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[SKuykendall]

Excerpts.  For full story, please go here:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20120619/NEWS01/306190048/Pomp-preschool-Graduations-youngsters-more-common?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home

Pomp and preschool: Graduations for youngsters more common
Ceremonies celebrate ever-younger graduates
7:37 PM, Jun 19, 2012   
Written by JUSTIN MURPHY, staff writer

....

The “moving-up” celebration is part of a growing trend: graduation-style festivities for younger and younger students. Preschoolers and kindergartners don miniature caps and gowns and cross the stage to receive their proof of passage.

At School 33, 5-year-old Najeer Burgess had about 10 family members in the audience to hear his name called out.

“It’s my first child graduating, so it’s a big deal,” said his mother, Shantanese Burgess. “He learned to write his name, he learned his left from his right, he learned how to interact with his peers.”

Najeer was stylish in a tan suit and light blue tie. Many of the students wore their best, while others settled for everyday school clothes.

They entered the gym in a toddling procession, quickly interrupted by swarming family members with cameras. Decorum was restored and the children sang along to a bilingual musical program including “Hello and How Are You,” “The Florence Brown Song” and “ABC Rock.”

They then received their certificates and shared with the audience their career plans. Firefighters carried the day, far outpolling others receiving votes: teacher, mail carrier, Burger King owner and more.

Ceremonies elsewhere in the region differed in specifics but carried the same message.

In Webster, next year’s sixth-graders got a sendoff from State Road Elementary School, complete with poems, singing and a breakfast with family.

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Graduation-style festivities in elementary and middle school have their detractors. Andrea McKenna, an education specialist with the Child Care Council, said kindergarteners in particular are too young to appreciate the point.

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McKenna also cautioned against turning children into “praise junkies,” citing research that over-celebrated children can lose a proper sense of motivation.

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Big academic accomplishments can also mean big business. Oak Hall Cap and Gown, a Virginia company, provides academic regalia to 10,000 kindergartens and nursery schools across the country — in addition to high schools, colleges and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Vice President Donna Hodges said demand for children’s attire has been steady over the years but varies regionally....“Who doesn’t want and deserve their 15 minutes of fame? They’re very proud of the achievement that putting on the cap and gown brings.”

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“These parents have made a commitment to getting there kids here every day and we want to celebrate that,” she said. “At this point in life, the parents are really involved and enthusiastic and we want to encourage that.”

James Garofalo, interim dean at the State University College at Geneseo School of Education, agreed that early positive reinforcement likely leads to future success.

“It’s a good antidote to some of the negative stuff that’s been going around,” he said.

“When the kids know their parents and grandparents are proud of them, it makes them think they’ve achieved something.”

[SKuykendall]

“When the kids know their parents and grandparents are proud of them, it makes them think they’ve achieved something.”

I think pre-school and Head Start graduations are adorable (and still have fond memories of the pale yellow dress my mother made me for my Head Start graduation).

Still, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to read so many positive messages into the pomp and ceremony.  (Why not just say that it's fun for kids and a good way to teach them poise and leave it at that?)  If parents are proud of their kids for dressing up, looking adorable, and being on stage for having completed a program that wasn't voluntary on their part, what message does that send kids? 

Is it the same message that we send our kids when we put their best artwork up on the refrigerator, take them out for ice-cream to celebrate a terrific public presentation, or tell them quietly (but repeatedly) that we're proud of them for standing up to bullies, reading a difficult book, comforting a smaller child?

Am I the only one who sometimes feels like childrearing is turning into one grand orchestrated made-for-Facebook, bring-your-recording-device event? 

I don't think there are necessarily any serious negative repercussions attached to this (other than training kids to expect expensive prom dresses and/or massive weddings), but I have trouble seeing it as actually being connected to good citizenship or academic achievement.  Perhaps the real question is whether a general culture of ceremonies diverts time and focus from the  other, less showy ways of telling a child that we are proud of the individual things he or she has done -- specific instances of hard work, self-discipline or kindness.

[JandJmom]

I actually think "graduation" ceremonies with cap and gown for anything less than high school dilutes the real thing.  Sure, celebrate and mark the day -- have the kids read poems, sing songs, but don't make it a mini-graduation.  If you go through a pre K, K, 6th grade, and 8th grade graduation why should you see high school graduation as anything special?

I think we are building a culture where nobody wants to wait and earn anything.  We keep trying to turn young children into mini-teenagers.

[agregoire]

Am I the only one who sometimes feels like childrearing is turning into one grand orchestrated made-for-Facebook, bring-your-recording-device event? 

