Compassion, Intelligence Mark the Class of 2011

It was a day of speeches, diplomas, smiles and, thankfully, bright sunshine.

Sunday afternoon 228 graduates, 100 percent of the 2011 Wayland High School senior class, had the chance to walk across a stage in the WHS stadium and accept their diplomas from Principal Pat Tutwiler and Wayland Superintendent Gary Burton.

The 90-minute ceremony included several student speeches as well as words from School Committee Chair Barb Fletcher, Tutwiler and Burton.

Burton, presiding over his final graduation ceremony before retirement at the end of this school year, commended the students on their successes and encouraged them to not squander the opportunities their Wayland education had provided them.

“Seniors, you leave here today with a Cadillac education,” Burton said, pointing out that Wayland Schools consistently rate among the best in the country. “If life is a race, you’re way out in front.”

Still, the compassion and kindness of the class stood out even more than its academic successes, Burton said.

Driving home his point, Burton quoted the Tin Woodman from L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

“But, after all, brains are not the best things in the world … Once I had brains, and a heart also. So, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart."

Senior Class President Lauren Colwell offered an applause and laughter generating speech that culminated with a rap about the senior class (check out the video with this story).

In a more serious moment at the podium, Colwell encouraged her classmates to thank the people – grandparents, siblings, teachers – who had walked with them through their education so far and, “Consider giving a kiss and a hug to the parental units,” she said.

Her classmate and class valedictorian Seth Lifland also took the podium, and after jokingly shredding a speech and scattering the pages to the wind, he went on to thank his classmates for the past 13 years.

“We’ve come a long way since digging tunnels in the sandbox at Loker,” he said. “2011 kids love each other and love the world.”

Tutwiler then took the podium and acknowledged that he remembered nothing of the speeches at any of his graduations, but told the students he hoped to make it more memorable for them by breaking it down into the three Bs: Be present by not allowing technology to divide your attentions so much that you “wind up being nowhere”; be someone’s hero “because it will add to our common humanity”; and be the solution because “the world needs doers.”

Then, as Colwell read off each name, girls clad in white robes and boys in black, walked across the platform, shaking hands and grinning the whole way.

At last, moments after Colwell, the final student, received her own diploma, mortarboards flew high into the air, tassels whipping in the wind, as the WHS Class of 2011 achieved the pinnacle of their high school experience.

Don't miss our photo gallery of images from the graduation day at WHS.