All year long, I've been holding the pictures of special Senior Moments to put together in this one Senior-specific blog post. I am starting to write this in August and will publish it in May. I expect to feel ALL the feelings this year as we walk with Ella through her last year at school and home. When we had kids, our dream was always that they'd be able to graduate from the same school they started kindergarten in. This year I'm thanking God for keeping us in this home and church long enough for this dream to become the reality.
One of my favorite Senior traditions is chalking your parking spot. Ella came up with the prefect theme for hers-- featuring robots (of course), her favorite movie, and a graduation-appropriate tag line from that move that is also a lyric she sang in Hello Dolly! We can have this kind of fun here in the Central Valley because we don't expect rain for several months yet! ;)
To celebrate their last First Day of School, our Seniors always meet on the football field in the dark of the early morning to watch the sun rise on their last year together. Then they all get a fun breakfast.
Senior yearbook photo. Our school does something strange. Everyone wears the same thing! This weird black cape for the girls and a fake tuxedo for the guys. We did not order any of these. But, they are a right of passage.
Ella's actual part in the Sound of Music may have been smaller, but she decided her ROLE as an experienced Senior on the cast would be to encourage and mentor all the younger actors! She designed and made these fun nun pins for everyone in the nun chorus, which were enthusiastically received. Her director asked Ella at one point to come be a special speaker in her Middle School Public Speaking class-- giving advice about memorizing and stage presence.
Senior Bow for the last musical of her high school career. Our director does a good job spotlighting the Seniors, giving them their own section of the program about favorite performances and future plans.
Accepted into her top school and awarded a top-tier academic scholarship! Ella's college is expensive. We're proud of her for paying for over 40% of it with scholarships.
Our school does Homecoming a little different than the school Dave and I grew up in did it. First, the court is just for Seniors. Second, it's so much more than a popularity contest. There are several rounds of voting. the candidates make speeches and share their testimony with the student body and participate in an interview with a panel of pastors. Two of Ella's best friends were in the initial round of 8. One, Ruth, went on to make the final cut and be a part of the trio contending for queen! A special moment for Ella was getting to crown her when it was announced at a whole school assembly. Ruth didn't win, but we were thrilled to root for kids we've been watching grow since kindergarten!
Ella's last Formal was her best one yet! The girls intentionally made it a special GNO and had a blast together, making some lasting memories. I thought this collage comparing these 3 friends their freshman and senior years was pretty fun!
The friends that have been with her since kindergarten! Ruth
Marina
and Maya. All headed in different directions, but I'll pray they stay in each others' lives. I can remember rocking a baby Ella and praying over her that she'd always have friends in her life who were encouraging and pointed her to the Lord. An answered prayer!
It was a year to cheer! Not only did we celebrate Ella's special Senior Milestones, she enjoyed rooting for her friends in theirs! For soccer Senior Night, she showed up for her athletic besties with a bunch of posters.
The first real Senior Tears came for our spring production of Pride & Prejudice. After months of hard work and an intense weekend of shows, Ella took her final bow on her high school stage. Our director is good at making the Seniors' final shows special. She posts adorable throwback pictures and heartfelt messages on social media (above). She makes a slide show, profiling each Senior, the shows they've done, and their favorite memories and future plans (below).
Lots of big feelings as these kids, many of whom have been acting together since 7th grade, share final scenes, final bows, and final before-performance prayers and hugs with each other.
A favorite tradition at our school is for the Seniors to Kiss the Stage Goodbye as they take their final Senior bow. This is a bittersweet time as we "Woohoo!!!" for all the memories and accomplishments, but cry that we'll never see them up there again. Ella recognized that it was not the stage that she would miss, but the cast of friends whom she's grown to love over the past 6 years, so her Kiss and Goodbye went to them. This gesture made our director start crying right before she had to do all her Closing Night speeches and blessings, so she scolded Ella for this. :)
Straight from play season to Robotics season! After an amazing Robotics season from January to April, the team concluded their year with the annual presentation to the middle school. The goal is always to plant the seed in the STEM-loving hearts and minds of incoming high schoolers that Robotics is awesome and a super fun place to belong. Since this year's robot was possibly one of their most impressive, the presentation was very well received. As always, Ella serves as emcee, doing the majority of the talking and fielding all the Q&A. I like to go to watch in awe as she holds hundreds of rowdy middle schoolers in the palm of her hand with her intelligence and quick wit. When she asks who wants to try driving the robot, the place always erupts! Ella is very proud that one of her high school legacies will be as the face and voice of Robotics, giving it a spotlight and showing everyone that someone a bit unconventional, such as herself, can join, succeed and love it.
