I haven't been to a high school graduation since I was in high school.
Yesterday My school pushed more than 600 graduates through in two hours. It was at Globe Life Park. The section I was guiding was just behind home plate. The graduation stage was past 3rd base.
Fortunately, the graduates didn't have to run the bases, they left the stands and then came out through the tunnels the players use to get on the field. The families sat in the balcony seats.
There has been severe weather in the area for several days now- but it held off for my school's graduation.
I don't get to know a lot of students. I have small classes, and I see each student twice in a week. Instead of having six classes of thirty students each, I have essentially three classes of 15 students each.
Sometimes I have a great relationship with my students, and sometimes I want to strangle them. I teach freshmen- and they are all immigrants, so some of them move away before they graduate, some of them drop out to get jobs.
I volunteered for graduation this year because a few awesome students from my class graduated this year.
One student had studied English in her country, but in an English as a foreign language kind of way. She came to the USA and took English 1 and English 2 her first year. In her second year she took English 3 and 4, in addition to all her other required classes. She rocked them all and got a FULL scholarship to an excellent private university.
The other student did not study English in his country. He got here through unbelievable hardship. He followed the same course of study, worked hard and his English is so good now.
Many of the students at my school are amazing individuals. Some of them will become thugs- like the kid who was failing my (regular/non-immigrant) class-
I said, "Hey- what you doing? You know you have to pass English class to graduate right? What do you want to do when you finish HS?"
His repy- "I dunno miss- prolly f*ck around and drop a body."
I have a student this year who is a first-year immigrant. She started school in the USA for the first time in August 2023. She clearly had studied English in her country. She is smart and motivated- and she pulls other students up with her. On her first STAAR test (TX standardized test for students) she Mastered the English 1 content. 14% of Texas students mastered their English 1 STAAR. 14% of ALL TEXAS STUDENTS mastered the content, and one of them was my super sweet first-year immigrant student from a third-world country. 💖
Happy summer to me- and all amazing and less amazing students!
