So Proud!
The girls get all dressed up. We see Confirmation dresses, dresses from Quinceras past, and dress from Big Lots (the more the frills the better). Some coming looking like the little girls they are and some, well some quite frankly look like little tarts. The Brittany Spears school of fashion mis-design is not very flattering. Most of the boys are reluctantly stuffed into white shirts and pressed pants, a few are turned out in their best Sunday suits.
So Proud!
A bit more wide awake than at the SleepOver
The saddest children are the ones where nobody at home bothered to make a fuss over them. One little girl showed up in her everyday sweats with unwashed hair, a boy in a grimy once white t-shirt 4 sizes to big, another in his usual baggy shorts and t-shirt.
We see the same wide variety of dress in the parents - everything from tight stretch pants, oversize t-shirts and flip flops to Sunday best to adult tart. The ones who do attend are all so proud - the video cameras roll (almost every Hispanic family seems to have one), they come bearing bouquets of flowers and festive balloons.
The tattoos alone are worth the price of admission. One father was covered in them, most gang related. He was a big guy - easily over 300 pounds, wearing Baggy shorts, chains from his belt loops and Doc Martins. Not someone I would want to encounter in a dark alley. He was holding the hand of his daughter, a brown eyed, black haired little doll, dressed all in ruffles and fluffles. And he was beaming.
Little Doll
We tell the kids that they can graduated middle school, high school and go on to college. But deep in our hearts we know otherwise. The Houston Indpendent School District only graduates 1/4 of the minority children who enter high school as freshman. Our district success rates aren't much better. I've been at my school for 14 years and I'm already encountering the children of children I have taught.
Do I have to pose?
Proud sister!
And that's why for some of our kids, it is not only their first graduation, it is
their last
5 comments:
Aw, that's sad. The little girls look beautiful though. I like your pictures.
Such beautiful kids.
I hear you about the poor little kids with no one to care whether they look good or not. . . . I bet some of those parents didn't even know it was the last day. More shame on them.
Sigh. That is very sad. You've got me counting my blessings here.
It breaks your heart, doesn't it. I see kids coming in to my library who are 10 or 11 who I know are already on the road to nowhere. The local middle school has the same "Arthur" books on the reading list that my 6 year old has already mastered! It makes me feel pretty damn helpless.
We can only just keep plugging. For all the ones we can't get to, there are always a few success stories and we have to build on that......
Actually, we can spot the kids on a fast track to "nowhere" by 4th grade. Thats when school becomes "reading for content" as opposed to "learning to read". It's really sad to think a child's fate is determined by age 9 but it often is.
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