STEPHEN RICCIO

PONTIAC June 25, 2020

Grade six students from Dr. S.E. McDowell School got to experience a unique graduation ceremony on June 25, with their teachers loading up a . . .

school bus and spending the day delivering gifts and applause to each graduate across the region.

It was a successful graduation tour, according to some of the teachers who tagged along for the celebration.

“I saw a lot of happy faces,” said Maureen Levesque, grade six teacher at McDowell.

“A lot of smiling faces,” said Janie Crawford, who teaches the grade five and six class. “They were beaming.”

Among the 39 children graduating from grade six this month, the tour hit the houses of all but three who were on vacation.

The gift bags that were put together for the fresh grads contained personalized glasses, t-shirts, a painted rock and each student’s graduation diploma.

The tour started at a reasonable hour, 9 a.m., and it did not stop until they had been all over the region, wrapping up at about 3:30 in Shawville.

“I think we saw the whole Pontiac, every back road,” Levesque joked.

The bus tour plan was in the works for the past month, and this format allowed for kids to have their family members with them while still being able to see their teachers.

“Some of them had their grandparents and their family with a little picnic set up,” Levesque said with a smile.

In any other year, the grade six graduation ceremony would have taken place in the school gymnasium.