you can't hear the next kid's name- no problem! I'm not sure why they did this but they paused a full 5-10 seconds after each student's name so we could hear every kid's name. I loved this. We did the math and it added maybe 30 minutes to the night, but so worth it!
Finding a good seat- no problem! Because of Covid they had to assign us seats through ticketmaster!
Here are some photos of the night...
He's in there somewhere...
*Tuesday was chill, Parker could stay home and relax while his younger siblings went to school. The elementary school held a tea for students who were graduating and still in the area. It could have been better if some of the kids he knew had gone, mostly he chatted with teachers which was very nice.
*Wednesday, Parker took off to the little school's field day. They had bouncy house type inflatables and lunch. It was a great day to finish off a busy and high energy week.
well, that was a shock. I was scrolling along pictures of graduation and when rubics cube came up, it was a jolt. What a great history of your first family graduation.
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