For the first time, Clinton High School last Tuesday gave its December graduates the same taste of “Pomp and Circumstance” generally reserved for the May/June graduating class.
District 56 Superintendent Dr. David O’Shields called the seven seniors receiving diplomas, “the first graduates of 2024.”
The Winter 2023 graduates are:
Emarceyceia Keeunna Campbell, Shane Liam Eustace, Shyteyana Nyshearia Foster, Alina Veronica Isakharova (honor graduate), Zaravion Malik Johnson, Hannah Bryce Spoone, and Noah Allen Heathe Yarborough.
O’Shields said the district strives to achieve excellence, embrace innovation, and forge new traditions.
“This does two of those,” he said, in the commencement address. “I think back to childhood, in a game or competition we often said, ‘ready set go’. It started in the 1800s trying to create a sense of fairness.”
He called life, “a series of ready, set, go-s.”
In ready, graduates “prepare yourself;” in set, they position themselves, and in go they “start moving or pursuing your purpose.”
He encouraged the graduates to make the most of each position. “The race doesn’t always go to the swiftest or the fastest or the strongest,” but rather to the person with perseverance, a person who “doesn’t give in, doesn’t give up, doesn’t give out.”
At Clinton High School, they present special awards at the each of each academic year to students who “have grit” - the determination to succeed in school, often in the face of tough odds. “Anybody with life experience will tell you, you have to have some of that. Life will occasionally knock you down; it does all of us. … Never give up, get going, get with it. You now need to find your ‘set’, your purpose, and go with that purpose that God has given all of us.”
Even with the uniqueness of this being the school’s first December Commencement, Clinton High could not break totally with tradition. As the Alma Mater played in the auditorium, faculty and staff scurried from their seats to form a two-lines gauntlet for the new CHS alumni to walk through, on their way through the auditorium doors and into The Commons. Dr. O’Shields sent the graduates out with a charge:
“You are the first class of 2024 — make the world a better place because, truly, it will be up to you.”
