There's a first time for everything

Thursday we celebrated our school's first graduating class. It was a pretty awesome experience because Bonnie and I (and the rest of our great staff) have been working with these kids for the past three years to get them to this point. I taught over a third of the senior class math and many of those kids I had for the past 3 years.

The kids and their parents took a pretty big risk coming to our school since we had no product to offer other than that of our sister school which planted GSIS. It was great to get to celebrate their accomplishments and successes. We have students headed to some quality universities in the states. A couple examples: Ohio State, UC Berkley, Wash U (STL), Cornell, Rice, Northwestern, and many more.

Here are some sights from the big day. Graduation was supposed to be outside but the threat of rain moved it into the gym. It was still a good set up though.

The graduates:

A special musical performance by our music teacher:

The happy parents snapping pictures:

The graduates lining the stairs up to the school after the ceremony:

Peter K gave Bonnie those flowers as a thank you:

Jessice Wendy Won Young Park (long story) one of my outstanding math students:

Peter C. We both got to teach Peter for the past 3 years.

Allen, one the the senior starters for our basketball team:

Jennifer who went to Nepal with us twice, Bonnie coached her for 3 years, and she was a student of mine:

A couple picks of us trying to look nice together.

I really can't express accurately how awesome it was to get to be a part of this and see our hard work over the past 3 years pay off in a tangible way.