How high school valedictorians are inspiring their graduating classes in times of change | Canada Voices

Every high school valedictorian faces the same challenge: celebrate their classmates and inspire them to go with confidence toward the next phase of their lives.

It’s never been easy. But has it ever been harder?

Climate change, skies filled with forest fire smoke, wars raging around the world: Students graduating this year have already been through so much. They leave high school facing the uncertainties of the consequences of artificial intelligence, not to mention one of the most difficult youth job markets in decades.

Everywhere you look can seem like doom.

But this year’s valedictorians will be reminding their peers that they are change-makers for whom anything is possible.

The Globe and Mail spoke to five valedictorians about their plans to inspire.

This year’s graduates entered high school after the worst years of the pandemic, and so their achievements are that much more deserving of celebration, said Divine Favour Ogunrewo.

“Some people’s mental health got really bad during that year, so I’m really proud of everyone for making it to this point,” said the 17-year-old.

When she gives her speech next week, she will celebrate her classmates’ perseverance as well as their capacity to make the world a better place. “We have a lot of change-makers in this generation,” she said. “If we’re making decisions by ourselves and no one else is making it for us, we can be the change we want to be.”

Come the fall, Ms. Ogunrewo, who moved to Canada from Nigeria at the age of 13, will be at the University of Toronto studying neuroscience.

“With the way things are looking, it’s hard to be confident going in to the world knowing that you’re going to succeed,” said Ms. Ogunrewo, a long-time member of her school’s student council.

But she is sharing in her speech words from Dr. Seuss that give her hope, about how each of us gets to decide the direction we go, and even if we don’t know where that is exactly, we’ll figure it out.

“Some of us know exactly where we’re going, some of us have changed our minds, and some of us are still figuring things out right now, and that’s okay, because growing up is messy,” Ms. Ogunrewo said.

Still, she tells her peers to go boldly. While she admits the world is not an easy place, she encouraged everyone at her graduation go on to do amazing things, saying, “As we stand here today, ready to embark on the next chapters of our lives, let us remember that we have the power to shape our own futures. We’re the ones who determine our own paths. We have the potential to achieve greatness.”

For most graduating high school students, the enormity of what lies ahead – their whole life, and what to do with it – can be overwhelming.

“The world is just big, and I think that’s what scares people, because they have so many choices,” said Lily Stewart, 18, this year’s valedictorian at Kitsilano Secondary School, in Vancouver.

The choices she and her fellow graduates will make, and the moral weight those choices carry, became the theme of the speech she delivered earlier this month.

During her time at Kitsilano Secondary she played volleyball, basketball, soccer and track and field, and she coached girls’ basketball and boys’ soccer. She was also part of the Black History Month committee and planned a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conference for the Vancouver School Board.

This fall, she will be heading to Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ont., to study biology and psychology and to play varsity basketball.

This past year, Ms. Stewart was mentored by Valerie Jerome, a Canadian Olympian, educator and political activist. Ms. Stewart honoured her mentor in her speech, by sharing Ms. Jerome’s words of advice: “Dare to be an ally and stand with others. Recognize the human dignity in those who are excluded because they look different from you.”

Encouraging her classmates to be fearless, confident and true to themselves, Ms. Stewart reminded them that many of them had met when they were wearing masks during the pandemic, and now “we’ve grown to take off our figurative masks and be ourselves,” she said.

Having made it through a pandemic, and now living in a world increasingly defined by what will likely be one of the greatest technological upheavals in history, this is a generation for whom disruption is the norm.

But the fact should inspire us, not scare us, Ms. Stewart told her peers. Amidst all the currents shaping their lives that are out of their control, each of them can determine for themselves who they are, and who they become.

“There’s so many different opportunities in the world right now, and the future is changing,” she told her class. “The world is changing, so just create your own path and be confident you can do that and be yourself.”

When Mahikan Nabi was about to begin high school, she made a decision.

“I told myself I would be the best version of myself. I would smile at everyone that walked in front of me. I’d be great with my greetings, I’d make eye contact, all of these things,” said the 17-year-old, who became the scorekeeper for the basketball team, played badminton and started a crochet club.

Now Ms. Nabi plans to pursue a career in dentistry. “I think smiles are something everyone can share, and so being able to help people with that, it’s just such a beautiful thing,” she said.

When she sat down to write her speech, she considered exploring the theme of failure, she said. “And then I was like, maybe that’s not something that we want to commemorate today.”

So she turned to a quote attributed to Albert Einstein – she had promised no “cringey quotes,” but this one was perfect: “Once you stop learning you start dying.”

She and her classmates had learned not only from teachers, but their parents and most importantly, from each other.

They had learned throughout high school that, “failure wasn’t the opposite of success, but a part of it,” she said.

They had learned to stand up for themselves, and that their voices truly mattered.

And when Ms. Nabi delivers her speech next week she plans to remind them of the importance of hope. “Everything in this world, if I may be so frank, is collapsing,” she said. “Everything seems like it’s going down. Nothing seems like it’s going right now, and so believing you are truly helpless is the biggest handicap.”

Which brings us back to learning. Combine a never-ending thirst for learning with unquenchable hope and the state of the world won’t seem nearly as daunting. Maybe not even as daunting as the start of high school was for Ms. Nabi and so many others.

“The world is waiting for us, not just to occupy space, but to make it better,” she said. “So don’t let your learning stop here. Don’t let the diploma be a finish line. Let it be a starting gun.”

The theme for this year’s graduation ceremony at William Aberhart High School, held at the end of May, was how much of a difference you can make in this world.

Andre (Andrisoa) Ramaholison, the school’s valedictorian, wanted to take that theme and remind his classmates that the difference they make often happens in small ways.

“I talked about how we’ve all made an impact in some way, whether it was by driving people to school, teaching someone a difficult concept or cheering our teams on from the stands,” the 18-year-old said. “It’s important for me to let students know that they matter, and their presence meant something to other people.”

In true school spirit, he gave a shoutout to “Abe’s” school colour, orange. The mascot is called Orange. The team name is Orange.

It had always been baffling to Mr. Ramaholison, but he figured it out. “I said it’s our identity. It’s what we represent. It represents energy, boldness and above all, orange represents community,” he said. “So we didn’t have to know why orange was so orange, or Abe was so orange, we just had to know it runs in our blood.”

That spirit of energy, boldness and community is something his fellow graduates need to take forward in to whatever it is they do next, said Mr. Ramaholison, who will be attending the University of Calgary in the fall to study engineering.

When he entered high school, he wasn’t very excited. He was leaving his old school behind and leaving some friends he had made special bonds with, he said.

“But honestly, it took like one week for me to get included in the school, so it grew on me pretty quick,” he said. That community that welcomed him and made him feel included was made up of many people and many seemingly small acts, each one important in its own way.

As he stood before his graduating class, Mr. Ramaholison said he wanted his speech to be one of those acts that helps make people feel seen and inspired. If there is one thing he learned from high school, one fact to carry with him as he moves on to the next phase of his life, it is this, he said: “You can make a difference in the world and have an impact, even if you’re just one person. You can make that difference to touch a whole community.”

Brandur Brown was so nervous and excited to be named class valedictorian when the announcement came over the P.A. system that he broke a desk in half.

“I was really tense, and I was kind of just shaking a bit, and I had my hands under the desk. The entire top of it just kind of popped off the legs,” he said.

His entire class screamed in appreciation when the announcement was made, and his nerves calmed down.

Mr. Brown, 18, played offensive and defensive tackle on the school’s football team – he’s big enough to break a desk. More importantly, though, he’s a team player.

As he prepares his speech, which he will deliver at the end of the month, he’s been asking fellow students to share stories of their years at Northern that he can incorporate. As he made clear in his candidacy speech, he had no interest in hyping himself at graduation.

“I really want to talk about why everyone else is great,” he said. “My measure of success would be seeing everyone smiling and kind of appreciate themselves.”

Besides playing football, Mr. Brown joined the physics club and started the Lego club. Next September, he’ll be attending the University of Toronto, where he will be on the football team and studying astrophysics in the hopes of pursuing a career in medicine.

As he finishes writing his speech, he’s hoping to work in a reference to a movie in which Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson learns to appreciate himself by taking off his clothes. “The joke is that I couldn’t find tearaway pants in my size,” Mr. Brown said.

He’ll also be referencing Snoop Dogg’s 2018 Walk of Fame acceptance speech in which the rapper famously said “I want to thank me for believing in me,” but with the twist that every one of his classmates should be thanking themselves.

Maybe it was all those years playing football. Maybe it was his time playing rugby. Maybe even some of it came from Lego club. But Mr. Brown knows no one wins alone, and any victory worth celebrating is one in which everyone knows they did it together.

“We’re all going to be one team at the end of the day walking off the stage,” he said.