Warden seniors walk through schools to inspire younger kids
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Four Warden High School seniors get ready to lead the walk-through of their district’s elementary school.
WARDEN — Education isn’t just about reading, writing, and arithmetic.
It’s about people and relationships.
Which is one of the reasons Warden’s 78 graduating seniors walked the halls of Warden’s elementary, middle and high schools on the Wednesday before graduation.
“I think it’s fabulous for our younger students to see their siblings and older cousins graduating,” said Denise McCaffery, an English language learning coach at Warden Elementary School and the walk’s organizer.
“I think it inspires them to graduate. It’s just a good feeling for everybody to honor the kids that have been here all these years and graduate,” she said.
McCaffery admits that it’s much easier to do this in Warden — a small community with three schools built together in one complex.
“This is the third year we’ve done this, and I saw it online,” she explained. “I thought, ‘what a neat idea to do.’ And since our schools are so close together, and everybody’s pretty much been here from kindergarten on up, why not do this on their last day?”
As the seniors walked the halls of the elementary school, they got high fives from the kids, some of whom wore their own graduation mortar boards made from felt.
“There’s a lot of cohesion here, and I think you see that in smaller schools,” McCaffery said.
A graduate herself of the Warden schools, McCaffery has been teaching for 18 years.
“My class was 45,” she said. “It was nice to come back home.”