A Kansas First Grader Asked for His Whole Class to Be There When His Adoption Was Finalized, So His Teacher Took Them All on a Field Trip to Watch

When Brittany Jones and her family asked her son who he wanted with him on the day his adoption became official, they expected a short list. The Kansas first grader had a different answer: his entire class, the Emporia Gazette reported.

On Oct. 16, Mrs. Metzger’s first-grade class at Olpe Elementary School went on a field trip to be there as their classmate, identified by the Gazette only as Z, was surrounded by family for his adoption.

Not Just a Couple of Friends

Jones told the Gazette how the invitation list came together. The family asked him whether there were certain people he wanted to invite to be there.

She asked whether that meant just a couple of friends. No, he told her. He wanted his whole class.

So the whole class went. The first graders gathered together in a show of school pride while Z stood with his family, according to the Gazette, and Metzger said her students were excited to support a day their classmate will never forget.

A Field Trip Unlike the Usual Ones

Olpe Elementary is a small school. It serves children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in the Southern Lyon County district and enrolled 149 students in the 2024-25 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The school shared the day on its Facebook page, describing it as “a pretty special field trip” for its first graders to support a classmate celebrating his adoption, according to KWCH 12 News in Wichita, which picked up the story a week later.

KWCH, recounting Jones’ interview with the Gazette, reported that her son insisted on having all of his friends there, not just a few. The station identified the school system as Olpe Schools, part of USD 252, and noted that the school itself had first shared the moment publicly. For a class of first graders, it was a field trip with a different kind of destination: not a museum or a farm, but a classmate’s family day.

Neither outlet published Z’s full name, his age or details of his adoption case.

Back in Time for Homecoming

The day did not end at the adoption. After it was finalized, Z went back to school and joined in the homecoming activities with the same classmates who had come to watch, according to the Gazette.

That meant the same group of first graders shared both parts of his day: the adoption itself and the homecoming fun back at school.

Adoption Days Across the Country

Z’s celebration came a few weeks ahead of National Adoption Day, which falls on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2026, when courts and organizations in more than 400 communities finalize and celebrate adoptions from foster care, according to the event’s organizers. Since it began in 1999, the effort has recognized more than 95,000 children who moved from foster care to permanent families.

The need remains large. On Sept. 30, 2025, there were 331,747 children in foster care in the United States, and 67,249 had a case plan with a goal of adoption, according to the federal Children’s Bureau’s AFCARS data for fiscal year 2025. That year, 43,380 children left foster care through adoption, and more than half of them were between 1 and 5 years old. Children ages 6 to 10 made up about a quarter of those adoptions.

Those numbers cover adoptions from foster care, which is the focus of National Adoption Day.

Whatever path brought Z to his family, the Olpe first graders made sure he did not walk into that day alone.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Liz – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons