Teacher Gives Student His Shoes at Graduation After Teen Was Nearly Banned for Wearing Wrong Ones

“It was a no-brainer,” John Butler, a paraeducator at Hahnville High School in Boutte, Louisiana, told the Washington Post of loaning his shoes to Daverius Peters minutes before the school’s ceremony

A high school senior in Louisiana was able to walk across the graduation stage to receive his diploma thanks to the generosity of a quick-thinking teacher. 

Daverius Peters was almost barred from his high school’s graduation ceremony on May 19 for wearing sneakers instead of the school’s mandated dress shoes, the Washington Post reported.  

A representative from Hahnville High School in Boutte, Louisiana blocked Peters from entering the ceremony’s venue because his black leather sneakers “violated the dress code,” Peters, 18, told the Post. 

The school’s graduation dress code stipulates that male students must wear dark dress shoes to the ceremony and “no athletic shoes” were allowed, according to the Post. 

“I was in shock,” Peters told the Post of not being allowed inside. “I felt humiliated. I just wanted to walk across the stage and get my diploma.”

Outside the convention center, a nervous Peters reportedly spotted a familiar, friendly face: John Butler, a paraeducator at the school and a popular staff member among the students. His daughter, Jaelyn, was also graduating from Hahnville. 

Peters quickly approached Butler and asked for help. 

“Of course, that sounded crazy to me,” Butler told the Post. “There was nothing eccentric about his shoes.”

When the school representative didn’t budge, Butler slipped off his tan loafers and handed them to Peters so he could join his classmates inside. 

“It was a no-brainer,” he said. “This was the most important moment in his life up to that point, and I wasn’t going to let him miss it for anything.”

It wasn’t a perfect fit — Butler is a size 11, while Peters is a size 9 — so the teacher sat in the audience in his socks, while Peters wobbled in the oversized loafers. 

Those in attendance —  especially Peters’s family —  were bewildered when the high school senior stepped across the stage in his new, ill-fitting shoes.

“Wait a minute, whose shoes does he have on?” Jima Smith, Peters’s mother, whispered to his family, according to the Post. “We were all confused.” CONTINUE TO READ AT WWW.PEOPLE.COM