All the Graduations

Graduation season was extra full this year! Prepare yourselves, this is a long post.

 

There was no official graduation for Savvy, but rest assured I ordered her a cap and gown! One of her friends whose mom is from Hawaii made each kid a candy lei (culturally appropriate and given in love!), and another parent showed up with cards for each kid. I gave the cap and gown to Savvy's teacher, Mrs. Riedl, who took pics of all the kids trying it on and will use it next year. There were lots of treats and memory books too. Savvy had a great year in kinder. She can read. It is magical to watch. We are so thankful she was able to start school this year! In NV, she couldn't, missing the cutoff day by 5 days. There were no loopholes or exceptions, or anything. Here in WA, she took an assessment and then was on a probation period the first 30 days. After that time, her teacher was thrilled to keep her in class. Savvy, and Cass, have loved school. While Cass misses Mt Rose and her friends, she has made more friends and done a pretty good job of writing and calling her NV friends. 

Kinder Olympics

On Savvy's kinder party day, I also stopped by Cass' class and walked with her to lunch. The girls pick one day a week to eat hot lunch. 

 At the school, there is an art teacher, a music teacher, a PE teacher, and a librarian who also does STEM in the computer room.  Each grade has a performance with music and songs from cultures of the kids in that class, their music teacher is amazing! The P.E. teacher did so many events, we couldn't participate in them all. But the Kinder Olympics was pretty neat. The girls brought home pottery they made on a wheel. They weren't allowed to put it in the kiln themselves, but learned about chemical reactions when the glazes turned different colors. And the no homework police will continue into next year.  It has a been a fabulous year, full of learning and new friends and the girls are excited for next year :-)

Last Day of Kindergarten!

Guess who joined us for the last day of school and dance performances? Alzada! She lives four hours away and it was such a treat to have her for a few days and catch up. We taught her the family game of crokonol (sorry for the misspelling!) and she whooped us all. We went to dinner at a cute place called Annies that sits on the waters of Bud Bay and a magician walking the tables dazzled us with table tricks. And when I was sad and frustrated about a certain inappropriate hip hop number during the full dance performance, she asked for understanding and read an article I shared with her on cultural appropriation. Alzada is amazing. She showed the girls a few self defense moves based on a form of martial arts she has studied and they have been practicing almost daily :-) And we had no idea of her love for Indian food! We also took Alzada on a tour of my campus where we sampled produce at the organic farm. 

Kinder Graduation for Savvy (and Cass from 3rd grade) is on the books! 

Matt and I were both at new campuses this year and had a great time being involved and working graduation. At Evergreen, we have a program at a different campus located in Tacoma, and I had the pleasure of helping organizing that one. The Tacoma graduation is the one I took the girls too, and the one featured in the pics below.

Yay for our volunteers and student coordinators! They made this celebration a grand success! We were there at 8:30am, setting up and getting ready.

The graduates were led by an African drummer through the neighborhood to the campus.

My partner in collaboration- Ms. Vicky Buford! 

Full meal and face painting and balloon animals for the kids and families.

The Sankofa is the unofficial mascot, and painted beautifully by our face painter. From Ghana, the head looks back to recognize the past and all the lessons learned, while the feet face forward to represent moving on and taking those lessons.

There were smaller graduations and the big commencement earlier in the week. One of my staff members graduated with her MA! A few pics from them... 

Matt had a moment during his graduation where a father and son walked together. He said there wasn't a dry eye in the place. I am sure there is a pic somewhere we'll share later :-) 

Now on to summer. Some people assume that there is a break! Ha!! That is not how an admin contract works my friends. We were lucky to use some leave and  take a week off. Tomorrow it's back to work. There is so much to do in the summer. Between students who are taking classes, new and old projects, and preparations for Fall, Summer is as busy as any other time of year.  On a positive note, the weather is awesome here in summer and we'll get some great weekends to hike and camp!