The season for awarding honor graduates has arrived, filling Seminole High School with sentimentality and excitement. Honor Grad, as it is colloquially known, is a coveted title that relates to a student’s GPA. There are three different levels to graduating with honors: Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and Summa Cum Laude. The highest of the three is Summa Cum Laude, which requires a student to have over a 4.0 weighted GPA.

Each student graduating with honors is encouraged to select a teacher or staff member who has helped them or had a positive impact on them. Selecting a member of the SHS staff is not required; however, it is seen as a great privilege from a teacher’s point of view, since it allows them to be recognized for making a difference in a student’s life. Once a teacher has been selected, a date is chosen by both the teacher and student to be photographed together. The teacher is later given the framed picture to hang in their room.

Many students do an Honor Grad proposal for their teacher. Similar to a ‘promposal’, this simply means that the student finds a fun or creative way to ask their chosen teacher to be their Honor Grad. Pictures of heart-warming Honor Grad proposals have been flooding student social media feeds, serving as a testament to the power of educators in seniors’ lives.

Senior Adam Conybear chose Mr. Charles Blackwell, the AP Macroeconomics teacher, to be his Honor Grad teacher. Conybear believes that the great advice he has received from Mr. Blackwell over the years has made him into the person he is today.

“I’m not really the sentimental type, but when it came to asking him, I had to show how much I appreciated what he has done for me,” said Conybear. “My gift to him was a golfball with the word ‘money’ printed on it because it combined things we both love, which are golf and economics.”

Senior Kirsten Stoller is currently a member of Leadership, which is taught by Mr. Alexander Mack. He is known for making his classes fun and being a student favorite at SHS.

“I proposed to him in front of the whole leadership class with a poster,” said Stoller. “The idea came from a friend of mine.”

Being selected as an Honor Grad is meaningful to teachers who are chosen. Knowing that a student put in time and effort to ask through a proposal makes that privilege that much more special to the teacher.