To The Class of 2021

“We can do hard things.”

-Glennon Doyle

For the Class of 2021, it certainly hasn’t been easy. I don’t have to tell you; you’ve lived it. Fifteen months ago, you all went home from school on a Wednesday afternoon and didn’t come back for almost a full calendar year. Even when you did come back, you did it in measures, less than half of you at a time, and with nowhere near the same sense of safety and ease. Along the way you watched as the world struggled to comprehend the scope of the pandemic that engulfed it, and then you lived through the impact of both the Covid-19 virus and the decisions made to try to keep us safe and moving forward.

So no, it hasn’t been easy, but the mind has a way of forgetting hardships with time. In case the years go by and you find yourself wiping the dust from your yearbook before re-reading these words, let me remind you of what you’ve accomplished and overcome in the fifteen months since the pandemic started:

1. On March 14, 2019 you became online learners, literally overnight. In the subsequent year you re-invented school. It is not hyperbole to say that education will never look the same.
2. All of you completed IBDP courses that you attended full-time for less than a third of their duration. Most of you did so while completing the full IB Diploma.
3. Some of you completed college level courses that you never attended full-time.
4. You successfully petitioned the IBO, an international organization comprised of more than 10,000 schools, to cancel presential end-of-course exams for Lincoln School. You were right by the way; at the time that IB exams would have been taking place we were again quarantined from campus.
5. You successfully petitioned the Costa Rican MEP to cancel their end-of-course exams for your generation, citing both safety concerns and the loss of instructional time. Again, you were right. As of this writing the MEP has just announced that all national exams must be cancelled this year.
6. You not only survived the world’s worst pandemic in 100 years, you thrived. Each and every one of you completed your full academic course of study and graduated on time. You’re off to universities in Costa Rica, the United States, Canada, and across Europe.
7. You took care of one another and your country. We’ve suffered through more than a year of illness and for some of our families, much worse. In response, you helped to build a solidarity fund for Lincoln families hit hardest by the disease and the economic losses that came in its wake. You sponsored multiple fund-raisers and food drives for other communities struggling to get by.

You may not remember this, but when we started the 2020-2021 school year, we talked about how the world needed everyday heroes: people who were willing to do the hard things, work together, work for one another, and look towards a brighter future, even when the present seems dark. We don’t need a blockbuster movie about Lincoln School students to know that you are just that: heroes. Thank you, Generation 2021, and all of our Lincoln students, for showing us how to Lead Forward.