He passed

He did it. It's official: Hiren is a high school graduate! A few months ago I did a post about graduation and how bittersweet it is for me. In that post I talked about Hiren and how hard he worked last year but was not successful passing the WASL which meant he was not allowed to graduate.

Because he didn't graduate last June, Hiren signed up for some classes again at SHS this year. He took the WASL again in August, but the results were not scheduled to come in until this month or even November.

He did not need any of the classes or credits as he already had more than enough to graduate, but he didn't want to sit around doing nothing. He thought he could take a computer class or two and another English class while he waited around for WASL scores to come back in. He was enrolled in my WASL COE (Collection of Evidence) class, and was working on more writing samples to submit just in case he did not pass the WASL.

That class is second hour, and I only have seven seniors in it. Well, yesterday, at the end of third hour I sat down to check my e-mail before my freshmen came in. I got a message from the Director of Language Arts. The WASL results came in yesterday, and before they even sorted them out to send to principals, she checked on Hiren's score because she knew I would want to know. He passed.

He passed.

He passed.

All on his own, he passed. I almost started to cry! I called the main office to find out where his fourth hour class was because I wanted to tell him in person. I found out he didn't have a fourth hour class, so I grabbed my cell phone.

I only had a very brief minute before the bell rang and I would need to start class, so I just dashed off a short message. It read "You need to come see me right now!" Then I turned off my phone and tossed it back in my purse.

Apparently he's got a new phone so my name was not programmed in yet. He called my phone number back, but I obviously didn't answer because it was turned off. When the voice mail picked up he realized it was me, and started to freak out a little bit. He thought he was in trouble.

He was about halfway out to his car to go home when he got my message. He immediately turned around and came back. When he walked in my room, he looked pretty worried. I was thrilled to be the one to tell him that he had passed the WASL and was officially a high school graduate!!

Huge hugs, a few tears of joy, high fives, and a bit of celebratory dancing later, he ran out of my room to talk to his counselor. Long story short, Hiren now has in his possession an official class of 2008 diploma. And a beaming smile that makes me want to do a happy dance.

The only downside to this amazing news?? I'm going to miss him.

I am so proud of that kid.