"The year COVID-19 took over" is not how we'll be remembered
By: Destiny Bruce
After weeks of anticipation between the coronavirus and the shutting down of schools, a final decision is made regarding the Class of 2020 graduation.
When the storm hit
COVID-19 was merely a disease only found in bats or animals who’ve had contact with bats. Slowly, quietly, and quickly the infectious disease that will soon be known to the world will spread killing thousands. So many countries aren't ready and now lost at what to do.
On April 15th, 2020 Philadelphia School District Superintendent Dr. William Hite announced all June graduations are canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s been about a month since the district was shut down, going from closed for 2 weeks, closed for two more weeks, closed indefinitely, to finally being closed for the rest of the school year. No matter what was happening around them, the Class of 2020 at Carver Engineering and Science still grasped at even the smallest chance that their graduation was still a go.
What now?
High school seniors all over the county express their wistful thoughts and feelings in any and every way they can. Classmates needing each other's support now more than ever. At Carver, art teacher Ms. Swift and the yearbook team saw it to be a good idea to make a place for students to express their feelings during these hard times in the 2020 yearbook.
”My goal of every yearbook is to try and capture that class's experience at E&S, and what we are going through now is a huge part of that experience. Never in my lifetime has everything that used to be important been taken away in a blink of an eye, ” Ms. Swift said she “thought it was important to give your class that chance to reflect.”
Student, Jalen Wright, joined the conversation and told everyone about his first thoughts at the beginning of the quarantine and told us how he felt when he sat and thought about what it all meant.
Jalen wrote, “Quarantine feels like an early summer which is nice and all until you realize this will be our last year here. I am doing fine but the idea of missing prom not because of my grades but instead because of a virus is just disappointing.”
The students and staff of Carver are using things like their new Carver Corona Blog and Instagram page carverybk2020 to make the best out of the rest of their time in high school.
What they had to say
I asked the Class of 2020 itself what they would like to happen with the graduation ceremony. Here’s what some of them had to say:
“Push it to summer, there's nothing that can properly recreate the importance of high school graduation. By cancelling, it makes a mockery of all the hard work put in for the last 12 or so years.”
“What everyone has been saying, reschedule it and make it sometime in the summer. Having a livestream or whatever the district was “planning”, is a complete joke. Nothing is going to replace the fact that we weren’t able to walk across the stage and receive our diploma like everyone else has done before/after us.”
“I agree with everyone else that’s saying reschedule it cause if we have a stream I’m not going to do it. Everybody (Probably with the exception of me) worked really hard all year long and deserves to be honored and sent off into the real world with a celebration they can never forget!! So I don’t care what it takes, they need to give the class of 2020 the moment we all dreamed for.”
“I agree with Rescheduling it. A live stream just won’t do it. I can’t speak for the rest of my class but I can speak for myself. I always wanted the satisfaction of walking across the stage, turning my tassel, and completing high school how I dreamed of. But I do understand Eventually things will open back up and it may be too late because some of us are going away for our next steps at different times some soon rather than later.”
Though graduation has been cancelled, this year’s graduating class is coming together to show that their 12 years (or so) of learning, hard-work, and dedication isn’t going to go to waste.