By Lori Greene
A Bios graduation ceremony is like no other. It is an intimate evening among 600 or so of our graduate’s friends and family. It is a time of celebration and recognition of the years of hard work by each of our graduates. Just like our individualized instruction, our graduation too is an opportunity to speak of each individual graduate.
We have a touching slide show of each student growing up, music performed by our orchestra and choir, a blessing from a staff or faculty member to each graduate, speeches made by our valedictorian and salutatorian, words of encouragement from local pastors, and of course, words from our principal, Mr. Ihms.
This year’s graduation will be much like the first two. Some changes? Sure! In our first graduating class we had one graduate, who just happened to be my oldest son, Austin. Our second year we had eight graduates, and our current class of 2012 has fourteen. Our speaker this year will be Mark Connelly, pastor at Mission Community Church – which just happens to be the venue for this year’s ceremony.
Another important and more intimate part of our graduation is what comes before the ceremony, senior dinner. This dinner is just for the graduates and their parents with the high school faculty. Two faculty members will stand with each graduate and talk to the room about the graduate’s accomplishments, experiences at Bios, maybe read a poem, prayer, or scripture verses.
While the graduation ceremony and senior dinner are important traditions at Bios, what’s more important is what comes before. We work for months leading up to graduation to help students in the application and scholarship process. We remind students and parents to sign up for the SAT and/or ACT, we hold college nights inviting local college representatives and advisors to talk about their schools, we invite financial advisors to speak about the financial aid process, and we meet with students and sometimes parents repeatedly to discuss different college options, career ideas, and to offer encouragement.
Field trips are another way we prepare our students. Our students will visit A.T. Still medical school in Mesa, go on a career day to Midwestern medical school in Glendale, spend a day at Grand Canyon University hearing about different careers in the medical field, not to mention the marine biology trip, and physics field trip to Castles and Coasters.
What advice do we give about scholarships? We encourage students to start early looking for private scholarships. Look first at opportunities close to home like a parent’s employer, Boys Scouts, military if there is a veteran in the family, and so on. The “easy” scholarships are the merit scholarships offered by the college or university simply based on GPA and ACT or SAT scores. I say easy because they are easy to find, but the reality is the hard work done to prepare for SAT/ACT and keep a high GPA is what earns the big bucks. The merit scholarships are generally the most generous scholarships students will earn. Always when discussing the financial aid aspect of college we encourage students to not incur debt.
Students and their parents are encouraged to visit the colleges they are interested in and spend a day shadowing someone in the career they are considering. We ask the students lots of questions about what they want in a college. For example do you want a big school or small, private or public, close to home or out of state?
To try to put a bow on this, I would say that the purpose of the work, and the celebration at the end of the work, is to be as prepared as possible for life beyond Bios. We want our students to be prepared spiritually, academically, and in their decision of higher education. And our graduates have said this has been their experience. They know their Bibles and they are well prepared for even the toughest of college courses. Majors change, colleges even change, but our students use their strong work ethic to accomplish great things.
The Bios graduation ceremony is a fitting celebration of the dedication of our teachers, sacrifices of the parents, and hard work of our students. Come and celebrate with us May 23rd 7pm at Mission Community Church.
