Going to School to Play

Fifth grade graduation just happened. This means I now have a middle-schooler. I'm too young for this! Right?

Before the ceremony began, each student created a slide that announced their future goals. Evan's slide said: "I plan to play a professional sport and travel the world." Simple and yet it encompasses two things he truly loves.

The ceremony began today with a song performance that included sign language. Evan told me last night that for the first time in his life he wished the other kids were two or three inches taller so that their heads would block his face and he would be able to lip sync! The best news we have about leaving elementary school is the middle school offers a STEM class for related arts. No more music!

Junior Beta members were acknowledged. Another song was sung. Citizenship awards were announced. Hundreds of names were called, and then it was finally Evan's turn to walk across the stage. Today made me really rethink our decision to send Evan to public high school only because I can't imagine sitting through another ceremony with five times the number of names that I heard today. I almost died with the mundanity of it all. Connor. Riley. I think I heard these two names no fewer than one fifty times.

Evan was awarded the Presidential Academic Excellence Award for maintaining grades of 90% or higher in all of his classes. Normally I would be honest and tell you we really expect nothing else from Evan, but he got placed in a class that was filled with "challenging students", and he had so many teacher changes this year, that it took me until this month to remember his homeroom teacher's name. He survived it all.

Evan can't wait for middle school! He's ready to play QB for the football team; he's hoping to be the only sixth grader to make the middle school basketball team; and he's planning to win State with the middle school soccer team. I tried to explain that between all of these athletic goals he has to fit in some academics. That's not nearly as much fun to dwell upon though.

Bring it, Middle School! We're ready to play, cheer, win, and maybe study in between!