Graduation Ceremony Research Articles

Accountability for Academics and Social Responsibility through Service Learning

Middle school teachers are charged with a formidable challenge. On one hand, they are accountable for helping young adoles cents master a daunting number of basic skills and concepts. On the other hand, they are expected to help their students develop a social conscience during what is arguably the most egocentric stage of their social development. Maintaining this balance requires considerable time and energy, and consequently, middle school teachers worry about meeting academic expectations and addressing social needs from the moment they start school in the fall to graduation ceremonies in June. At Pine Point Middle School we felt strongly that our curricular objectives and instructional method ologies for eighth grade English were sound; however, we lacked an authentic assessment tool to measure

Many faces of risk: Free speech versus public safety

AbstractNational controversy erupted when students at a public university invited a man who was on death row for killing a police officer to speak at their graduation ceremony.

Veterinary education in South Africa : the Class of 1925 : short historical communication

Veterinary education in South Africa started in 1920 when the Onderstepoort Veterinary Faculty was created. Sir Arnold Theiler was close to retirement when he finally officiated as Dean at the graduation ceremony in 1926 for the class of 1925, constituting the 2nd group of graduates. In this article the fateful circumstances that dictated the final years of Theiler's brilliant career and their effect on his participation in student matters are initially dealt with. This is followed by concise descriptions of the life histories of the ten veterinarians who graduated from the Faculty in 1925. Particularly noteworthy is that although they all started off their careers as civil servants, 4 ended up in private practice. One of them in fact spent by far the greatest part of his career, namely 35 years, as a private practitioner. An unusual incident was the almost fatal shooting of another one, while he was executing his duties as a veterinary field officer, by the son of a farmer.

Questioning honor: a parent–teacher conflict over excellence and diversity in a USA urban high school

Parent–teacher relations are often characterized as highly conflictual in the educational literature, with scant empirical evidence of how the disagreements occur in everyday talk. Close analysis of a teacher's account of an intense conflict with a student's mother over the National Honor Society grounds the abstract discourses of merit and difference in the worlds of parents, teachers and students. Narrating primarily through reported speech, in a ‘she said, I said’ fashion, the teacher recreates her conversations about the National Honor Society and the graduation ceremony. Creating the social milieu through reported speech and the inner reality by telling what she left unspoken, she captures the derision between parents and teachers. Moreover, the adult struggles obscure the adolescents' initial concerns about elitism. Exposed to reform debates, the teacher reveals her consciousness about diversity and privilege. The mother's understanding reflects traditions of individualism and meritocracy without regard to barriers created by race, sex, class and disability. The encounter ends without opportunity for fuller articulation. Notwithstanding these tendencies, the individual parent–teacher conference remains the most widely employed format in US schools, emblematic of an extremely privatized notion of that relationship. The author frames the conflict in terms of school community and public education at large to identify possibilities for more generative communication.

Graduation Requirements

Last spring a van pulled up to a university with an extended proud family dressed to the nines looking for the graduation ceremony to see a member of their family graduate from college. University security had to notify the family that the spring graduation ceremony was a few weeks ago. No, they said, they just had spoken to their student, and he was meeting them at this location. They had visited him regularly in the past four years at an apartment located just off campus. Security encouraged the family to call their student and straighten it out. After a few hours of efforts, the family concluded they could not reach their student. After reviewing university records, personnel found that this student had never attended the university.

Hitler and Stalin in Perspective: Secret Speeches on the Eve of Barbarossa

Two complementary speeches made by Hitler and Stalin in the months before the invasion are uniquely revealing. On 30 March 1941 Hitler addressed the leaders of the Wehrmacht's forces deployed in the east about the military situation and the nature of the planned campaign. Five weeks later, on 5 May, Stalin presented a similar overview of the military situation at a Red Army graduation ceremony attended by many Soviet leaders. Despite their great importance neither speech exists as a certain text, and the present article contains different sets of notes for both speeches. The notes on Hitler's speech made by Col. Gen. Franz Halder have been available in published form for many years, but they can now be compared with a second and longer version, by Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth, which has never been published before. The first extensive notes of Stalin's speech were published only in the 1990s, and these have more recently been supplemented by notes from the diaries of Georgi Dimitrov and V.A. Malyshev. Stalin's speech has not, to the best of the authors' knowledge, been published in full in English before, and neither have the Dimitrov and Malyshev notes.

Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Japanese Association for Adolescent Psychotherapy, 16 November 2002, Tokyo, Japan

Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference of the Japanese Association for Adolescent Psychotherapy, 16 November 2002, Tokyo, Japan

No respect

As I prepare for yet another graduation ceremony, I start to wonder about the things we have taught our residents as they grapple with the next phase of life. We have probably shown them all we know in the operating room, clinic, lecture hall, office, or even the local pub after a hard day. I am sure that most of them are probably beaming with confidence and cannot wait to “do it their way,” or even the “right way.” I can remember that feeling vividly almost 20 years ago. I thought I knew everything and could fix even more. I did not think that there was anything I had not learned, but little did I know …

Handel at Oxford in 1733

H ANDELS appearance at Oxford in July 1733, like Haydn's in 1791, was one of the few great events in the musical history of the 18th-century university.' The occasion was the so-called 'Oxford Act'--which was, in effect, the university's annual graduation ceremony (or passing-out parade) for masters of arts and the higher doctorates (in divinity, law, medicine and, just occasionally, music too). When celebrated publicly, the Act usually involved special musical performances (and also, in earlier days, a short season of dramatic performances given by one of the London theatre companies). Such a variety of entertainment, in addition to the academic ceremonial itself, naturally attracted a great many visitors to Oxford, not only numerous persons 'of quality and distinction', but also a fairly large contingent of Cambridge men come to witness the proceedings. As it happened, the Act in its traditional form as established by statute was publicly celebrated only three times during the first half of the 18th century: once in 1703, again in 1713, and once again 20 years later when, possibly because of the presence of Mr Handel and 'his lowsy Crew' (as they were famously dubbed by Thomas Hearne, the irascible Oxford diarist and antiquary), the stage players were denied access to the city, and thus forced to perform in Abingdon, a small country town about 61/2 miles to the south. The character of the Act, occasionally referred to later on as the Commemoration, changed quite markedly during the course of the century, and was, after 1733, soon replaced by the Encaenia, now an annual one-day festive event in commemoration of the university's benefactors which takes place in the presence of the Chancellor, and is confined to the awarding of honorary degrees (and ancillary garden party). A generally lively speech by the Public Orator (or, in alternate years, the Professor of Poetry) commenting on the main events of the preceding academic year also forms part of the proceedings.3 Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the 1733 Oxford Act involving Handel seems never to have been considered as a single self-contained episode in the composer's career, save by Cyril Eland, in an unpublished essay apparently written in the 1930s when its author was an undergraduate at Magdalen College.4 A corrected carbon copy of the typescript was later acquired (and bound) by Gerald Coke, the great English collector of Handeliana, who lent it to Otto Erich Deutsch when he was working on his invaluable documentary biography published in 1955. Together with a letter of 9 July 1951 from Deutsch to Coke thanking him for the use of it, Eland's essay is at present housed with the rest of the Coke collection of manuscripts and early printed editions in the Hampshire County Record Office in Winchester (press-mark HC 767). Though it can hardly be described as a commendably scholarly achievement, even for an undergraduate, Deutsch no doubt found it useful in alerting him to one or two sources that might otherwise have eluded him. Unfortunately, however, Deutsch's strictly chronological presentation of data not only allows two or three other non-Oxonian items to get in the way, but also defers for a further 30-odd pages several other contemporary observations on the Act which were not published until June 1734.5 Thus no clear picture of the week's events emerges; neither is there any very satisfactory explanation of the framework of academic ceremonial to which

