During the Friday, June 22 graduation ceremony, valedictorian Graci Daby delivered a speech highlighting her class’s drive to make not only their community but the world a better place. However, they weren’t always perceived that way. Since they were in elementary school, they were always referenced to as “that class,” and it was normally said with a level of disgust, according to Daby.

“We were known as the class of the constant pointless drama,” she said. “Someone fighting in front of the school or behind Stewart’s or in the cafeteria or literally anywhere. We spent too much time worrying about how we looked and what we were wearing rather than who we are. Sometimes we created problems out of thin air, and other times we continuously strive to get the teacher off the topic of their lesson plan long enough to forget that they have one.”

However, with time comes growth.

“Though I do admit we were once ‘that class,'” Daby continued, “one with all the previous mentioned faults, those flaws which once shaped us into who we were, now shape us into who we want to be.”

While friends, parents and teachers have seen the class’s empathy and compassion over the past five years, so, too, have the readers of the Lake Placid News and Adirondack Daily Enterprise. Here are just of few of those moments from the 2017-18 school year.

Daby and Jenna Eldred lead a group of 130 student activists in a walkout in response to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and gun violence throughout the nation. For 17 minutes in a snowstorm, students stood in silence, honoring the those who died and standing up for change.

Morin Bissonette harvested a number of unwanted, yet still edible, tomatoes from North Branch Farm in Saranac and turned them into sauce. She donated 48 containers of sauce to the district’s Backpack program, a service that provides easy-to-make food and school supplies to financially less fortunate students. Her efforts fed 50 families.

The school’s Environmental Club got Mayor Craig Randall and the village to commit to being a climate-smart community. Scott Schulz started a Hometown Heroes dedication for local military men and women. Emily Jesmer raised money and donated an OB Susie – a medical dummy used to simulate childbirth – to Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake.

The list is heavy, and that’s just in the past year. Much more was accomplished within their high school careers.

At the end of her speech, Daby flipped the once negative nickname for her grade on its head and said, “We are no longer ‘that class.’ We are ‘THAT CLASS.'”

Speakers also included salutatorian Laurel Miller and guest speaker David McKillip.