Orion High School's learners become diploma eligible each month, and are awarded their diplomas upon approval.  Orion High School holds a yearly Hometown Graduation Ceremony, honoring the young men and women who have earned their diploma any time from August of 2015 - August 2015.  Learners are not required to participate in the ceremony, but many do, as a culmination for them and their families.  This year's Hometown Graduation Ceremony will be held at Orion's hometown of Midland, Texas, on July 22, 2016.  There ceremony will be held at 5:00 PM Central Time at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Midland, TX.

Orion High School's Warrior Chapter of the National Honor Society is the host of the ceremony, and members serve as Honor Guard participants in the ceremony.  During the ceremony, Orion High School awards the Valedictorian Award, for the learner graduating with the highest grade-point average.  The Salutatorian Award is awarded to the learner-graduate with the second highest grade point average.  If the Valedictorian is a Texas resident, Orion High School provides an award for the graduate to attend any public college or university in Texas, tuition free for the first-year.

Adult learners, like most of us, are excited to get started, and get the work done, and get on with the next phase in their lives.  Often, they are met  with additional hurdles, which cause frustration to our learners.  Our intent is not to make it impossible to earn the high school diploma; however, the diploma must be earned.  There are key factors that are involved in ensuring that an adult learner is ready to receive a diploma from Orion High School:

• Core course requirements must be met - Adults log in and access their online course work, and seemingly get 'done' quickly and efficiently.  When learners race through their work, it does not always make it possible for the learner to establish a relationship with his or her advocate and with all of us a a school team.  So, one of the hurdles that we place is that we want learners to have mutual communication with the Advocate.  Relationships take time, so, when a learner completes an extraordinary amount of work in a single day or week, it is impossible to develop a relationship with the advocate, let alone with the school's community of learners.
• Attendance requirements must be met - Adult learners are required to log in at www.OrionHS.org, and are required to make a status update posting.  That let's us know they're 'checking in' and allows them to be part of the larger community.  After the initial posting, learners may then access all of the additional support resources available through the community, prior to continuing on to the Adult Learner Portal, where they can proceed with their work.
• Learners must focus on positive communication with the advocate, that occurs mostly within the chat, IM, and private messaging areas.  Advocates provide office hours, and set appointments with learners for all other meeting types that may ocur.

The Learner Advocacy Committee at Orion High School is the Committee that is made up of the individual advocate-teachers.  The Committee meets on Tuesdays with the explicit purpose of Advocating for their learners' graduation from Orion High School.  The Committee is also made up of the Director of Admissions and Records, Norma Garcia; as well as the Director of Adult Learning. Let's see who our new graduates are...

Orion's  learners work extremely hard at meeting course deadlines, homework submission, meeting weekly with mentors, and balancing all other things that happen in family life.  In order to earn an A or a B in an Orion course, an Orion learner must dedicate substantial time in effort into not just viewing modules, but in synthesizing information, and communicating what has been learned, with the mentor, on a weekly basis.   For our adult learners, earning A's and Be's is also a difficult, but doable task.  Most of our adult learners have full-time jobs and families, so, to make the grade here, is an astounding feat.  Congratulations to all!