Homeschoolers: Celebrate, then get down to business

WASILLA — In a borrowed auditorium, the Mat-Su Central School ushered its first group of graduates into adulthood Monday.

The school had to borrow an auditorium from the Mat-Su Career and Technical High School because it doesn’t have one of its own. In fact, in a lot of ways, Mat-Su Central is more of an idea than an actual school. The Mat-Su Borough School District created Mat-Su Central this year as a means of organizing its disparate legion of homeschooling families under one banner and giving a hand to graduating seniors whose next step in life requires a diploma from an organized high school with a name and an address.

Since students and parents choose the homeschool option for a variety of reasons, it’s probably to be expected that the 63 names listed in the graduation program belonged to students of disparate backgrounds. And their graduation ceremony reflected that diversity.

For instance, graduate Keanuinui Moore, who gave one of the two student addresses at the ceremony, chose homeschooling after she had to quit high school a year ago to help her family. She said she tried to re-start her studies at a traditional high school, but was told she wouldn’t graduate on time. She wanted to prove them wrong.

“Apparently they didn’t believe in me,” Moore said.

Moore said the world would do well to heed her advice on the topic of homeschoolers — “don’t sell us short.”

The other student speaker was Jessica Doak, who spoke less about what brought her to Mat-Su Central School than she did about where she was going now that she’s graduated. Doak earned a black belt in Tang Soo Do during her high school years and left with a 4.0 grade point average and a scholarship to the University of Alaska.

“We are standing at a very important point in our lives,” Doak said, one during which students will be asked to make very important decisions about their academic and professional lives.

But there’s also something to be said for, in the near term, basking in one’s accomplishment and taking a few weeks to think.

“Relax and read a book — only if you want to,” Doak advised her fellow grads. “Relax and write — only if you’re on Facebook.”

But if her colleagues were thinking of taking Doak’s advice, the ceremony’s keynote speaker, Mat-Su School Board President Colleen Vague, said they should make sure that when they decide to take a job they do so in earnest.

To the grads intending on moving on to colleges, she said, “you are prolonging the inevitable. You will eventually need to get a job.”

Vague said her background in human resources has taught her a number of things. Absenteeism, she said, is the No. 1 reason people are fired. And a person’s right to self-expression is very much curtailed when he or she enters the work force. Employers can absolutely tell employees to pull up their pants, cover their tattoos and take the jewelry out of their faces.

They can do that, Vague said, because, “there are 80 people behind you looking to take that job.”

So students can do well in the working world, she said, by simply taking their jobs seriously, by showing up on time and when scheduled — and by following the rules.

“One day maybe you’ll be the employer and you can make and change the rules as you see fit,” Vague said. “But I don’t think that day is today.”

In thanking Vague for her remarks, Principal John Brown told the graduates to heed her words, but maybe not just yet.

“Tomorrow morning you guys wake up and think about that,” Brown said. “Tonight — celebrate.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.