celebrating the class of 2021

graduation is back in the building

with covid guidelines allowing for larger gatherings this spring, friends attempted to create an authentic and meaningful graduation ceremony for the class of 2021—on our campus.

On Wednesday, June 9, the Class of 2021, their teachers and advisors, and their family and loved ones gathered at 250 Valencia Street for their graduation from the San Francisco Friends School.

In order to make this momentous event possible on our campus, families gathered to watch the ceremony in the SFFS gym, while the soon-to-be graduates sat together in the Meeting Room. The two groups (plus those who were Zooming from home) experienced the ceremony together via an extensive AV set-up, and families were able to watch their graduates walk across the gym stage to receive their diploma from Mike and Clarke while hearing the cheers and feeling the pride of the (distanced) crowd.

The incredible SFFS Arts Department led the talented Class of 2021 in a number of performances, ranging from a jazz-infused take on “Simple Gifts,” to an 8th Grade band performance of classic poprock hits by A-ha and Foo Fighters to a beautiful spoken word piece, “New Eyes,” that was co-written by three of the graduates (Jocelyn Gursky, Leah Lashinsky, and Rajan Rao), an homage to their journey through Friends, which they masterfully compared to the 8th Grade interdisciplinary eye project, itself a rite of passage at Friends. ––––––––––

[Excerpted from “New Eyes”]: Jocelyn: Today, I walk down the hallway for the last time as a Friends School student. Lining the walls, watching me, are eyes. The eyes have so many different components that allow for the process of vision. There are so many things that the light goes through during this process to obtain a clear image. And when the adventure has come to an end, the light is ready to do it all over again.

Rajan: We are all nervous to go to a new school, with new people, and new experiences. But, we have been through this incredible journey together. We have learned so many things along the way, and are ready to embark on this journey once again.

Jocelyn: Because of our parents, teachers, and community, we have new eyes.

Leah: Now, we can see clearly. ––––––––––

We are so proud of this group of newly-minted SFFS alumni, who are off to attend 23 different high schools from San Francisco to Massachusetts to Barcelona.

Below, we’ve included Mike’s remarks to the graduates and their families on June 9, complete with some family lore, some encouragement, and some moving insight into what these remarkable young people bring with them as they move on from Valencia Street. En-

joy, and Happy Summer, Friends! ––––––––––

From Head of School Mike Hanas’s Graduation Remarks:

Parents and Grandparents, Siblings and Cousins, Aunts and Uncles, Family Members and Friends, near, upstairs in the gym, and far, Colleagues and Trustees, and, yes, Graduates of the Class of 2021, welcome, thank you, and congratulations!

As I said to your family members in the gym in this quote from Brene Brown, “A collective assembly can start to heal the wounds of a traumatized community. When we come together to share authentic joy, hope, and pain, we melt the pervasive cynicism that often cloaks our better human nature.” Let the melting begin. You did it. Let’s pause for a moment and savor that together.

And, yes, when I say you did it, I mean all of you—graduates, colleagues, family members. No matter your age and stage of life, over the

course of the past 16 months, you have experienced disappointment, loss, fear, frustration, perhaps even anger. And no matter your age and stage of life, my strong sense is that you have mustered courage, creativity, resilience, fortitude, curiosity, and compassion—I not only sense that; I have seen it . . . firsthand on the carpool island and Front Yard, in hallways and classrooms, even on Zoom.

Sometimes a story looms so large in my mind that I just can’t help but tell it. Today it is the story of Mary Pryal and my mother, Anne Hanas, that looms so large. Mary was 94 years old when she died on Friday. Her husband Martin, 99 years old himself, tells this story in the way I love most, and I’ll try to capture some sense of how he begins it when I ask, “Martin, would you please tell the story of how you and Mary met my mother?”

“Ah, by Jesus, Michael, it was a cold night in December. Mary and I had come to the country from Ireland, through Canada and Michigan, to Chicago, where I’d been told there were jobs. Mary was pregnant with our Michael—just a few years older than you—and we had no place to live. Then we met your mother and your grandmother Mary on the street on Wolcott, the street where you grew up. We told ‘em our story, and they said, “Then you’ll live with us. And we did.”

So Mary and Martin moved into the house at 5309 South Wolcott with my parents and grandmother. Mary gave birth to Michael Pryal. Martin got a job with the gas company that made it possible for them to pay some rent and contribute to grocery bills. And perhaps most importantly, Martin got his driver’s license and a car that allowed him to drive himself to work and to drive Mary and my mother wherever they needed to go—grocery shopping, doctor’s appointments, the pharmacy, Wisconsin Dells and Lake Geneva for vacations. Mary and my mother became best friends, through my mother’s passing 33 years ago and as I describe them to you today.

They did not know the language of The SPICES, but they lived simply and knew what mattered most; they knew how to argue without ending a friendship and what a waste of time and energy it was to be anything other than true to themselves; they knew how to work toward more just and caring communities, as a nurse in Mary’s case, trained in London she rode her bicycle and served as a midwife delivering and blessing babies when hospitals were being bombed in WWII, and as a lunchroom attendant in our local public school in my mother’s case; and they knew how to pull together their limited resources in the sharing of responsibility for one another. My mother finally earned her driver’s license when she turned fifty, and I think the only reason she bought a car was because the Pryals had become able to move into their own home a little too far from ours for us to walk.

Those kinds of lives and that kind of friendship require a whole range of choices easy to take for granted, but as one of my fictional heroes Albus Dumbledore reminds us in The Chamber of Secrets in a line I think you know well, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

You, Graduates of San Francisco Friends School, the Class of 2021, you know how to make such choices.

You know how to ask questions in order to understand. You may not do so everytime—none of us do—but you know what it takes to muster the will to work.

Your exploratorium exhibitions demonstrated what Clarke described as “profound depth of knowledge” and “skilled execution.” Sara Melman says, “You rocked it.” You know how to use what you have learned in order to act—with your voices, your industry, and your willingness to simply show up—in response to poverty, homelessness, and racism.

You know what it means, how it feels, to be seen and how to see that of god, light, in everyone you meet. You know more about the eye—how it works—than nearly anyone I know.

You know, as we’ve heard again and again, how to finish strong. You made of this year—this year—”something very special” by showing up in the ways you have.

And you know how to spark joy, like that on the face of your Kindergarten buddy in response to your smile or with another chapter of “Bird of the Day.” Who the heck needs SNL when we have Rajan!

I don’t know that any of you will pursue the career possibilities you chose for budgeting exercises with Lissie—in fact, one of my wishes for you is that you change your mind again and again and occasionally connect the dots—but I know this, you will take SF Friends School with you, within you, like a toolbelt, wherever you go; and whatever challenges you and we face next, the world we share will be a better place for the fact that you are part of the response team.

You have our deep love, very best wishes, and our heartfelt congratulations! •