It might not seem like much to anyone who's not a parent, but graduating from 5th grade is a HUGE deal for my little boy. You see, Logan entered 1st grade without having acquired his vocabulary or vocal skills. We were concerned about Logan's slow speech development from an early age, and he has been diagnosed within the autistic spectrum.
To Logan, From Dad: You've Made A Father Soooooo Proud!!!!
For us parents, graduations of any sort are always important. We want more than anything in the world to show our children how much we support and care about them. I have to tell you that I was very proud of my son today, which goes without saying. I'm usually pretty composed in public situations but I did get a little teared up when he got his certificate!
This little kid has made the most enormous strides since he started the special ed program at Palmquist Elementary School. He's not always the most talkative little fellow and he definitely doesn't care for too many questions. A trait quite common among autistic kids, I have learned. But when he gets going about a topic like Bendy and the Ink Machine or Five Nights at Freddy's, the complex sentences come flowing right out!!!
I don't want to fill the whole article with just my words. After all, it was Logan's graduation. I did make a slight change from my normal photography forgetting self and snapped some nice images of the event. There are a couple videos I uploaded to Dlive that I'll share as well.
All setup and ready to go.
In charge of the PA system was the school dean, Mr. Armaranto. Last year his daughter graduated, and together they sang the national anthem. No repeat performances this year!
Logan doing the march with the rest of the 5th-grade classes. They go right down the middle then take their seats in their respective class sections. Logan had a nice green dress shirt underneath his Avenger's sweatshirt that I guess he didn't want to take off.
Mr. Veseskis, Logan's 5th-grade teacher, heads up the ceremony and begins by calling up his students!!! Logan spent about half his time in Mr. V's mainstream 5th-grade classroom.
Logan gets his lei!!! If you look closely, you might see that it's a candy lei nonetheless. That's grandma sneaking up behind Logan to adorn him with his candy lei!!!
There goes grandma sneaking away after giving Logan his candy lei. We all love grandma, especially Logan.
Logan was in the back row until, to my delight, they turned around to sing! Catch Logan singing hip-hop in the Dlive video.
https://dlive.io/video/inalittlewhile/589dd130-69cd-11e8-8c69-9334a80daafd
It's Logan's turn to do the walk up to center stage and receive his 5th-grade graduation certificate.
Logan with the head of the special education department, Mrs. Reed. We can't begin to thank her enough for the work she did with Logan!!!
There's the man of the hour himself. He's got a firm grasp on his 5th-grade diploma and he ain't lettin' go!!
Last but not least, it's Logan with Ms. Gilmore. Ms. G was Logan's class aide all year long and they developed a very special relationship. It's going to be tough leaving everyone and moving up to middle school next year.