Crescent Blogs

Each start of the school year brings forth memories from our own experience. My first year of high school was anything but an easy transition. I vividly recall my dad dropping me at school with my agenda in hand to find my first class. There was no orientation, no camp program to ease the entry into what would be five challenging but highly memorable years. (Interestingly, the first person I met that day became my best friend and remains so today.) I survived day one but soon, as the enriched curriculum of study piled up, I fell behind and my confidence dwindled. And yet, despite not achieving the overall average my parents or I hoped for at the end of the year, something more important happened in my Grade 9 year. I heard my calling.

[This speech was given at Crescent's Opening Assembly on September 5, 2019.]

It was seven years ago – almost to the day – that I first sat in this very gym, listening to the first of what would be many speeches from a variety of Head Boys. I struggled to make sense of the words that the man in the blue blazer was saying. Besides, Grade 5 me had much more pressing issues, like what lunch was going to be like at this strange new place, or whether or not I packed my soccer cleats that morning. (I didn’t.)

A group of Crescent's Middle School students and teacher Greg Ryerson participated in a program for human-centred design thinking in January 2019.