Tulsa Honor Academy Hosts 'College Signing Day' To Celebrate 1st Graduating Class

Tulsa Honor Academy (THA) will celebrate its first graduating class Tuesday morning and its commitment to college.

The school has organized a "College Signing Day" at 10 a.m. inside Oral Roberts University's Mabee Center. Each graduating senior will declare where they are going to college.

Signing Day is a tradition typical among student-athletes to announce where they are committing to play their sport at the next level. Tulsa Honor Academy Founder and CEO Elsie Urueta Pollock said she believes all students' decision to go to college should be celebrated, not just athletes, which is where the idea for "College Signing Day" came from.

97% of THA's graduating seniors were accepted into college and many will be first-generation college students, including Alonso Canales.

Canales has attended THA since he was in 5th grade and said his parents chose to enroll him in a college prep school because they trusted it would help pave his way to go to college, something no one else in his family has ever done.

"My family originally came from Mexico," he continued saying, "They moved to America and that is when I was born and the reason, they even came to America was for me to have the opportunity and the resources to be successful in life and just make them proud."

Canales said he will attend the University of Oklahoma in the fall to study architecture.

This year's graduating class will be Tulsa Honor Academy's first since the school launched in 2015. It is a charter school for students in 5th through 12th grades.

Urueta Pollock said from the moment students enter THA's doors, they learn what it means to go to college. Once they become Juniors and Seniors, she said the students are guided through the college application and financial aid process. "We take going to college very seriously and we also know 94% of our kids will be first-generation college students, so they may not know all the steps that it will take to get there," she said. "We make sure that there are no barriers for them to access these opportunities."

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