Below is a video of my promotion speech for the Union Middle School class of 2020.
Last year, I wrote that my promotion speech was hard to write. Well, obviously I wasn't aware for what 2020 would bring. What an odd race to the end of the school year for all of us.
Last year, I wrote that my promotion speech was hard to write. Well, obviously I wasn't aware for what 2020 would bring. What an odd race to the end of the school year for all of us.
The original plan was to allow the two students who ended up in my promotion speech to give their own speech at the in-person ceremony. It would be an off-shoot of my annual speech and I figured it would be pretty silly, given how these two students just finish each other's sentences.
Then Covid-19 shuttered our schools and then our hopes for an in-person promotion for our students. I told these two students that I wouldn't be able to do what we had talked about for our in-person speech. They were bummed and so was I.
In the following weeks, thanks to one of my former fantasy football friends "zoom-bombing" our annual NFL draft chat, I had an idea: why not have these two students "zoom-bomb" my promotion speech.
I asked them if they were interested. After their screams of excitement, they said "yes" a thousand times. We gathered together via Google Doc a few weeks later and in one sitting, probably no longer than ten minutes, we had gathered our ideas and built the promotion speech. We originally thought we were going to be on the same zoom but I realized how tricky that was going to be. Have you ever tried to coordinate the schedules of two teenagers? It's not pretty.
So we filmed them independently and had the brother of one of our staff members (Ms. Zangwill's Brother Brad) splice everything together.
I don't think any artist is every happy with their final product. Luckily, I'm not an artist and I'm accepting of what you're about to see. It was a different type of speech to a different type of school year.
We are going to miss the class of 2020 because I can share that we already do. You brought a lot of light to our campus each day and I'm hopeful you'll continue to shine wherever you stream your high school years.
As always, thank you parents for your support over the past three years, thank you staff for your continued dedication to our students, and thank you students for just being you.
Here is the promotion speech video. Enjoy.
