Half receive their diplomas in person
The Storm King School Class of 2021 may as well be known as the Class of COVID-19. While not the first class to graduate under the global pandemic, this year’s senior class was the first to be fully impacted by it. As the graduates waited to receive their diplomas this past Saturday, they were able to reflect on the positives and negatives from their experience of the past 15 months.
This year’s graduating class included 40 seniors and one post-graduate student. The students hailed from 13 countries and three states. Unfortunately, only 23 members of the graduating class attended the ceremony in person while the other 18 completed their year off-campus. Two of those students enrolled in the school for the first time as seniors, but never had the opportunity to grace the grounds of Storm King because of the pandemic.
Unlike previous classes, this year’s crop of students had to endure wearing masks on campus and daily health checks. Cohorts were established and class sizes were reduced to prevent the spread of the virus in the event someone became infected. While students were still able to participate in extracurricular activities, sports were limited to intramural competition.
“In the last few years, there has been a lot of talk in education about the importance of resilience and ‘grit,’” Headmaster Jonathan Lamb said in his commencement speech. “Generally in school we help students develop resilience when one fails a quiz and has to re-learn what we thought was known. Or we help our athletes understand how to deal with losing a close game with grace; and how to use that loss to improve play in future games. Hard-earned accomplishments that involve falling down and getting ourselves up are more enduring and meaningful than easy successes; they prepare you for the tougher tasks ahead. Each of these recoveries builds your resilience and prepares you for the next challenge. But what happened over the past fifteen months involved a different type of resilience building. We had to face something that was out of our control–as individuals and as communities. All of us just had to deal with the conditions that confronted us. And what compounded the challenge was,unlike a school quiz or a game, or even a natural disaster like a hurricane or an earthquake, the challenge has continued for months and months. Learning to live and confront a crisis or emergency over time, even when we don’t know everything about how to solve it, is also an important preparation. Living with COVID has offered us lessons.”
Dealing with COVID has helped prepare the students to deal with other big challenges such as the struggle for social justice, the need to deal with climate change, the migrant and refugee crisis around the globe, and addressing the need for necessities like food and water.
“Solving any of these will require the same things we faced with COVID: comprehensive planning, convincing people who don’t think like us of the need for change, and the ability to sustain new behaviors for extended periods,” Lamb said. “Passing through this crisis, all of us have practiced adjusting our actions and impulses for the well-being of the community.”
During his commencement speech, Charles Cordero, a 1992 Storm King graduate, focused on the struggles he and his family faced emigrating from the Dominican Republic and growing up in New York City in the 80s during the biggest drug epidemic the country had ever seen.
He also took a moment to address the world the graduates are facing today, one in which race and class are dividing the country further and further.
“Our nature is to try to ignore and smooth over difficult and uncomfortable issues hoping they go away, but history has a way of rearing its ugly head,” Cordero said. “These are important and at times difficult conversations around racial and social issues we no longer can ignore because these are issues that need to be addressed and met head on. These issues affect our day to day lives in some way shape or form. There is no cure for bias, but you can be more mindful and conscious while increasing your awareness. Multiculturalism must continue to permeate every aspect of our human lives. School curriculums and leadership roles must mirror our American demographics so we can make progress in these difficult spaces.”
Cordero told the graduates it’s important for them to continue to get involved, to make a difference, and make changes for the next generation.
Awards
The Storm King Scholar Award: Dias Aidossov, Romee Choi, Kylie Marshall
The Riley Cup: Sharon Schoonmaker and Emily Elizabeth Kent
The Spy Rock Cup: Dominique Gooden
The Headmaster’s Cup: Olivia O’Blaney
The Storm King Cup: Shayla Lawrence
