The other event of last week was my Niece's graduation from sixth grade. I thought this was a strange concept at first. I went through twelve years of education without any ceremony at all, though there was some circumstance. Of course my home town was on a 4-4-4 elementary middle high school system, where her school district is on a six year elementary, two (three?) year junior high, high school system. Her school offered pre 'K', and kindergarten as well. She and 16 others had been there together for eight years by the end. Leaving the [Ben W.] Murch Elementary School is a significant event for these kids. All the more for the great dispersal which happens next. My town had several elementary schools but just one middle and high school when we left one, we would just arrive en masse at the next in September. Half these kids leave public school for private schools, others disperse in other ways.
Regardless the bureaucracy won't let it be called a graduation; it's officially a promotion, though it came with speeches, diploma's, processions and a yearbook. This is a picture of her and one of her best friends during the out procession at the end. Hey! who says childhood is just a blur? Must have been another bad photographer. Another picture of Nicole with Lanya a little while latter.
They are going on to the same junior high. A couple of months ago I noted this junior high was next to the high school where Henry Rollins went to school. She replies back to that with a Rollins' quote (and yet she doesn't seem to know who Black Flag were) you could have knocked me over with a feather. Her other best friend Sara's family are moving a couple of blocks north into Maryland and another school. This last is just before the end: each student got their diploma and a yellow rose, which they were supposed to dart back and give to their fathers.
I glanced at a picture of my middle school briefly while writing this. I remember six grade as the year that my town took two middle schools a quarter mile apart and by pouring a gym, cafeteria, library, courtyard, and administrative office suite's worth of concrete turned them into one school. For some reason I had trouble coming to grip with the notion that there were still people in those halls growing up, being kids, being teachers (that school is where my mother a teacher worked teaching english). Apparently there are though.
Regardless the bureaucracy won't let it be called a graduation; it's officially a promotion, though it came with speeches, diploma's, processions and a yearbook. This is a picture of her and one of her best friends during the out procession at the end. Hey! who says childhood is just a blur? Must have been another bad photographer. Another picture of Nicole with Lanya a little while latter.
They are going on to the same junior high. A couple of months ago I noted this junior high was next to the high school where Henry Rollins went to school. She replies back to that with a Rollins' quote (and yet she doesn't seem to know who Black Flag were) you could have knocked me over with a feather. 
Her other best friend Sara's family are moving a couple of blocks north into Maryland and another school. This last is just before the end: each student got their diploma and a yellow rose, 
which they were supposed to dart back and give to their fathers.
