NEW SCOTLAND — Some 95 students in Clayton A. Bouton’s Class of 2025 were sent off into the world with messages of resiliency, adaptability, community, and the importance of support systems.

Among the central themes that emerged over the course of a half-dozen speeches on June 27 was the characterization of Voorheesville’s high school as a community “built on support, connection, and deep tradition” rather than just an educational institution.

Clayton A. Bouton was described as a “small” school that is “full of heart.” The school has “always been more than just a place to learn,” it was said with examples including “cheering each other on at games,” “coming together for school events,” and “leaning on one another during tough times.”

Students in their speeches at the Lydia C. Tobler Performing Arts Center on the school campus said Voorheesville was a “tight-knit community” that graduates “all cherish forever,” with Superintendent Frank Macri reinforcing the notion, calling the school the graduates’ “second home.”

The students’ chosen speaker, Ted Simons, a physics and engineering teacher, said the Voorheesville community exerted  an “unseen, powerful pull”  on his own heart, and extended gratitude for its “trust, its strength, and its joy.”

The theme of resilience was highlighted as speakers described “navigating years of COVID,” a “random week off because of a flood, " and “early dismissals from weather or gas leaks," affirming, “through all of this,” one thing is true: “We made it.”

Macri commended the class for commencing high school amid global uncertainty, stating the students “rebuilt” and “redefined what school could feel like,” and “brought back the spirit, the connection,” and “helped shape what Voorheesville meant after everything changed.”

Macri’s speech included the use of everyday school items as metaphors, like a broken Chromebook symbolizing that resilience didn’t “mean perfection; it meant rebooting, recovering, and getting it done anyway.” He said a broken pencil represented that “progress doesn’t require perfection,” but rather “using what you have, doing your best with it, and continuing to move forward.”

A face mask served as a reminder of the “adaptability, flexibility, [and] resilience” developed by the class in navigating the pandemic, all skills deemed essential for thriving in the future. 

A coffee cup represented the “determination, and whatever sleep you manage to squeeze in,” that fueled success, while elementary school glitter served as a metaphor for the enduring nature of graduates’ “earliest lessons” learned, like kindness and sharing. A crumpled hall pass signified the importance of taking breaks and seeking space for growth, with the caveat to “return ready to move forward and stronger than when you left.”

Voorheesvilles’ mascot, the blackbird, served as a central and recurring motif, embodying core values and the enduring spirit of the school. The bird’s mantra to “be inclusive, respectful, determined, strong” was presented not only as a guiding principle but as a lived reality, deeply defined and shaped by the Class of 2025, with Marci asserting the values were “more than a mantra. They’re a mirror,” reflecting graduates’ character. 

The blackbird is smart, loyal, and resilient, Macri said as he instructed graduates to “stay true to who you are, lifting others as you rise, and carrying their values that brought you here: Loyalty, strength, purpose into everything you do next.”

Valedictorian Brianna Hillmann urged her peers to “dust off our wings and fly blackbirds, for we were always waiting for this moment to rise.” Hillmann will study at the University at Albany in the fall.

Salutatorian Lindsey Wight told her classmates, “No matter where you go, you will always be a blackbird.” Wight is attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Simons sought to address graduates through the lens of physics, describing the students as “vectors,” mathematical quantities with both magnitude and direction. 

Simons characterized students’ magnitudes as “brightly luminous,” possessing diverse “colors of the visible spectrum” with “hues in the frequencies that most of you can’t see.” The graduates’ collective direction on June 27, Simons asserted, was “away from here out into the universe.”

He then offered them two physics lessons for their journey. 

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Simons said, explained that uncertainty was not only a natural part of the universe but a “normal” part of it. He advised graduates not to panic when faced with uncertainty, as they are simply “fitting into the universe with the rest of us who are already unsure.”

The second lesson was on the Point of Origin: To understand motion, Simons said, one must first understand one’s position. He likened the universe to graph paper, where choosing a “point in time and space … defines who you are,” giving meaning to everything else.