Clover Park's Graduates Setting Off For New Beginnings, Journeys, Challenges

The Warriors. The fighters. The dream-chasers.

That is how Clover Park High School’s senior class president, Leiana Tirado, referred to her fellow graduates in her commencement speech Monday night. Because the 158 members of the Class of 2012 possess such attributes, they will succeed, she said with steadfast determination from atop the podium in the Tacoma Dome.

“Don’t allow your dreams to fall by the wayside,” she said. “Believe in what you are capable of achieving.”

That belief starts within themselves, Tirado said.

“Our future isn’t something that just happens to us,” she said. “It’s up to us to create it. There are new beginnings, new journeys and new challenges to explore.”

In his speech, Jason Stancil compared the graduates to their 8-year-old selves, many of whom loved video games.

“When we leave here,” he said, “we will be people – functioning members of society. And a Dome full of 8-year-olds would have loved nothing more than that.”

Stancil added that their childhood counterparts would be proud of where they are today.

“You have what it takes to make it through the video game of your life.”

That game started long ago – in Clover Park schools, in different states, in different countries.

In her address to the graduates, School Board President Carole Jacobs said Clover Park is a veritable United Nations.

“You have lived it,” she said in regard to diversity. “In your classes and in your extracurricular activities. Maybe without knowing it, you have both engaged and embraced diversity in your everyday lives, and you have done so very well.”

In addition to graduating 16 honor graduates and 76 students with scholarships worth more than $1.7 million, Clover Park featured a Washington Scholar, 20 academic scholarships, 79 community service awards and scholarships, three fine arts awards and scholarships and 60 other scholarships and awards.

Superintendent Debbie LeBeau attributed such successes to Clover Park being what she called a professional learning community, which fosters student success, lower dropout rates, smaller achievement gaps, leadership and collaborative learning.

“A professional learning community is one in which (students) continuously seek knowledge, share what they have learned and build on it,” she said. “As the world changes, so does the knowledge we need to be efficient.”

And, according to Principal John Seaton, they’re certainly aware of it.

“It’s almost the end of this journey that you started 13 years ago,” he said with a teasing smile. “You know a lot – you’ve told us that much.”

In sharing a story about the famous artist Michelangelo, Seaton urged the graduates to look upon themselves for the key to their futures.

“Will you shape your own life?” he asked. “Will you sculpt your own being?”

“Let peace guide you, and so may peace follow you.”