the Hooding Ceremony

Today was a busy day for John. In addition to student teaching, he had to complete an "action research" project this semester, which meant a research project using the students as subjects to pursue a question about education. John's question was whether using journaling would improve the emotional literacy (understanding of feelings) for middle school boys, and whether that would improve their school performance. The boys really liked the project and benefitted from it, and the feedback was great and rewarding. The downside, from a pragmatic standpoint, was that it took a long time to do the "research" because of the many weeks spent journaling, which left very little time at the end to analyze the data, write the paper, and prepare the presentation. Add to that the stomach flu that hit us last Friday and gradually worked its way through all four of us over the course of five days, and it's been hectic.
But, it's over now. The master's program Research Symposium was today, and John got great feedback on his project. Josh, on the other hand, gave great feedback to the reception line, where he spent easily 60% of the evening, making repeated trips to the fruit plate for more strawberries.
Immediately following the symposium was the Hooding Ceremony. While graduation is Saturday, this ceremony was for John's department only--just the two "cohorts" of MAT students who did the 2-year program with night classes, so it was intimate and personal. Each student was presented with his or her Master's hood to wear on graduation day, and there were short speeches, video tributes, and lots of picture taking, hugging, and goodbyes. Unfortunately for me, John had our camera, so I don't have any pictures of him. I'm hoping John's parents got a good picture or two to send me. In the meantime, here is John's picture of us: