Closing Ceremonies at Delta State

The Closing Ceremonies for Institute were awesome. Incredibly awesome.

All corps members were all supposed to sit with our school sites for the ceremony (since we'd spent so much time with them over the last five weeks), so Ruleville all got together before the ceremonies to prepare. And by prepare, I mean that we all dressed in black and covered ourselves with green and yellow streamers (the colors of Ruleville).

So. Much. Spirit.

Some of the people from my awesome CMA group.

We then all walked in together shouting "Ruleville Tigers" and holding up tiger paws. We're cool like that.

And we cheered...

"50% sweat,
50% skill,
100% reason to remember Ruleville.
10 % sleep,
90% gain,
100% reason to remember the name.
RULEVILLE!"

The ceremony itself was the best part though. It started with a choir from a local Kipp school (public charter school) singing a couple songs, and then overall Director of Institute gave a speech.

AND.... My kids and I got a huge shout-out during the Closing Ceremonies!!! The Director of Institute gave a shout-out to four different corps members about how they went above and beyond to work with their kids, and I was one of them. He talked to the entire audience about how I invested a few of my most difficult kids by having them paint a mural with me before class every morning (blog about the mural coming soon). What an awesome feeling, to be recognized for that hard work and to have my fellow corps members celebrate that with me.

AND... My friend Geales absolutely ROCKED her speech at the Closing Ceremonies. Listening to her stories during Institute, reading her blog, and watching her on stage tonight reminded me of the incredibly people I've had the good fortune to meet. Geales is one of the most selfless people I know, with a heart and soul of gold. I love her to death, and I'm so happy that she got the opportunity to speak in front of her peers. Gave me chills.

AND... BamaCorps was hard-core represented through-out the entire ceremony. A fellow BamaCorps member, Mickey, was another of the four CMs who got a shout-out during the Director of Institute's speech (so two out of four = not too shabby). And we were all over the place in the ending slideshow, which was a montage of a ton of pictures taken at all the different school sites this summer.

Overall, a pretty great evening to wrap up my summer experience at Institute.