“Simran Cheema is a Renaissance woman,” begins teacher J.J. Atterbury, standing at a trophy-covered table.
Then, he launches into a recitation of the Grade 12 student’s achievements in academics, sports, robotics and musical theatre, all the stuff that has resulted in her being named not just athlete of the year, but winner of Reynolds Secondary’s highest honour, the W.J. Garner Award, which comes with a $5,000 scholarship. He talks about four years on the honour roll, a 4.0 GPA, tenacity in soccer, basketball and rugby.
It’s a standard high school awards ceremony, with one big difference: It’s happening on Cheema’s front lawn. Cheema herself is looking a touch bewildered, having had no idea what was coming when she answered the door in bare feet and a blue Reynolds Soccer hoodie. This, in the year of COVID-19, is what an end-of-year assembly looks like. Instead of being feted in front of a gym full of their peers, half a dozen of the Saanich school’s major award winners were surprised late Thursday afternoon by a convoy of teachers who drove to the students’ homes.
Principal Tom Aerts and nine teachers tackled it like a NASCAR pit crew, rapidly setting up and taking down the display — skirted table, flags, balloons, roadrunner mascot — before zipping off to the next house. It was a way to toot the horns of those whose accomplishments would otherwise, like an unwitnessed hole-in-one, go uncelebrated. A drive-by tooting, as it were.
It was ... touching.
I say this as someone who has not always been a big fan of end-of-year festivities, and not just because my own 18-year-old high school bio might not have been as impressive as Cheema’s. (“This year, Jack learned to smoke.”)
Sometimes, it seems that, like a couple who put more thought into the wedding than the marriage, students put more energy into the grad process than they do into school itself. Grad night has become grad season, dragging out over a period equal to the Seven Years’ War, with a cost to match.
The grad ceremonies can be tedious — hundreds of young people and their parents sardined into a stuffy hall for hours on end until they lose A) the feeling their legs, B) consciousness, or C) the will to live. Meanwhile, up on the stage, some grey-haired, grey-faced luminary drones on at length, instructing the students on what to do with their lives.
Sometimes, this speaker turns what should be a joyous celebration into an opportunity for a grim-lipped scolding: Work hard, don’t drift, have a goal, nobody owes you a living. Sometimes, the advice is more wistful: It’s better to be kind than cool, to be generous than acquisitive, to chase contentment instead of wealth, oh, God, why did I marry Harry (occasionally, wisdom gets confused with regret). Grads must wear mortarboards as hard hats to protect them from the words raining down.
The thing is, there’s still something uplifting about these gatherings. All that pride, all that achievement, all that unfettered potential. The culmination of a 13-year journey, shared with those who took it together.
Except this year, the end of the road also doubles as the edge of a cliff. The first class of grads born after 9/11 have found their short lives bookended by a pair of generational crises. With the future so cloudy, they have been robbed of their moment in the sun.
So, good for those who choose not to let it slip by unnoticed.
“I was speechless,” Cheema said after the convoy had departed for its next stop. “I was not expecting it at all.”
Yes, she says, missing out on a normal grad year has been disappointing. This year’s alternative — gowning up and going to a largely empty school gym in small groups, socially distanced, to accept their diplomas — isn’t what she and her classmates had in mind.
But then, neither was Cheema expecting Thursday’s front-lawn surprise. It had to feel pretty nice to have her beaming family on hand as Atterbury spoke of her as “a kind, intelligent, hard-working and well-rounded student who dedicates herself to everything she does.”
Cheema was grateful. The school staff could have just told her of her awards by email, she said. They didn’t.
“I’m glad they put in the effort to do this.”
