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The Katherine Thomas School in Rockville will celebrate its first full class of graduates today, and parents, staff and students are eager for the ceremony.

"It'll be a big celebration for us," said Potomac resident Donna Dixon, whose son Alex is part of the class. "We're very excited."

Alex, 19, started at the Katherine Thomas School in first grade after teachers at the McLean School in Potomac pointed out that he appeared to have some learning issues. Dixon said she eventually learned her son has severe dyslexia, a language and processing disorder, and difficulties with problem solving.

Despite his learning challenges, Dixon said the Katherine Thomas School never made Alex feel different from any other child. He plans to take classes at Montgomery College and continue his part-time job at the Cabin John Ice Rink.

"They never looked at his issues as an encumbrance to him growing," Dixon said of the staff at the Katherine Thomas School. "They focused on his strengths and the consequence of that is Alex grew up to be a pretty self-confident kid instead of a self-conscious kid."

Alex and 30 other young men and women will walk across the stage at Temple Beth Ami in North Potomac to celebrate their achievement at a 5:30 p.m. ceremony.

"I'm in awe of what these students have accomplished in such a short period of time, but I'm also a little sad because they're such a small group and we've worked so intensely with them," said Rhona Schwartz, director of the Katherine Thomas School's high school program. "I just know they'll go on to bigger and better things."

The Katherine Thomas School, part of the Treatment and Learning Centers (TLC), is an independent day school for students in preschool through 12th grade with moderate to severe language and learning disabilities and high-functioning autism. The high school program first opened to ninth- and 10th-graders in 2005.

Last year, Katherine Thomas School bid farewell to its first two graduates.

Schwartz said this year's graduates are bound for classes at Montgomery College, vocational training and other paths. Some have even earned scholarships to four-year universities, such as George Mason and Shenandoah universities in Virginia.

Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, will be the keynote speaker at the ceremony. Schwartz said Suskind, whose son is a junior at Katherine Thomas School, was chosen because of his personal connection to the school.

"He's spoken to English classes, so the students know him very well," she said. "His book, ‘A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League,' was also chosen last year for the ‘One Maryland One Book' program, and its message is very relevant to our students. In it, he talks about hope and overcoming obstacles and that's a message we want our students to come away with."