Brennan finally graduated from Fox Chapel Elementary School fifth grade class. The school calls it "Promotion". Anyways, that was a very interesting day since that's also the day we booked our airline tickets to fly back to Hong Kong, way back in January.
So apparently what happened was that the original last day of school was on June 12th but due to school snow days, Montgomery County added three days at the end of the school year. Then the teachers protested to have all the snow days removed, however only 2 of the 3 days were approved to be removed which means that the last day of school is on Monday June 15th. That is also the day of Brennan's class promotion which made things very difficult for our flight out of the country. Other elementary schools had their promotion on Friday June 12th!
The departure time for the airplane is at 1:30pm but we have to be at the airport two hours early for international flights at 11:30am and takes about an hour to get to the airport which means we need to leave at 10:30am. His fifth grade promotion starts at 9:00am and he happens to be the last child of the last class (due to Zhao last name and his teacher's last name Mr.Wells) out of six classes.
The timing was too tight so we told Brennan he has two choices: either skip his promotion or if he wants to go really bad he needs to email his teacher to see if they can place him in the front so we can leave right away. He wanted to go to his promotion, so he emailed his teacher. He said he can not anything about the arrangement of the students and would need to talk to the PTA. So we help Brennan pursue that avenue and he email them. They said they can not do that. Since Brennan is already doing his part to be in the promotion, we didn't let him stop there. So we told him to email the school principal what can be done. The principal approved! Since they don't want to put Brennan in another class when the names are called, they placed his entire class to be the first set of names to be called but he would still be the last person. We were ecstatic!
The day of the promotion was very interesting. Of course it starts the day raining. We arrived at the school 40 minutes so we can get the very back seats first to leave immediately when Brennan walks past the stage. We were anxiously waiting for the program to start on time and of course it does not, it started 15 minutes late! I was sweating that we might make it to the airport on time.
There's a good part to this. While all the people were going in to take photos, I stood in the back of the auditorium on the chair with my long lens to take photos. Then the school auditorium staff told me that I can't do that. Then five minutes later that same person came to me and told me to follow him. I wasn't sure where he was leading me but I followed. He took me to the control room which is one floor up and I can see the entire stage without anyone blocking the view! It was an awesome place to take photos. So that's the good part.
Meanwhile in my heart I was rushing the people to get to name calling so we can leave, but nope. They started with the entire class singing, then some more singing, then they had a couple musical pieces, finally the principal gave her speech. It was getting close to 10:30 and then that was not the end of it ,two more teachers talked. I was panicking!
Finally they start calling names. But it was not like everyone was rehearsed and they were very continuous; it was get up to go up there, the person will try to pronounce the name, then the student would walk 10 steps into the stage to stop to face the audience, and of course everyone claps. This means that there's a long wait until the next student is called. It took forever, about 15 minutes, before they get to Brennan.
Once I took his photo walking through the stage, I ran back to the entrance to meet the rest of the family to run to the van. We rushed to the airport from 10:50am and got to the airport at 11:30am while my parents and sister's family were waiting for us. It certainly was a lot of adrenaline going through the entire event but glad we all made it to the airport safely and on time.
Congratulations Brennan on your 'promotion' !
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So apparently what happened was that the original last day of school was on June 12th but due to school snow days, Montgomery County added three days at the end of the school year. Then the teachers protested to have all the snow days removed, however only 2 of the 3 days were approved to be removed which means that the last day of school is on Monday June 15th. That is also the day of Brennan's class promotion which made things very difficult for our flight out of the country. Other elementary schools had their promotion on Friday June 12th!
The departure time for the airplane is at 1:30pm but we have to be at the airport two hours early for international flights at 11:30am and takes about an hour to get to the airport which means we need to leave at 10:30am. His fifth grade promotion starts at 9:00am and he happens to be the last child of the last class (due to Zhao last name and his teacher's last name Mr.Wells) out of six classes.
The timing was too tight so we told Brennan he has two choices: either skip his promotion or if he wants to go really bad he needs to email his teacher to see if they can place him in the front so we can leave right away. He wanted to go to his promotion, so he emailed his teacher. He said he can not anything about the arrangement of the students and would need to talk to the PTA. So we help Brennan pursue that avenue and he email them. They said they can not do that. Since Brennan is already doing his part to be in the promotion, we didn't let him stop there. So we told him to email the school principal what can be done. The principal approved! Since they don't want to put Brennan in another class when the names are called, they placed his entire class to be the first set of names to be called but he would still be the last person. We were ecstatic!
The day of the promotion was very interesting. Of course it starts the day raining. We arrived at the school 40 minutes so we can get the very back seats first to leave immediately when Brennan walks past the stage. We were anxiously waiting for the program to start on time and of course it does not, it started 15 minutes late! I was sweating that we might make it to the airport on time.
There's a good part to this. While all the people were going in to take photos, I stood in the back of the auditorium on the chair with my long lens to take photos. Then the school auditorium staff told me that I can't do that. Then five minutes later that same person came to me and told me to follow him. I wasn't sure where he was leading me but I followed. He took me to the control room which is one floor up and I can see the entire stage without anyone blocking the view! It was an awesome place to take photos. So that's the good part.
Meanwhile in my heart I was rushing the people to get to name calling so we can leave, but nope. They started with the entire class singing, then some more singing, then they had a couple musical pieces, finally the principal gave her speech. It was getting close to 10:30 and then that was not the end of it ,two more teachers talked. I was panicking!
Finally they start calling names. But it was not like everyone was rehearsed and they were very continuous; it was get up to go up there, the person will try to pronounce the name, then the student would walk 10 steps into the stage to stop to face the audience, and of course everyone claps. This means that there's a long wait until the next student is called. It took forever, about 15 minutes, before they get to Brennan.
Once I took his photo walking through the stage, I ran back to the entrance to meet the rest of the family to run to the van. We rushed to the airport from 10:50am and got to the airport at 11:30am while my parents and sister's family were waiting for us. It certainly was a lot of adrenaline going through the entire event but glad we all made it to the airport safely and on time.
Congratulations Brennan on your 'promotion' !
Brennan's teacher: Mr. Wells
