PHOTO BY PAULA MULLER
Class President Zoe Petty gives the President’s address while Valedictorian Anna Hunt listens.
BY GAYLA CAWLEY
SWAMPSCOTT — The High School Class of 2016 has staying power, which was celebrated on Sunday when they received their diplomas.
Superintendent Pamela Angelakis praised the 159 graduates for their resilience, which she defined as the ability to bounce back and recover quickly from difficulties. She said their senior year had been a challenging one, but compared their ability to keep going to learning how to ride a bicycle without training wheels.
“Why did you all succeed?” Angelakis said. “Because of resilience.”
English teacher Peter Franklin said his classes featured breathing exercises and meditation. He said the strategies helped reduce anxieties among his students, but acknowledged that they might have told their parents that he was often the source of their stress.
Franklin said the graduates may be taking different paths, attending different colleges, going straight into the workforce or into the military.
“We all have one thing in common, to be happy,” Franklin said. “That’s the one thing that drives us.”
There are two main contributing factors to happiness, he said. A person must be grateful and should take a moment each day to think of anything going well in their life. The other component to happiness is to be mindful. He said gratitude and mindfulness will lead to success, happiness and a blessed life.
“They say it takes a village to raise a child,” said Class President Zoe Petty, a Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity program or Metco student from Boston. “For me, it took a small town and a big city.”
Valedictorian Anna Hunt said she and fellow graduates appreciate growing up in a town and culture that values education and freedom. She quoted William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” with “all the world’s a stage and all the men and women are merely players.”
The graduates will play the lead role in each of their lives, Hunt said. She told them that when they make mistakes, they can get back in the game, or not. But if they don’t get back in the game, they’ll merely be on the sidelines.
“The game doesn’t stop,” Hunt said. “It invites us to keep playing.”
Frank Kowalski, interim principal, told graduates that part of the game of life is learning how to lose, which develops and creates character.
“Losing has more lessons than winning,” he said.
Sara Cunningham, the student speaker, said Swampscott High School has shaped who all of the graduates are and who they will become. She couldn’t help but realize that graduation would likely be the last time she will be together with all of her classmates.
“We are each other’s histories,” Cunningham said. “And that history starts today.”
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @GaylaCawley