Senior Dinner

I know I already wrote a little about senior dinner in my Reflecting on Students post, but tonight is the dinner, and I feel the need to talk a little more about how this fits into the culture of our school.

This year, GRACE will graduate its 13th senior class.  I have been at GRACE for 13 years, so I have been at every dinner we have ever had.  It has changed a bit over the years.  Its original purpose was to honor the parents.  Teachers did speak about every student, but that was a relatively small portion of the program.  The larger portion was students making a speech.  They wrote a letter ahead of time to thank their parents for everything they had done.  At the dinner, they stood and read the speech aloud.  This was a festival of tears from the student, their parents, the teachers, and the principals.

Our school has grown since then.  Our first graduating class had 7 students.  This year's class has 43.  The dinner has grown as well.  We now use it as an awards night for students, announcing valedictorian and salutatorian, bestowing graduation cords, and presenting ACSI awards.  Every student also receives a framed printout with three character traits the teachers have said they see in that student.  As the focus of the dinner shifted from parents to graduates, the program changed.  Students still write letters to their parents, but they read them privately at their table rather than out loud at the podium.  As a teacher/speaker, I no longer speak about every student.  I speak about the 2-3 that I have signed up for.  

While we only speak for about two minutes, it is the culmination of our mission and vision statements at GRACE.  It shows that every student is well known by at least one teacher, not just on an academic level, but at the character level.  These speeches rarely mention their classroom abilities; they are about character.  We bring the student to the front and share what we see in them and what we hope for their future.

A few years ago, I spoke about a student that isn't a super-positive person.  The next morning, during my first-period class, she interrupted me and asked if she could say something.  She told the sophomores in my chemistry class that they didn't know how lucky they were and how much they were loved.  She spoke to my class for over five minutes about how glad they should be that they have teachers who know and love them.  She didn't graduate as cynical as she might have, and that is what this dinner does for many students.

Next year, GRACE will have over 60 seniors, and there has been much discussion this week about how this dinner might change again.  It would, after all, take 2 hours to talk about each student for 2 minutes each.  Tuesday, we had a one and a half hour meeting to discuss it.  You might be surprised to find a group of teachers and principals weeping over possible changes in this tradition, basically begging to be allowed to stay longer on a Friday and do more work.  If a student walked past the library and saw us through the window, I'm sure he would have been confused by the scene.  We ultimately decided to limit ourselves to 200 words, written ahead of time to keep us accountable.  As I drove home from that meeting, I thought again about our mission and vision as a school and thanked God for the amazing group of people with whom I am blessed to work.  Their passion for this dinner isn't about the dinner; it is about making sure our students graduate knowing that God has gifted them for His purpose.  Our wonderful principal actually cares what we think and accepts our level of intensity.  She didn't just say, "This is the way it will be now, so get to it."  She wanted to help us keep the heart of what we do while making it logistically feasible.

This night is special.  It was special before, and now it is special in a different way.  As the next wave of changes come, it will continue to be special - possibly in a different way.  Whatever changes we make, we know that it will come from an administration who cares about our students and about us.  We know that it will still proclaim to our students, "You are loved by your teachers and by the God who gave you these gifts.  Go accomplish the mission He has given you."