Dear High School Seniors,
It wasn’t supposed to end this way.
You were supposed to have those special moments. The last day of classes. Prom. Graduation practice. Graduation. Graduation parties.
As a teacher, I view my final day with seniors through a lens of joy and dread.
Joy because it is a well-deserved milestone, the last time a particular group of young adults moves in unison at the prompting of a bell, the last time they will complete a routine they are ready to shed.
Dread because it means they are leaving, and that when I see them again, the dynamic and the circumstances will have altered — a polite exchange in a store, maybe an email or two, or a heart emoji on Twitter and Facebook.
On that last day, there are always more than a few moist eyes from even the most stoic of students — and educators.
Graduation brings plenty of tears, too, but they are different. The ceremony is more formal, the roles more clearly delineated — Pomp and Circumstance, a litany of speeches, hats tossed in the air, cookies, fruit punch, exit.
The enormity of it doesn’t hit me in the same way as that last day with 12th-graders in the hallways and the classroom.
But, you, Class of 2020, aren’t getting that.
I wish we had known, back in March, that our couple weeks of “extended spring break” would last until the end of May, that this last day of school was really the Last Day of School. Maybe we could have had something that resembled closure.
But we couldn’t know, so we didn’t appreciate what was about to happen.
Don’t get me wrong. Administrators, teachers, parents and communities around the nation are doing everything they can to honor you and your accomplishments.
Signs are being displayed, awards ceremonies are being broadcast on YouTube, virtual class photos are being shared, social-distance parades are stepping off. One principal in Dallas delivered a candy bar and a note to each senior in his high school — more than 600 of them.
Graduations, too, are moving online. Big-name speakers like Barack Obama are offering words of encouragement in televised ceremonies. Students are being filmed individually in their caps and gowns, receiving diplomas in nearly empty auditoriums to a smattering of applause from family members, the event recorded and stitched together with footage of their peers doing the same.
Some districts keep pushing graduation back into late June, July, August, and even dates in the fall, when students are home from college for a weekend, hoping to find a time when it is safe for everybody to be together.
It’s not that we aren’t trying to honor your accomplishments. We are.
But it’s not the same. We all recognize that.
Some words of encouragement from your elders aren’t all that encouraging, either.
I’ve heard and read comments saying to suck it up, that some 18-year-olds in the past have marched off the graduation stage and into World War II or Vietnam. That people are dying while you’re mourning the cancellation of prom or an overnight trip. That this will give you something to laugh about in 10 or 20 years.
These sentiments come from people who mean well, mostly. Reminders that the institution from which everybody graduates is the School of Hard Knocks.
But the truth is that it’s always easy to find somebody who has it worse.
Of course, people are dying. You know that. Some of you are dealing with that loss, too.
Yes, young adults in the past have been handed some raw deals. Some weren’t able to go to school at all, or were sent off to work in the mines, or were denied basic human rights. If raw deals were placed on a continuum, who knows where social distancing during one’s senior year would fall.
None of that means that you can’t be sad or angry for what you’re losing right now, today.
So go ahead. Kick a can. Cry. Write it all out on a piece of paper and then crumple it up or tear it to shreds.
Or just shrug your shoulders and move on.
There isn’t an instruction manual about how to handle this situation, a prepared series of boxes to check. It’s unprecedented.
You know what else is unprecedented? The strength of the Class of 2020. You will push through this adversity. You will conquer it. You will move on. Because you are strong and resilient, something you have proven by switching from face-to-face to remote instruction, socializing with friends via FaceTime and Zoom, stepping up to become breadwinners in families in which employment has been disrupted by shutdowns.
And while your teachers weren’t able to say goodbye to you properly on that last day of school in March, I think I can speak for all of them when I say how proud of you we are, how much we respect everything you have accomplished so far, and how much we anticipate all the good you will do.
You rock. I only wish I could tell you in person.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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