STEVE SMITH -- What’s Up

No one should have to sit through two graduations in one day, but we

had little choice last Thursday. At 1 p.m., Bean was scheduled to have

her “promotion” from Victoria Elementary School. And while that alone

would have been overload for most people, our family of four also made it

down to Mission Viejo five hours later to see the graduation of my niece,

Dana Hines, from Mission Viejo High School.

At Victoria, 76 children received a “certificate of graduation” even

though the end of their elementary school tenure was repeatedly termed a

“promotion.” I’m not sure what the difference is but the speeches, advice

and tears sure seemed like a graduation to me.

Principal Judy Laakso, my nominee for this year’s Medal of Valor, kept

her remarks brief, a fabulous model for anyone else who is a speaker at

any ceremony. Laakso spent much of her time talking to the parents. “To

many of you, it seems like only yesterday that you enrolled your child in

kindergarten,” she said.

That is true. It is hard to believe that six years have passed since I

pulled out the camcorder to record Bean’s first trip to school. There,

she was met by her first teacher, Tammy Meador who provided the perfect

start to her school experience. Not long after Bean moved up and out of

her classroom, Meador had the first of her two children and decided to

stay home to raise them.

I support Meador’s decision, but it was hard to see her leave. Meador

had the right combination for a kindergarten teacher: enthusiastic and

fun but with a keen sense for when to put the brakes on all of it. At the

promotion, in an acknowledgment of what a special place this school

really is, Meador showed up with her two children, Jonathan and Connor,

to watch the kids move their tassels across their mortarboards.

Yes, they had the caps. No gowns, just caps, and while it may have

seemed over-the-top to some, I thought it was wonderful.

God was mentioned twice at this public school, once by a teacher

during her remarks. No one fainted and not one child started talking in

tongues.

Laakso talked about hard work and dedication, but her most important

comment probably was lost on some of the parents at the ceremony. “Love

and modeling,” she said, “has shown your child how to become the graduate

he or she is today.”

It’s the modeling remark that hit the bull’s-eye.

Five hours later, we found ourselves sitting on cement bleachers

watching Dana and 600 other high schoolers graduate. With us were two

exhausted kids who were remarkably well-behaved. Roy, who sat in my lap

most of the evening, was unusually patient.

Hundreds of chairs were lined up on the football field and thousands

of people were in the stands. It reminded me of my own graduation from

Fairfax High School in Los Angeles in 1973. Our class of 1,000 graduated

at the Hollywood Bowl, a place where I had been working part-time for two

years and, which always will be special.

At Dana’s ceremony, there was more talk about hard work and

dedication. There were more speeches, too, a lot more. One of them, I am

sorry to say, was a poorly chosen update of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I

Have a Dream” speech.

About 50 kids wore gold gowns instead of the more common red ones,

signifying outstanding academic achievement and they were repeatedly

singled out. Not one red-gowned student fainted and no one complained

about the red gowners suffering from a lack of self-esteem as a result.

Dana is a smart kid who will enter UC Irvine as a math major. When she

graduates in a few years, she will have the world on a string because of

the shortage of people who have her same interest. I’m sorry to say that

there is no shortage of writers.

The two graduations, together with some professional challenges I

experienced in the morning, made it an exhausting day. Driving home, I

had the sense that all this happened too quickly, that it was only

yesterday that Dana was the 3-year-old who wouldn’t talk during a family

reunion trip to Yosemite. And I still recall the smile on the face of

Bean, the little red-haired girl, oblivious to her parent’s tears, who

couldn’t wait to start learning at school.

I’m not one to give advice to these kids, not because I don’t have

any, but because they probably wouldn’t listen. But having graduated my

first child, I am more certain than ever that while programs such as

class-size reduction and new teaching methods are valuable, I agree with

Laakso that parents created the graduates we saw on Thursday.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer. Readers

may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (949) 642-6086.