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 Editorial

What do you remember most about your senior year of high school? Was it watching the caps fall through the air as you celebrate the end of an era? Was it the thought that you’ll never have homework ever again? Was it saying goodbye to your favorite teacher who helped you more than you can put in words?

There are so many moments, positive and negative, that might stick out in the last year of school as we cross over into adulthood which is why it is so great that school system’s like Pelham City Schools and Alabaster City Schools have traditions like the Parade of Graduates.

Students are granted an opportunity to walk down memory lane, quite literally, as they parade the very same hallways they once walked down as an elementary schooler. They get to see how much things have changed in their alma mater as well as see what is the same—which sometimes includes the very same teacher who guided them all those years ago.

We live in an ever growing complex world and it is extremely important that as these young people enter the “real world” and the workforce, we signal to them that they are adults and that they can take on the challenges ahead of them.

The Parade of Graduates serves as a touching moment of reunion as well as a symbolic gesture of a student’s transition into adulthood. Students are able to the see their past selves  in the small kindergarteners gathered along the walls cheering for them and the young students are also able to imagine their future selves making the very same walk.

It is a wonderful thing for our schools to not only leave our students with the proper tools to navigate their future but also a handful of nostalgic memories to cherish for the rest of their lives.