Edgemont Salutes the Class of 2010

Edgemont High School said goodbye to the Class of 2010 – at 180 students, the largest in Edgemont’s 54-year history – at graduation exercises held Thursday evening on a tree-covered lawn in the center of the school’s park-like campus.  A huge throng of parents, teachers, siblings, relatives and friends were on hand as senior Adrian Burke urged classmates to set goals for themselves because “the climb up the mountain” is more important in life than the “view from the top,” while fellow senior Danny Bernstein praised the faculty for teaching the class “how to learn” so that “we’re always learning even when outside the classroom” in ways that influence them not just as students but as people too.

Referring to Edgemont’s long breezeways that connect one campus building to the next, Bernstein said that one of the greatest classes he had ever taken was “Introduction to Breezeway Etiquette,” where he learned “how to avoid awkward situations” by among other things “pretending to text.” He also spoke of classmates learning to “ask each other for help” and learning how to “offer it in return.”

A third senior, Taylor Barker, welcomed the crowd by noting how few people ever remember who speaks at high school graduation or what anyone says.

English teacher Elizabeth Scut was chosen by the class as its faculty speaker. Scut spoke of a noisy mockingbird that set up residence outside her home a few months ago and kept her family awake after midnight. She urged the graduates to find their own voices.

Weather was a major factor that threatened to postpone the ceremonies. Because the class was so large, the administration decided that if it rained, it would postpone the ceremony by a day until Friday so that exercises could be held outside rather than in the school’s gymnasium, which would have been too small to accommodate the crowd. Even though the region was under a severe thunderstorm alert on Thursday, with a 40% chance of rain, the decision was made at noon to proceed with the ceremony anyway, and robo calls and email announcements confirming that there would be no postponement were made.

However, the weather continued to look threatening, and contingency plans were made that afternoon to move the ceremony to the gym in any event.

But skies brightened when the ceremonies began at around 6:30 p.m., with the faculty marching in their black robes, while the graduates, in their bright Edgemont blue caps and gowns, followed immediate behind.

At the conclusion of the speeches, and after the distribution of displomas, senior class president Chase Klein led the class in the traditional moving of the tassel from right to left, followed by the Edgemont tradition of the graduates all tossing their blue caps in the air in celebration, while the crowd looked on and cheered.

Photographs by Mariela Dujovne Melamed