Couldn't have said it better (oh and please ignore the photos I posted on FB of Rachel's Moving Up Ceremony!!!!).
I am a firm believer in celebrating achievments but the mini-graduations that occur several times throughout a child's educational career is taking it a bit too far.  There are always the people who show up with balloons (it drives me NUTS when they say class of 2012, etc on them!  Uh no, you are not.  If you want to get technical these 6 year olds are the class of... 2024 (and please dont check my math.  I simply added 18 to the year my daughter was born!) )
However, what about the kids who don't have parents hanging their art work or quietly telling them how proud they are?  What about the self-esteem boost they may get from a room full of people applauding them for making it through Kindergarten (and that may have been very difficult).
On a personal note, I love the Montessori Moving Up because completing Kindergarten really IS a big deal!  My child will have spent half of their life within that class and is now moving onto the world of Elementary Education (and that is such a big deal that the "Great Lessons" are reserved for First grade!).  Today and tomorrow my almost 6 year-old will spend sometime with the children that were once big mysterious kids "downstairs" but are now her peers! 

[Hilary]

I am not sure which way this trend is going. When I was a kid, 8th grade graduation was a big deal -- white dresses for the girls and suits for the boys. Maybe it was a holdover from when not all kids made it past 8th grade? (Yes, I am almost as old as Laura Ingalls Wilder.

My son had a (paper) cap and gown graduation from the 2.5-year-old class at the Rochester JCC, which seemed truly ridiculous, yet adorable. My daughter had a sweet ceremony at the end of UPK, which made sense to me -- she was moving on to "big" school. Both kids had huge ceremonies at the end of kindergarten, which I didn't really understand. (By my second child, they scrapped the mortar boards, thank goodness.) However, moving and got lots of parents into the school, so that's good, right? I think it would have been better if it was more of a celebration/demonstration of what they'd learned.

6th grade graduation -- excuse me, moving up -- was also a big deal, and I thought it should be. The kids were leaving the school where many of them had been since kindergarten and heading off to really big school.

Where we live now, there are no ceremonies for parents - not for kindergarten, not for 5th grade, not for 8th grade. Apparently our elementary school has some kind of internal all-school celebration for the 5th graders, but there's no room for parents! And I'm a little bit sad about that. Do we really think kids and parents don't understand the difference between a 6th grade "graduation" and finishing high school?

I think cutting down on the pomp and the expense is fine, but I'm a fan of milestones, and marking them.

[DarlaD]

I agree with Hilary. Preschool "graduation," even with the totally-inappropriate cap & gown, is just really cute! And it can be sort-of appropriate, as, at least in my case, many students were likely to not be at the same school the next year for Kindergarten.

I don't "get" Kindergarten graduation, but then again, my kids' school
"loops," so they don't even change teachers or rooms between K & 1st grade. A graduation would just be totally silly.

My oldest daughter just completed 6th grade,and it feels like a HUGE event, completing elementary school & leaving the school she has been at for 7 years. Definitely worth commemorating with a celebration...not necessarily a graduation.

An 8th grade moving up ceremony would make sense in a school system with middle school or junior high, where 8th grade is the end of taking classes at that school. My sense is that an 8th grade moving up at say, SOTA, would be unnecesary. (Similarly, a 6th grade moving up ceremomy might be inappropriate in a K-8 school).

Now, I hear that people throw huge parties, complete with hotel rooms & limos, for 6th grade graduation, and that seems a bit over-the-top to me.

GCCS has "passage ceremony" on the last day of school annually. It is a great tradition, that celebrates the year we are finishing & looks ahead "just a little bit" to next year. 3rd graders always do a special dance, ackowledging that 3rd graders are moving "upstairs" (literally), to where the upper grades are located, and where more serious work is done. Student representatives in each grade "pass along" information & supplies to the students coming in to their grade (ie, 1st graders pass along something to the current Kindergarten students "to help them in 1st grade," etc.). Teachers that are completing a loop with a group of students "pass along" those students to the next teachers with "words of wisdom" about those students (and teachers more likely than not shed tears at this point- it is very touching & very sweet). They show a slideshow of every grade, and for 6th grade, they show the students' pictures every year from Kindergarten, or from when the student started at the school, and share where the child is going for middle school (parents of 6th graders are certain to be crying at this, and most other parents, too). 6th graders are featured, and they sing a special song & do a dance. This year they chose "Count on me" by Bruno Mars; many sang, some played guitars, a few played other instruments, and some kids danced. (The 6th graders were crying throughout this, so, in turn, many of us parents were, too). Some featured 6th grade dancers danced while the whole school sang "Simple Gifts." Lovely.
And another tradition is that Kindergarten students walk out ringing bells while we sing "Farewell to the School Year," and all the students & even us parents walk out through an archway of flags held by the 5th graders. (In the beginning of next school year, the then-6th graders will again create an archway of flags, and the Kindergarten students walk through it at their first Wed Community Circle meeting).
It is a lovely tradition that reflects on ALL the students having a "passage" from this school year & their current grade, with a little emphasis on the 6th graders, who are truly having a "passage" from the school.       

