June

Graduation was certainly a different affair this year.  Kudos to The Man, The Myth, Karl Mellander who with a committee of other staff and students came up with a great event that I was happy to be a part of.  A stage was set up in Stewart Park with the lake as the background, and over the course of five days each student walked across, pausing for photos and an explanation from Principal Trumble about switching the tassel from the right to the left.

Most graduates showed up with just a few family members, but one kid on the first day had a full posse to mark the occasion.

Will Mu, a student I worked with frequently during her four years at IHS was one of the first to cross that I had a special interest in seeing. 

Another fabulous person I got to work with for four years was Blute.  She is going into animal health (unless that's changed to geology or something) and got some good practice taking care of Bean for us when we left town.

Eh Soe Mo Soe and his brothers, plus another grad, Terry.  We decided the risk of being maskless outdoors was worth taking to get some once-in-a-lifetime photos.  We were careful to only be in close proximity for a couple minutes. 

All the graduates had a yard sign along Cayuga St. by the high school.  Vincent was a student I really enjoyed knowing, but unfortunately he returned to Russia for Christmas and due to new regulations wasn't able to return to Ithaca.  He expects to get things cleared up in time to attend college in Miami.

Zoe fled to Taiwan about the time school closed so she wasn't able to walk across the stage either.  Not sure where she plans to go to college but her older brother just finished his first year at Cornell.

Eh Thehday wasn't into the stage walk but couldn't get out of the yard sign spectacle.

Another event cancelled because of the pandemic was the Senior Awards Ceremony.  David offers a scholarship to a student going into health care in memory of his wife who died in 2016 and this year's recipient was Will Mu.  We set up our own ceremony. 

Will Mu wasn't going to pick up her yard sign so I did it for her and put it up by her kitchen door.

The video put together of the students walking the stage, plus messages from local people of note (Sam Harris from X Ambassadors, Amy Dickinson, and one of my all-time favorite graduates G-Quan Booker of GCF Dance).  The video is not available as I write this due to a few errors, like leaving out many of the students whose name starts with "M" and this spelling error that I caught with a screen shot before they took the video down for editing.  Here is the completed video.

More hat-tossing from Julia.

Will Mu and I posing for a quick pic. 

Julie giving her cap a toss.

Oh what a treat to see Yoe Mu walk the stage.  This young woman worked so hard to get here, and I have no doubt that hard work is going to continue throughout her life.

When I first met Terry and got to know him, I kept saying I wanted to get to have dinner at his house and meet his parents if they are anything like him.  Then I met El Ree and knew this was a unique family I hope to stay in touch with for many years.  The first time I met their dad it was clear Terry hadn't fallen far from the tree.

They did display a bit of sibling rivalry at school, but proved it can be set aside when it counts.

Will Mu also had a graduation ceremony at BOCES from her nursing program.  As you can hear/see from this video, she didn't stop with only one award, she cleaned up at BOCES.