With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GOWN
August 31, 2022
The first graduation I attended as a member of the Bishop McNamara High School Faculty was strange. There were two reasons for this: first, I had forgotten my graduation gown at home and had to have it delivered to me right before the faculty was supposed to march and, second, the event took place at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the campus of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Obviously, forgetting one’s attire for an event like this would put anyone off and would be a memorable moment, but, for me, the location was critical as well.
This McNamara graduation for the Class of 1993 took place in May of 1993. I had just graduated from Catholic University in the same location in May of 1992.
This felt like I was coming full circle and, for a twenty-two year old, that was quite the heady feeling.
Mainly, my graduation memories of the over 25 I have attended in the years following this one deal with either me messing around with my colleagues and finding different ways to pass the ceremony (Word Baseball, anyone?) or, later in my career, me delivering comments from the podium as a member of a high school administration.
But this first graduation was filled with the resonance of my own college graduation just months before it.
That was a special day.
