Graduation Day

Friday was the Grade 10 and 12 Graduation Ceremony. The teachers had been working on decorations all week, and the hall looked just beautiful – like something out of a magazine, as Mrs Bobone said today. The Grade 9s and 11s had been practicing dancing all week, as had the choir – everything was ready for a lovely day. And it was. I thought I’d be crying all day, but actually it was just nice to see all my girls again, and they were too excited for me to get sad.

I’d spent all hours of the night before finishing writing the cards I’d bought for each of the girls in my 2 classes - I wanted to give them something to say goodbye, so I’d ordered a whole stack of Aboriginal artwork cards from Community Aid Abroad and nearly destroyed my fingers and wrist writing messages to them all (90 card in a couple of nights!) – but I’m so glad I did because they were really thrilled to read them, and I had so many girls come up to say thanks – and they all had the little koala/kanga keychains I’d bought around their necks or on their bilums – so that was another good move. Glad I thought ahead last time I was in Oz. And I made business cards with my contact details in Sydney, so I hope I get lots of letters – and maybe even a visitor or two.

The school didn’t have their results ready yet – there’s been wide-spread cheating in the national exams throughout the NCD, and so the exam board had to cancel the English and Maths exam results and just work from internal assessment marks (incredible to think that kids could get hold of the papers before they were set, but apparently they did, and paid uni students to tell them the correct answers) – and that meant that certificates were not ready yet, and the students couldn’t receive these much-anticipated results. So much hangs on these marks, because they can’t get into Grade 11 unless they get Upper Passes or above – and even then there’s very limited places. So they were very disappointed to find out that they couldn’t get their results.

But actually, I was not so sad about that because Graduation Day is meant to be a celebration of what they’ve achieved – and last year it was awful to see the reactions on the faces of the girls who opened their envelopes only to realise that that was it for them – they didn’t get good enough marks to get into the next level. And I know that will be the case for some of my girls, so I was relieved to know they could enjoy their day without it being spoilt by seeing a pass in maths or science instead of a distinction or credit.

However, we did get a printout of the scores to date – it’s possible they may change, so we don’t want the girls to rely on them too heavily – and I was thrilled to see that between them my two English classes managed to score 30 Distinctions (ie were in the top 5% in the country) – exactly the number I had targeted! Not only that, but out of the 43 girls in my Purple class, 19 got Ds, 21 got Credits and only 3 got Upper Passes! Wow, I was stoked to see some of those girls with C’s – they’ve come so far and I know they will be overjoyed to see their hard work being paid off. Many of them will be dropping in to school tomorrow to get their results, which apparently we can give them then, so it will be wonderful to see their faces light up.

But back to the ceremony itself – it was a nice one (if hot), with a great guest speaker – Dr Mary Ponifasio, who is a cancer specialist and an ex-M’ville girl – very inspiring for these girls to have such a successful ex-student come and speak to them. The opening procession was a Cook Islands dance which was amazing – I got some video footage of those girls and their hips – man, can they shake it! Then there were some other dances, a couple of songs (including a new Marianville song, sung by the choir and led by one of the teachers who taught it to them – beautiful) and the final recessional dance by the Manus group and their drums – again, incredible music and movements.

I thought I’d cry in the school song, but it was performed by the school band (complete with new drum kit, electric guitar and keyboard) and so totally jazzed up it was not at all tear-jerking, as it is when sung a cappella. The band also played the national anthem, and I’m sure I got into trouble with Jasmine Andrew because in the program I’d printed the inclusive version of the words – not just to annoy her (although I knew it would!) but because it’s ridiculous for a girls school to be singing ‘oh arise all you sons of this land’. I’d warned the staff I’d be typing the ‘sons and daughters’ version, and they were happy enough – and amused by my recount of my argument with that little neighbour of mine about the words, and this act of revenge on my part – she could make them sing the old version, but buggered if I was going to put it on the program!

I got to present my class with their (fake) certificates, and that was lovely – a nice tradition we started last year, for the class patron to be the one to give them to their class – and again, it prevented me from tearing up because I was so focused on each girl and then smiling for their many cameras. It wasn’t until afterwards, when the girls started finding me to say thanks and to bilas me with necklaces and bilums that things got emotional - there were a few times when I nearly lost it then, but mostly it was just a happy day, full of celebration and not quite goodbye yet.