Teachers, parents celebrate last day of school with graduations and ‘confetti walk’ at Jefferson Elementary

Kindergarten teacher Marissa Zellers arranges a dozen of her pupils into a single-file line outside her classroom door. Fiddling with the red tassels taped to their blue construction paper mortarboards, the swarm of 6-year-olds buzzes with anticipation. Zellers reaches down to ensure each of their tassels is to the right as “Pomp and Circumstance” plays from a speaker.

“OK, kindergartners,” Zellers said in a slow, deliberate voice. “The magic moment is about to happen.”

Kindergartners and grades advancing to middle school celebrated their graduation with lively festivities at Jefferson Elementary School on the last day of school Tuesday.

In their celebration, fifth- and sixth-graders marched in the school’s annual last day of school confetti walk as staff showered them with colorful shreds of paper.

The last day fell on a Tuesday, due to a combination of a snow cancellation makeup day and new federal holiday on Monday, Juneteenth. After three blissful months of summer, students and staff will return to school Sept. 5.

The confetti walk goes back at least 30 years, predating any of the staff’s time at the school. As long as they can remember, staff have sent their pupils off to middle school by affectionately pouring handfuls of shredded paper onto their heads. By the time students walk two laps of the gym, they look like cupcakes topped with a healthy layer of sprinkles.

Emotions in the gym were a mixed bag: some were misty-eyed, many staff members having watched the students grow from tykes to tweendom.

“I was just trying to keep it together, myself,” said Dan Ankcorn, a reading intervention specialist.

Students also experienced a spectrum of emotions while reliving grade school memories.

Sixth-grader Lydia said she’ll miss her kindergarten teacher, Andrea Sims, who now teaches third grade at Jefferson.

Sixth-grader Cassie said she was excited to go to middle school, but treasures time spent with classmates at Jefferson.

“Me and my friends made code names for everyone in our grade,” Cassie said.

Sixth-grader Jersey also fondly recalls time spent with teachers, like assigning characters of “The Office” to classmates with her teacher, Mikayla Mahoney.

“It’s kind of nerve-wracking going to middle school,” Jersey said.

This year, the fifth-graders joined the sixth-graders in the procession for the first time. Due to district-wide restructuring in grade levels to comply with class size requirements, middle schools on the southside of Spokane Public Schools will integrate sixth-graders starting September, while elementary schools will instruct grades K-5. Schools on the northside made this transition this school year.

While fifth- and sixth-graders celebrate graduating to middle school, a number of staff are also making a transition to a new school due to this restructuring.

Ankcorn is one such educator. A true Jefferson legacy, Ankcorn attended the school in 1980. A generation later, his children were Patriots at the school.

“They have some traditions around here that you don’t see anywhere else. They’re really family and community-focused,” Ankcorn said. “It was just nice to come back home, be at the same school I was at.”

He’s worked in the district for 24 years, and is looking forward to celebrating his silver anniversary by helping students struggling with reading at a new school, Frances L.N. Scott Elementary.

Ankcorn said the confetti walk was his favorite of Jefferson’s traditions.

“Parents have their own celebrations with the kids, so we get to send them off in our own way,” Ankcorn said.

For Zellers, some of the fifth-graders she sprinkled with confetti were among her first class of kindergartners at Jefferson. Ten of those students, she said, used to sit criss-cross applesauce on the primary colored rug in her classroom as pupils and teacher alike navigated the new school for the first year.

“It was really special to see them, but also a little shocking to realize they’re going off to middle school,” Zellers said. “It was kind of funny being like, ‘They’re big kids now,’ but also they’re still so little. Some of them are really tall, but they’re still little humans.”

Now, the dozen pint-sized scholars seated at the front of her classroom are an especially sweet, kind and bouncy group, she said.

Zellers’ students donned paper caps and received a diploma in their make-shift graduation ceremony outside her classroom before being released to beaming families.

“Every once in a while you meet people that are doing the job that they were absolutely made to be doing. And I think it’s always really self-evident with her,” said Nathan Bauder, father to Carter. “It’s a beautiful process to watch as a parent.”