This week, we farewelled our graduating students in a very joyous but deeply emotional ceremony in the Sports Centre. Many parents came to share this important event with their children, which marked the finish of their secondary education – not only from Hong Kong but from other parts of Asia and even as far afield as Europe and the Americas.
Although the focus of the ceremony was farewelling our graduating students, we also said goodbye to the one teacher leaving this year. Peter Smith had been with us for two one year appointments to fill the gaps created by teachers who had been on leave. We had good cause to express deep gratitude to Peter because the gap he filled this year had came about at quite short notice. Even though Peter knew the year would be difficult, being away from his wife, he agreed to help us. It was heartening to hear the genuinely warm applause given to Peter by the students when I presented him with a small gift to express our appreciation.
Another happy task I had at the ceremony was to present the annual awards to students in the graduating class who had made particularly significant contributions to the College during their time with us. The awards were introduced three years ago in six categories to recognise those students who had shown special leadership in various facets of our community life. I presented a small gift to each of the winners, noting that when our new Auditorium is finished, we intend to record the names of all the award winners on honour boards into the years and decades ahead.
In a school like LPCUWC, selecting a student who should receive an award is one of the most difficult tasks imaginable, and the staff and I spent a long time discussing the possible names. However, when the awards were announced, the clear delight and rapturous applause suggested that we got it right! The awards we presented this year were:
The Award for Sports and Outdoor Activities : Tommy Lee (South Korea)
The Award for Community Service : Casey Hicks (Canada)
The Award for the Arts : Jessica Fan (Hong Kong)
The Award for Effort and Improvement : Neto Francisco De Jesus (East Timor)
The Award for Positive Contribution to Campus Life : Morris Swaby Ebanks (Cayman Islands)
The Award for Promoting Cross-Cultural Understanding : Kate Cheng (Hong Kong) and Amparo Aracil Pujalte (Spain)
After the award presentations were completed, each of the graduating students was called to the stage, by name, to shake hands and receive their graduation certificate. Personally, it is always a highlight of my year to shake the hands of each of these sensational students that I have come to know during the preceding two years, knowing just how much potential to bring about positive change there is among each and every one of them. I know that we meet again in ten years at the reunion, they will all have remarkable stories to tell, and I can hardly wait to hear them!
In my concluding remarks at the end of the ceremony, I decided that there was little point offering more of the gratuitous clichéd advice that seeme to flow feeely when students graduate. Instead, I challenged the students with the words of our UWC President, Nelson Mandela. Not long after his release from prison (and as I pointed out to the students, a much stricter prison even than LPCUWC), he wrote these words:
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“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made mis-steps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”
In those words, Nelson Mandela spoke about changing the world. I reminded the graduating students that they had come to a United World College to learn the skills of how to make the world a better place. They had learned the skills of negotiation through the disagreements, they had learned the art of compromise through the arguments, they had learned to respect the opinions of others simply by living in a community of people from almost 80 countries, and they had learned the value of delayed gratification and tolerance through eating every day in the canteen.
They are important skills, because as I often say to my students , “you can’t change the world if you don’t understand the world”.