Sociolinguistic Foundations to African Centered Pedagogy: A Literature Review

PERIOD I: INDIGENOUS VOICES PERIOD II: COLONIZATION OF THE LITERATURE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE BEHAVIORS PERIOD III: POST COLONIAL STUDIES: TOWARD AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE BEHAVIORS PREFACE To the contemporary investigator of African centered pedagogies, merely looking within the broad background of educational research would miss a substantial portion of the entire ethnographic range of investigations. An integral body of literature reposes in two other significant areas: first, within the indigenous voices of African American writers, pioneer ethnographers and scholars; and secondly, within the ethnographic investigations of the field of sociolinguistics. This literature review will focus upon the sociolinguistic foundations of the ethnographies which have formed a substantial part, both in conceptual and applied contexts, of the discussion and development of African centered pedagogies in more recent years. core issue in the relationship between sociolinguistics and African centered pedagogies is the study of the culture-specific behavior of the African American speech community; the pedagogical corollary of that relationship is the applied strategies of using those patterned and valued ways of speaking for teaching and learning effectiveness in formal classroom settings. point of departure in my own readings is with the writings of Carol Lee. This author touches upon the concept of as a valued form of oral discourse in the African American speech community. Signifying can be characterized as the verbal art of using dual meanings, innuendo and the play upon the sound and meanings of words. As a form of discourse, signifying has been the focus of much investigation. Carol Lee briefly discusses some of the background literature and touches lightly upon many other researchers' work within the field of sociolinguistics. Her article is replete with references on the topic. Since this is such a rich and important focus of research, it is important to delve more deeply into this valuable body of literature. scope of the review of this body of literature might be delineated in the following historically based outline: Period I: Indigenous Voices To ignore the indigenous voices in the critical history of African American education, or to bypass those perspectives in the earliest of ethnographies, is to deny African Americans that recognition of self-knowledge that would be factually and grossly incorrect. earliest recorded voices have commented on the processes of education (or schooling, might be more accurate) in relation to the cognitive abilities and language behaviors of African Americans. Maya Angelou, in her poignant autobiography entitled I Know Why Caged Bird Sings (1969) has described eighth grade graduation day in her native Stamps, Arkansas. graduation speaker was unequivocal about the visiting artists and the microscopes going to the white schools, while how proud the town was that the athletes (Black students graduating) would be going on to the agricultural and mechanical college. Angelou states: The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises (p. 151). Although Angelou's memoir was not published until 1969, the period of recollection for this dubious kind of graduation ceremony is set in the 1930's and 40's--at the time when African American cultural and artistic contributions were making a mark in the rest of the country (and world). indigenous voices, contemporary to this period, were indeed recorded, although not published widely at the time. Ironically, while Maya Angelou was listening disappointedly at a biased graduation drama in Arkansas, across the country in Washington, DC, the Black intellectual and philosopher, Carter Woodson was graphically portraying her and many others' plight in the pivotal MisEducation of the Negro (1933). …

International student graduation ceremonies: An opportunity for local tourism services providers

This purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of travel when associated with graduation ceremonies for the international student cohort. Due to the global growth in the international student market, the perceived importance of investigating this market in relation to the impact on tourism marketing is of timely significance. A mail survey of international students who completed their studies in a large Western Australian (WA) university in the past few years was conducted in 2001. The aim of the survey was to determine the significance of the following: (a) types of accommodation facilities used by the family/friends when visiting for graduations; (b) the proportion of expenditures on various types of activities; and (c) the differences in spending patterns for various countries of origin; and (d) the overall contribution of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) to the WA tourism sector. Results indicate that at least two to three family members (mostly parents) of graduating international students attend graduation ceremonies in Perth. Results also show that 58% of the visitors use commercial accommodation facilities (mainly hotels/motels) spending $462 on accommodation for staying 5.35 nights on average, and spend $653 on shopping. At least 58% of the graduates returned to Australia since graduation mainly for holidays (54%). Results of the study are discussed and implications for both the tourism and education sectors are highlighted, in addition to future research directions.

Graduation poetry: a comparative view of two Xhosa Oral Poets

The Xhosa oral poetry tradition as it exists in Southern Africa, has been documented fairly extensively. The tradition is, however, adapting to new circumstances and conditions and appears to be flexible enough to survive. The ‘old style’ poets have been replaced by a younger generation of iimbongi who are in big demand to perform at various occasions. The purpose with this contribution is to foreground two such younger iimbongi and to illustrate the valuable contribution they make to this essentially oral genre. Both are creative artists in their own right. Zolani Mkiva, widely known as ‘Mandela's poet’ at one point, is probably better known By contrast, Bulelani Zantsi, is still establishing himself, although he is already well known in the Western and Eastern Cape. Their backgrounds will be profiled, as well as their performances, particularly those at the graduation ceremonies at UWC in 1995 and 2000. It will also be shown how the performances of these younger generation iimbongi differ from their predecessors, how they adjusted to the pressure of having to perform on successive nights in basically the same context, and what the main similarities and differences between these two poets and their poems are.

Farewell to graduates: Looking forward

For the past 30 years, it has been my privilege to participate in a meaningful role in the work of the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences (KMSP & MHS)and to be a part of this graduation ceremony. As all of you are aware, the ceremony today marks the end of an era. For the past several years, my farewell remarks to the graduates have been a recitation of Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” (1990). Indeed, Dr. Seuss articulates an extraordinarily appropriate message to new graduates, and I have arranged for the graduates to each receive a copy of Dr. Seuss. But this afternoon I want to highlight four thoughts I hope you have learned and will carry with you as you journey forth.

Using the Narrative Approach in Groups for Chemically Dependent Mothers

ABSTRACT The powerful and healing effects of the narrative approach with the mothers at Family House, a residential treatment program for chemically dependent women, support the use of narratives in groups. Creative clinical techniques that facilitate the telling of stories are detailed. Eight themes were constructed from a retrospective review of group process notes, graduation ceremonies, and one author's written stories about clients. These repeated gender-associated themes include: no power, no sense of self, no joy, no honesty, no trust, no sense of community, no attention span, and no words for feelings. Directions for future research are identified.

Theology chronicle - Opening words at the graduation ceremony at the University of Pretoria (Part 4 - Law, Theology & Veterinary Sciences) 27 March 2001

The mission of the University of Pretoria, to be an internationally competitive and locally relevant, comprehensive research institution is by now deeply entrenched in the minds of all its stakeholders. This mission, to which we remain steadfastly committed, will ensure that the qualifications obtained by students at this University will serve them well in the development of their future careers. Through our efforts to steer a strong and sound vessel safely through the turbulent waters that characterise the higher education sector, we are able to say, with confidence, to all of you, that you can and should be proud to become a Tukkies graduate.

Declarations made by graduating medical students in Australia and New Zealand.

To survey the use of declarations of ethical commitment made by graduating medical students in Australia and New Zealand. Information, obtained by email and telephone, from faculty officers of all faculties of medicine (or medicine and health sciences) in Australia and New Zealand. Declarations are made by graduating medical students at seven of 12 Australasian faculties of medicine. To date, declarations have been based on the Declaration of Geneva or the Hippocratic Oath or have been formulated by academic staff or the students themselves. In six of the seven universities, declarations are made as part of a special declaration ceremony (usually combined with a prize-giving ceremony). One university includes a declaration as part of the official graduation ceremony. We discuss the relative merits of a declaration selected for students by staff members and a declaration written anew by each group of graduating students.

The Drug Court as a Sentencing Model

The sentencing model of the drug court puts a single judge into repeated contact with defendants under supervision. The drug court sentencing model, first, provides court monitoring and immediate, tangible punitive consequences for noncompliance with program requirements and, second, offers a strongly supportive group that provides a range of treatment options with which the defendant must be involved. Data in this article are from (a) a database developed on cases accepted or rejected by the drug court, (b) interviews with treatment providers, and (c) interviews with judges and administrators and attendance at court hearings and drug court graduation ceremonies. The article presents data on the conduct of the drug court judge and completion and attrition rates in the program, and it concludes that the activist judge role is the pivotal feature of the drug court.

The No Religion Zone: Constitutional Limitations on Religious Association in the Public Sphere

The last decade has witnessed an explosion of religious activity in the public sphere. Political candidates of both parties loudly pronounce their individual faith and link. that faith directly to their political values. Candidates use religious gatherings as political podiums and confidently assert that their God and His teachings define the country's very nature. Meanwhile, activities conducted by religious groups in public schools have become both more numerous and more prominent in the last decade. These activities include public prayer sessions at graduation ceremonies and extracurricular events, meetings by religious organizations on public school properly, prayer sessions around flagpoles outside public school buildings, and religious assemblies on school property, sometimes during the school day. Religious activities by groups of adults in public spaces other than schools have also multiplied. Religious groups conduct large-scale religious ceremonies in public parks, erect religious displays inside and outside public buildings, and even build permanent religious structures on public land.