[Mrs.Schenk]

From the perspective of a kindergarten teacher...

Pre-k "graduation" while I'm not a fan of the word, i agree, it was very cute, and the kids seemed to have their first big sense of doing something important in the world of education.

Kindergarten... most teachers prefer the term "moving up", although there are a few stuck on "graduation".  I think a culminating event is important for kindergarten.  (of course I do, because I think kindergarten is so important!)  For many parents, this is their first time in the education system.  For many parents, it's the first time they're being told their child may need speech therapy, or  OT.  For many parents, their first child going to school for THE WHOLE DAY!  In addition to the parents' firsts... the things they learn in kindergarten are just endless.... they learn about their immportant role in the school community, they learn rituals, and routines, they learn to walk down the hall to the library ALL ALONE!  They learn to trust others, and trust themselves!  They learn to READ and WRITE!  They can count to 100 by 10's and 1's!  and most can count by 5's!  They can do the monkey bars, and no longer need pushes on the swings!  When they walk through the door in the morning, they know there will be many people there who will look at them, smile, and say "GOOD MORNING!"

Sure many children have these experiences in pre-k, or in church, or simply in their awesome little tight knit community.  But there is something really magical about how it plays out in a kindergarten classroom.

So, each class has a little show, one class read ''Brown Bear, Brown Bear" in sign language, my class sang "down by the Bay" and groups of 3 stepped forward to belt out the silly rhymes, and another class danced and sang with one of their favorite class songs.  Then we all got together and sang a song (it was beautiful, and I cried).  After each individual performance, the teacher said each child's name, and they gave a wave.  We then gathered in the classrooms for cookies and juice and pictures and hugs.  It was  wonderful!  And those children were sitting on TOP of the world after those performances!  As they should. 

The whole pomp and circumstance, not necessary.  Let's just celebrate with music and dance!

6th grade... I get it.  Not sure it needs to be as long and involved thought...

[JandJmom]

I agree 100% Mrs. Schenk.  School 12 does similar for Kinder.

[SKuykendall]

Darla posted something interesting about a sixth-grade graduation erupting into a melee: http://flowercityparents.org/forum/index.php?topic=3822.msg12226;topicseen#msg12226

I've been trying to figure out how to say what bothers me about the pomp and ceremony without stereotyping all the parents who show up at a pre-school graduation with a bouquet of balloons and a crowd of relatives.  After all, some of the parents could just have very close-knit families and a thing for balloons -- so it's not fair to paint them all as having an unhealthy addiction to showy displays of parental pride.

I do wonder, though, whether there are some unhealthy side-effects to pulling out all the stops for milestones: I wonder whether doing this can make parents can feel good about their parenting to the degree that it numbs a nagging sense of unease about other parenting activities that have gone undone.

If a parent has invited their entire family to a pre-school celebration and has dressed up, bought the child a new outfit and a balloon bouquet, can this help a parent to forget the things that haven't been done?  Things like: turning off the TV; remembering to really listen when kids talk; empathizing; finding ways to encourage learning and to develop a child's academic interests.

I certainly don't think this is just an urban problem, but maybe it has longer tentacles in urban settings just because of the difficulty parents sometimes have with aligning their expectations -- and praise for meeting/exceeding expectations -- with those of the academic establishment.

And how should urban school districts address the fact that children in city schools sometimes (not always, regardless of socioeconomic status) operate at a disadvantage when it comes to how well their homelives prepare them for success in school? 

Should urban communities strive to make parents more aware of of how much sometimes still needs to be done at home?  Or should urban communities try to give all parents a sense of themselves as successful parents and hope that more success will follow?

I'm sometimes troubled by parents who feel very good about their parenting because they are buying their kids elaborate gifts, throwing parties to celebrate graduations and moving-up ceremonies, and setting rules along the lines of, "You must graduate." 

One the one hand, I realize that graduation is a great thing in neighborhoods where only half the kids graduate and, on the other hand, I think there's something vaguely elitist about saying that, for certain communities, we should support the development of relatively modest educational goals rather than supporting ambitious goals and the "something more" in the way of parenting techniques that would be associated with those goals.  (Reading to the kids every night and turning off the TV doesn't actually cost anything, so it doesn't seem like an infuriatingly unreasonable goal to ask parents to set for themselves.) 

Then again, if everyone tried to make graduation ceremonies more low-key, maybe parents who like buying bouquets of balloons would just buy them for non-academic occasions instead and still feel like the "something more" had been done....