Is it just me, or is a “formal” graduation from preschool with caps and gown a bit over the top? Do 4 and 5-year-olds really need to walk across the stage as pomp and circumstance plays and they are handed their diploma.

As a parent, I am so happy my kids school doesn’t have any graduation until 8th grade. I get the want/need/desire to celebrate a transition to a new school, but isn’t there a better way?

Couldn’t the kids do a final project presentation to their families illustrating what they had learned?

As an educator, I think celebrations are important. But I also think they should be reserved for those seminal moments and I’m sorry to say I don’t think that finishing preschool is seminal.

I wish we focused more on what the kids learned and experienced then simply celebrating that they finished.

It just reinforces that too often our schools focus on the wrong thing–the result as opposed to the process.