The Ability to Persuade People to Change

Dean Futrell speaks in a strong voice and articulates her ideas with great clarity and assurance, according to Mr. Goldberg. But she well understands that listening carefully and working with people are two other characteristics of leadership. MARY HATWOOD Futrell, former three-term president of the National Education Association and today the dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University, was not placed in the academic track in her segregated school in Lynchburg, Virginia, more than 40 years ago. The counselors and teachers at Dunbar High School liked Mary, understood that she was bright, and her work hard, but they concluded that her family was far too poor to maintain her in college. When Futrell was a small child, her father was quite ill. He died when she was 4 years old. By age 10, Mary and her older sister were occasionally helping their mother clean homes and restaurants. Young Mary was always under pressure from her mother to achieve at a level in As her mother told her many years later, knew you had potential, and I felt it was my responsibility to make sure you developed that potential. I was willing to work as much as I had to to give you the support to go to school. Josephine Hatwood did considerably more than that, although she herself had only a sixth-grade education. My mother always read to me and my sister, had spelling contests with us, checked our report cards, and came to school any time it was necessary - even though it might mean changing buses two or three times. Mrs. Hatwood didn't understand the implications of tracking well enough to press for Mary to be in the college-bound program and trusted the counselors to make the right decision. However, by Futrell's junior year in school she was fifth in her class of 89 students and getting such grades that she was finally moved into the academic track - too late to take a foreign language or advanced math, but not too late to be on the path to college. At Futrell's school graduation ceremony, she received an unusual and utterly unexpected scholarship from the teachers who had actually taught her. came up on the stage and handed me these envelopes with $1,500 for college. They had gone to the local businesses, churches, and sororities and collected this money for Mary Hatwood. These were the teachers who had entered her essay in a state contest in which she became a finalist, who had told her to believe in herself and to respect herself, and who had convinced her that nobody could ever take my education away from me. The South was still segregated when Mary Hatwood began her undergraduate work in 1958 at the all-black Virginia State College in Petersburg. Mary studied both education and business to increase her chances of getting a job on graduation. She did well in college, where had teachers who pushed me and demanded things of me. The demands made by her mother and her teachers in school and college became part of Mary Futrell's being and outlook. If you are around Futrell for any length of time, you hear the phrases hard work, determination, and high standards over and over. In 1963 Futrell went to work in the Alexandria, Virginia, school system as a junior and senior school business education teacher. It didn't take her long to become involved in the local teachers' association. got involved because I didn't like what they were doing. I thought the association should get more actively involved in issues that supported what teachers wanted to do in the classroom. These were also the difficult years during which the schools in Virginia were being desegregated, and minority teachers were frequently treated disdainfully, sometimes even being demoted to nonteaching positions. Futrell bridled against this treatment of some of her colleagues. In 1976, after more than 12 years of classroom experience and considerable activity in her local and state associations, Futrell sought the presidency of the Virginia Education Association (VEA), although she was strongly discouraged from running, and obstacles were placed in her way. …

Praising the graduates: the repeated phrase in Xhosa oral poetry

This contribution deals with a number of praise poems performed at UWC graduation ceremonies by Zolani Mkiva. The data, to some extent, could be considered as unique, in that 6 performances were rendered over g days. Because only one single poet had been involved, and because the context within which every performance took place basically remained unchanged, the situation raises questions around the compositional strategies of the poet. It stands to reason that, given the circumstances, the poet might opt for using some phrases or expressions in more than one poem. This in turn recalls the well known argument around improvisation vs memorisation. The purpose of the contribution, then, is to highlight those sections the poet thought profitable to use in more than one poem. These could then be considered as possibly having been memorised. The theoretical framework underlying the discussion, is that of the so-called performance theory.