Reliving emotions with the Class of ’17

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/07/2017 (2727 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On a hot, sunny day in the middle of June, I walked out the front doors of Glenlawn Collegiate Institute in St. Vital for what was likely the final time.

I had just wrapped up the final interviews with members of the Class of 2017, a remarkable group of kids whose progress the Free Press has been chronicling since snack time in kindergarten to graduation gowns at the end of Grade 12.

What with being a guy of my particular gender, I am not good at expressing my innermost feelings. But at that precise moment, my emotional state would best be described as bittersweet.

“I guess that’s it,” I thought to myself as I walked to my car. “I will probably never get a chance to talk to these kids again.”

So, yes, there was a certain amount of melancholy in the air because my time with the class had come to an end.

There was also a sense of accomplishment, because the truth is we had just finished an incredible journalistic ride — following a single class of kids on a 13-year journey through the academic system.

At the end of each interview with the 15 remaining members of the class, I demonstrated my emotional maturity by staring down at my feet and muttering something about how much fun it had been to watch them grow from pint-sized pupils into mature, responsible young adults.

By way of contrast, Free Press photographer Ruth Bonneville, who has followed the kids since Grade 2, shed heartfelt tears as she threw her arms open and wrapped up each and every class member in an emotional bear hug.

Readers first met these kids in Ms. Doris Gietz’s kindergarten classroom at Windsor School, where they sported pigtails and toothless grins.

Today as you read our last story on the Class of 2017, you can get all misty-eyed seeing our red-robed scholars take the final step in their long, winding journey — graduating from Glenlawn Collegiate.

For me, the journey began in 2011, when I signed on to the series just as the kids were starting Grade 7, their first year of junior high at Windsor, a K-8 facility in Louis Riel School Division.

In all honesty, I’m not sure how happy I was at the prospect of spending the next six years trailing a bunch of kids around and asking them uncomfortable questions about whether they were dating or whether they’d failed their driver’s tests.

By then, however, the kids were used to the presence of nosy photographers and journalists, so it didn’t take long for me to get sucked into the vortex that passes for normal life in the chaotic hallways of junior high, then high school.

This is the point where I am supposed to tell you it is impossible to look back over the past six years and pick out a single moment that stands out from the rest.

But that would be a lie.

For me, and for many readers, the defining moment of this amazing series came in 2012, when Bonneville took an achingly beautiful photograph of a then-12-year-old Griffin carrying his brother Tyler, then a Grade 1 student with cerebral palsy, over his shoulder.

That powerful image of brotherly love was used to illustrate one of the first features I wrote, describing how — as their rookie season in junior high drew to an end — the class was becoming increasingly aware that there are other people in the world, people who just might need a little help from time to time.

The class had spent the year organizing a wide range of charity events, but were just throwing themselves into a project that hit close to home — a drive to raise money to replace Windsor School’s decaying wooden play structure, which wasn’t accessible to kids and parents who relied on wheelchairs.

No one needed to tell Griffin how important the new play structure was. “My brother uses a wheelchair and he can’t use the play structure because it’s surrounded by pea gravel and there’s no ramps and it’s all stairs and stuff,” the flame-haired hockey-loving youngster told me back then. “It feels like he’s left out.

“At recess, kids (Tyler’s friends) don’t go on the structure. They walk around with him (to show support). They care.”

Sitting nearby, another 12-year-old member of the class, Aby, chimed in: “It means a lot to everyone. We all want to help raise money to help Tyler be a part of normal class life. We just want him to feel like he’s a normal kid.”

That iconic photograph of a young man’s devotion to his younger brother touched the hearts of readers, who donated to help the school build an accessible play structure. To this day, some readers write Griffin letters to say how touched they were by his love for his brother.

In 2013, at the end of junior high, as the class prepared for their first year on the bottom rung at Glenlawn, I dropped in to see how the kids were making out. I asked Griffin the one thing he would miss most when bidding farewell to Windsor, the only school he’d known since kindergarten.

“I’m going to miss walking my younger brother, Tyler, to school,” he said without skipping a beat. “Tyler is in Grade 2 right now. He has a disability that’s hard to explain, but he can’t walk or talk, so we have to help him walk. I try to carry him at home. He’s too heavy for my mom.”

So that’s the memory that clings to me today as readers say farewell to a class of kids whose ups and downs we’ve watched with fascination for the past 13 years.

And Griffin, who once dreamed of life in the NHL, now plans to become a teacher working with special-ed children.

There are a lot more memories, too. There’s the memory of how, at the end of Grade 11, Naomi plucked up her courage and told me about her ongoing battle with anxiety and depression. Today, at the end of Grade 12, Naomi is a confident young woman and a crusader for mental health.

Not to mention the heart-rending memory of Aby weeping openly after cancer claimed the life of her best friend.

Sitting down with these kids over the years, the outside changes have been easy to spot — they’re taller, heavier and have developed their own personal style.

But the inside changes are even more dramatic — they know who they are and how they fit into a rapidly changing world.

I am going to miss pestering these young people every year, but I can tell you one thing for certain — you don’t need to worry about whether they’ll make a success of their lives, because they already have.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca