On Tuesday, our family (along with a couple of Mason’s friends) gathered around a television to watch the Yukon class of 2020 graduation ceremony. The online ceremony (streamed on Facebook) was the last of a series of events designed to celebrate this year’s graduating seniors, in a world where celebrations as we knew them have been put on hold.
Celebrations began on Saturday with a parade of seniors. About half of this year’s graduating class took to their cars and did a lap around Yukon. Parents and friends lined the streets to wave, cheer, and support this year’s high school seniors. My family and I sat in chairs along Route 66 in support of the kids. It was no substitute for kids hearing their name and walking across a stage to applause, but it was something.
To support the seniors, Morgan and a few of her friends from band gathered with their instruments to play alongside the parade.
On that same day, a local sign company began displaying all 600+ seniors’ picture in rotation on several of their electronic billboards around town. By sheer luck, Susan and I only had to wait a few minutes to catch a picture of Mason on display.
On Sunday, family and a few friends joined us on our back porch for a small gathering to celebrate Mason’s achievements. Susan arranged to have tacos delivered from Ted’s, but the smallest amount of food we could order was ten times what we needed, so the bright side is we will be eating leftover Mexican food through July. A few of Mason’s classmates stopped by to toss around a football and play Frisbee, which just shows you how desperate kids are for social interaction at this point.
Monday night was “Seniors on the Mill,” where the school projected every senior’s picture onto the side of the Yukon grain silo. Susan, Morgan and I met some friends of ours and sat in chairs in a parking lot, watching the pictures go by. Each picture received varying levels of applause, whistles, and car honks. This gathering definitely had a small town feel to it, and that’s okay. Lots of seniors turned out for the event, and in many cases it was the first time some of them had seen one another since the week of spring break back in mid-March.
And that brings us to last night, when the official graduation ceremony was streamed for people to watch. Graduation was led by the school’s principal and featured three short speeches from graduating seniors, all of whom appeared alone behind a podium. After the last speech concluded, “graduation” consisted of a rapid-fire slideshow where each graduating senior was displayed on the screen for about three seconds.
Mason and his friends clapped and cheered for their classmates as their pictures scrolled by.
Susan cried.
If I could summarize the graduation festivities for the class of 2020, I’d say a bunch of parents who didn’t know exactly what do planned a bunch of things and did the best they could to honor their kids. As a kid, I didn’t really understand how big of a deal graduation was — and I suppose graduation has always been as much for the teachers and parents as it has been for the kids. Graduation is a defining moment where you can pause, applaud, and tell your kid, “you did it.”
Mason, I know a parade, some pictures on a silo and a PowerPoint presentation streamed on Facebook isn’t the same as walking across a stage and receiving your diploma, but no matter how we celebrated the event, buddy… you did it.
Hi Rob! I totally feel you on this. My son is graduating high school as well. We’re hoping that our school district will have an in-person graduation ceremony in addition to a web stream when the time is right.
You should be proud! You did well by your son and your community came together! Good luck to Mason and all of this classmates!
My youngest daughter graduated this year also. She being home schooled and only having a few close friends they “did” their own. Small and quaint. Us being the proud parents we are, we feel for them. We total agree with you that it seems graduation is more for us, then for them, but we are all proud of what an accomplishment this is in their life.
Down here HEB (the big Texas grocery chain) ran a special on their YouTube channel live with a lot of “Texas” celebrities, sport stars, etc. that gave quick, but meaningful speeches. It was a great tribute to what is/was going on, and my wife and I watched it and enjoyed it more then our daughter.
Now for the class of 2020 to continue with their goals and life. Happy days will follow!
FIrst of all, CONGRATULATIONS MASON!!! I know he doesn’t know me, But I hope he appreciates the sentiment just the same! Second, you guys did good by your kiddos! It was the best that could be done with the current situation we are all in right now! I know that when we walked across that stage 30 years ago, (yikes!) it seemed like the night would never end. At least that is how it was for me. Being in the “w’s” my name was one of the last to be called. And by that time, I was ready for it to just be over with… THEN, I heard my name and actually walked across the stage to be handed, not a diploma, but the nifty little red display do hicky the diploma went in. (We had to pick our diplomas up at the counselor’s office along with our final transcripts after the final “official” day of school.) But still, I never really understood the big deal until that moment. It WAS a big deal to walk across that stage! It angers me that the class of 2020 will never get to feel what we did when we walked across that stage 30 years ago. It isn’t fair. I hope that next year’s graduating class will get to experience that once in a lifetime accomplishment, hearing their names called and walking across that stage. It’s the culmination of 13 years of schooling that can never be replaced by a “live stream” of a couple speeches and 3 seconds of a picture displayed in a cheesy power point presentation… they still use power point???