Last weekend we had the pleasure of attending the graduation ceremony at the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton.As tutors we always enjoy this opportunity to celebrate the successes our students. We know how hard they have worked to achieve their degrees.

My colleague Dr Emel Thomas said:

“BALT graduation February 2016 was a proud moment for me. I found myself reflecting and marvelling at the achievements of an amazing BALT year group! Three highlights: hearing a speech from the great Baroness Warnock, having BALT student Siobhan Fitzpatrick give the closing student speech and meeting students and their families afterwards to congratulate them. The following statement encapsulates the end of the BALT journey 2014-15 for me:

“Keep going, you’ll get there, every moment is your opportunity to add a little more value to your future”.

Emel, Dom and I enjoyed Gemma, a BALT student now on  a PGCE course, telling us about her successful job interview at a school where she had once been a teaching assistant. the sense of her journey having come full circle and her enthusiasm for teaching was evident.

Julie Jones, Leader of Education, Children and Young People, said “Great to know that FDLT and BALT graduates are such confident, strong practitioners, proud of their degree level qualifications which are so relevant to their work-based practice.”

We were all sitting on the back row and Dom Murphy said:

“From my position, seated strategically out of sight at the back, I had a good view of people’s progress from approaching the steps up onto the stage through to shaking the vice-chancellor’s hand, so one of the highlights for me was seeing the expression on face after face after face change from “Don’t trip over, don’t trip over, don’t trip over” to a triumphant smile of achievement.”

It was huge pleasure for all of us to witness Baroness Warnock being presented with an honorary doctorate at the ceremony – seeing someone whose work we have read and quote and hearing her discuss key moments ion education was an unexpected bonus!

The students in their BALT year are stil working on their degrees so we hope this experience gave them the recognition they deserve for achieving their FDLT and the motivation to get back to their dissertations so they can graduate with BA honours this time next year.

If you have a story about graduation please post it below or email it to me and I will add it.