After working super hard all year to prepare for and then take their AP exams in the first 2 weeks of May, Ella's AP classes went into party mode for the last few weeks! AP English had class at the coffee shop and AP Calc took a field trip the Escape Room, where Team Calculus not only conquered the hardest level escape room, the one only like 8% succeed in, they did it in record-setting time, getting their name on the leaderboard! This will go down as one of Ella's best Senior year memories! Her advanced math teacher has been her very favorite.
Field Day is another fun tradition our high school enjoys on the last Friday of each year. It's an ongoing joke that the seniors ALWAYS win, either through cheating or creative score keeping! ;) This class legitimately dominated, though, giving Ella another one of her favorite Senior year memories. Here they are pretty proud to finally be enjoying a Field Day W in their Senior Blue!
A huge day for our Seniors is the Senior Walk. On this day, the entire student body assembles on the football field to make a long tunnel for the Seniors in their caps and gowns to walk through. Every kid and teacher gets to cheer for and high-five and hug the Seniors. A special speech is made about the whole school celebrating their achievements and being there with them as they take some of their final steps on campus. The imagery is powerful! Ella and her classmates are congratulated by underclassmen friends, current and past teachers, coaches, little kids they've babysat for, classes of kids they've TA'ed for, and parents.
After the tunnel of cheers, everyone surrounds the Seniors for a special prayer time.
The Senior Walk is followed by the Senior Awards Ceremony and Senior Chapel. Ella was up on stage a lot for Senior Awards! She did great with scholarships and was recognized for that. She also got a President's Award for academic achievement. The award she is most proud of was one of the prestigious department awards-- Science! We loved and laughed that her friend group had the department awards almost completely locked up: Maya Spanish, Marina Art, Briley Math, Ruth Social Studies, Madison Industrial Arts, and Ansley English! She hangs with a smart bunch! :)
The Senior Chapel was another sweet time to give this class closure. They led the whole school with worship and then a few stood up to share testimony about what parts of this year's theme verse (Psalm 16:8) mean to them. Ella shared about how she finds comfort and confidence in the the solid rock of the Lord in the face of uncertainty in her life. My tears on this day came when the class lined up on stage in the order in which they joined (Ella an OG in kindergarten) and then sang their class song, "Goodness of God", for everyone.
After all the special events of Senior Walk Day, Mrs. M. their director posted this sweet blessing for her graduating drama kids:
Our Seniors don't take spring exams! What's the point? College acceptance and scholarships have already been secured. Instead they go on whole class trip to LA for amusement parks, fun meals, and beach time!
And then, appropriately, as they all began the year together on the First Day of School watching the sun rise, on the night before graduation, they all watch the sun set as a class. This tradition is such a cool way to bookend the milestone year.
You will hear this as biased, but I promise teachers and administrators have confirmed! Ella's class is an exceptional class! It is full of super smart kids with bright futures! The collective amount this class has been rewarded in scholarship is over 3 million dollars! The kids in this class have lead Robotics to some of their best seasons, FFA to state and even national recognition, sports teams to state titles, Debate teams to state titles. It's the biggest group of drama kids the department has seen in years, and contains the school's best voices. They run chapels and lead Bible Studies and demonstrate what it means to love their Lord and walk with Him through example. They are truly salt and light at our school. Dave was honored to do some Senior Exit Interviews and said a theme in the answers was, "I strive for excellence because my amazing classmates push me to." The class of 2023 is a good bunch and they will be missed.
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