Manchester School District Class of 2023: Four ‘atypical’ years of finding their way to resilience
When the Class of 2023’s high school experience began in the fall of 2019, it was a typical high school experience. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
Links to photo galleries of all four high school graduations
- Graduation Gallery: Memorial High School
- Graduation Gallery: Central High School Class of 2023
- Graduation Gallery: Manchester West High School Class of 2023
- Graduation Gallery: Manchester School of Technology
MANCHESTER, NH – For nearly two centuries in the United States, the high school experience has been an American rite of passage, an introduction to hierarchical structures.
Everyone knows the drill: You enter as a lowly freshman, get stuffed in a few lockers, then work for four years and leave the kings and queens of the school.
When the Class of 2023’s high school experience began in the fall of 2019, it was a typical high school experience.
Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
The Class of 2023 at all four city schools were freshmen in March of 2020 when the pandemic shut down the world, and their high school experiences across the board would come to redefine the word “atypical.”
In a matter of days, they were thrust into remote learning, and would soon become fluent in the lexicon of Covid education, learning terms like “hybrid models,” “synchronous” and “asynchronous” learning, while attending classes without leaving their beds.
On Saturday, June 17, at the SNHU Arena in downtown Manchester, all four schools – Central, West, Manchester School of Technology and Memorial – graduated those freshmen, just when their high school experience had returned normalcy.
Ceremonies were spread across one day bringing thousands of families into the arena for what may have been the most “normal” aspect of their students’ four-year journey: Graduation day.
At the Memorial graduation, which I attended as a proud dad of a graduating son, the speakers’ themes for the evening would reflect this climate—lauding the graduating class for their perseverance, resilience, tolerance, inclusion and compassion.
I am sure this was a common thread throughout every graduation ceremony that day.
After senior Evalyn Davis performed a rousing acapella rendition of the national anthem, she ceded the stage to the senior class president Autumn Pelletier, who began with the obligatory Class of 2023 “selfie” from the stage.
Pelletier acknowledged the obstacles the Class of 2023 had to overcome, using the metaphor of a rollercoaster ride to describe their high school experience. “As we rode through its highs and lows, we may not have thought we were going to survive,” she said. “And sometimes it felt like I had my eyes closed the whole time.”
Salutatorian Ricky Truoung then discussed how the pandemic and “challenges of remote learning” affected his plans to achieve straight A’s throughout high school, teaching him “resilience.”
“Everything did not go exactly as planned,” said Truoung, who will be attending Harvard University in the fall. “But when you really think about it, it truly was incredible how we were able to go through such a challenging and unprecedented time in human history.”
Next, the valedictorian Joshua McDonald began by acknowledging that “English is not [his] strong suit” so, instead, he played to strengths, crunching numbers while discussing the 15,120 hours spent in high school that somehow managed to “go by too fast.”
McDonald, who will attend Northeastern University, then added a touch of magic and theatrics, performing a card trick that was projected onto the jumbotron at the SNHU Arena that cleverly navigated their four-year high school experience, including Covid-19 and an “abnormal” learning experiences.
“The future is unpredictable,” he said, “but I do know that in 40 years when we look back at this, we won’t think about the time we spent in class, not wanting to be there, we’ll think about the friends that we made, the jokes that we shared, and the teachers that made us do more than just memorize the quadratic formula.”
Above: Adam Jacques, a co-captain of the Crusaders football team, gave Principal Scott St. Onge a lift. Photo/Stacy Harrison
The Class of 2023’s chosen faculty speaker and social studies teacher Creig Lessieur began by acknowledging that his goal was to eschew graduation speech cliches and admitted that he struggled with writing it. “It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to get there,” he said.
Lessieur went on to acknowledge that the students’ generation “received a lot of flack” for some of their idiosyncrasies but lauded them their ability to “accept people for who they are” while bringing “inclusion” and “acceptance” into a deeply divided world.
“I think your approach to the world is needed now more than ever,” said Lessieur.
Principal Scott St. Onge then expressed optimism for the future and said that we can all learn “humanity” from the Class of 2023.
Manchester mayor and Memorial High School alumni Joyce Craig also praised the graduates for being an “exceptional” and “resilient” group of young people and encouraged them to “use [their] voices.”
Manchester superintendent Dr. Jennifer Gillis then officially graduated the students before they were awarded their diplomas, sending this unique Class of 2023 into the breeze, into the future, into the rest of their lives.
