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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-06-02

Is It Just Me?

As long-time readers of this blog know (all three of them), I am a public school teacher. And today was the last day of classes for Jefferson County Public Schools--my district.

Which means that every single elementary school in the district devoted at least 90 minutes of this (largely useless anyway) last day of school to what is called a "Continuation Ceremony." This is one of those recent educational inventions in which we throw a party and have a ceremony for our sixth graders (in JeffCo, 6th grade is still in the elementary school) to commemorate their time and to congratulate them on making it through sixth grade.

In other words, it's a little mini-graduation, complete with "Pomp and Circumstance" and tiny little diplomas.

Now, don't get me wrong--I remember the end of sixth grade as a pretty cool event. It was nice to know that I was done with this particular school, and good to be looking forward to the next stop in middle school. But it WAS NOT worthy of a formal ceremony or anything. As I recall, the sixth grade got to spend the last day at the local roller rink.

Now, I figure getting done with sixth grade should be considered an absolute minimum expectation for our students--it shouldn't be a surprise or a wonder that we've completed sixth grade.

So I was wondering: when we spend so much time and energy celebrating the mundane, do we make it that much more difficult recognize--much less celebrate--the truly exceptional?

Or, like I said, is it just me?
Posted by: Michael / 6/02/2007 12:46:00 AM

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