Harwood class of 2021: ‘Spirit in the face of adversity’
June 15, 2021 | By Lisa Scagliotti
Newly minted 2021 Harwood Union High School graduates toss their caps in celebration following their commencement ceremony June 12. Photo by Michaela Milligan
It’s difficult to find a Harwood Union High School graduate from the past several decades who doesn’t recognize Kathy Cadwell.
But just to be sure, when she took the podium at Saturday’s commencement, she started with an introduction: “My name is Kathy Cadwell and I’m graduating from Harwood today.”
After teaching at the school for 40 years, the veteran history and social studies teacher decided to wrap up her career with the class of 2021. “It’s hard to imagine a senior year as challenging and as discombobulating as this one has been,” she said, noting that everyone likely imagined it playing out differently than it did.
“Many times, life doesn’t happen the way we want it to,” Cadwell said. “The grief, sadness and loneliness of your final years of high school will be part of your story.” But likewise, she pointed to the positives: “I want to acknowledge your strength, your tenacity, your flexibility, and your spirit in the face of adversity.”
Cadwell spoke to the 121 seniors who soon would turn their tassels on their graduation caps. And as an indication of the COVID-19 pandemic easing, commencement was held in person with each student allowed two guests under the tent set up on the lawn in front of the school. Other guests spread out on the grounds nearby in chairs grouped by family. There were no limits on attendance which swelled to about 800 under the bright Saturday morning sunshine. The event was also recorded for viewers to watch online in real time and later on the school’s YouTube channel.
The ceremony was a marked contrast from the 2020 ceremony held in the early weeks of the pandemic outdoors as a drive-in with students distanced from each other, seated in vehicles with their family members. They exited only to cross the stage to receive their diplomas. This year, the students sat side by side astride the platform decorated with baskets of flowers and school flags.
Cheering the champions; silence for a coach lost
Harwood Co-Principals Laurie Greenberg and Meg McDonough. Photo by Andy Bishop
In her opening remarks, Harwood co-principal Laurie Greenberg — also a parent to a graduate — alluded to the dynamics of the 2020-21 school year that had high school students attending in person just two days a week for most of the year. Rules and routines changed, sometimes multiple times per week due to the pandemic: “We still have a few hours to go. We could get new guidance. And we all might need to pivot,” Greenberg teased at the start.
The ceremony at several moments injected a cheer and round of applause for the boys lacrosse team that just hours before on Friday evening won the Division II state championship, defeating Rice Memorial High School 11-7 in South Burlington.
The team had the traditional hero’s welcome back to the school district as three Waterbury Fire Department fire engines met the team bus at the base of the Interstate 89 offramp to provide an escort through town. Players waved and cheered out the bus windows to fans lining Main Street and others honking horns along their path.
At the start of Saturday’s commencement program, however, Greenberg included a moment of silence for the school community to remember Taggert Haslam, the longtime track and field coach and Harwood graduate who passed away unexpectedly in April. She invoked his “infectious laughter, good humor, and wisdom” to go with the graduates.
Cadwell: ‘You, my students, have been my best teachers’
Senior Ellett Merriman set the stage for Cadwell’s address, recounting the indefatigable teacher’s gift for teaching the classics while making them relevant to current events. Cadwell’s “Three Democracies” history class and her philosophy and rhetoric classes served up lessons from ancient civilizations that reverberate across modern politics, Vermont town halls, and discussion groups like the student-led Socrates Cafes she nurtured for years.
Merriman declared herself “starstruck” by Cadwell’s “spirit, ingenuity, and passion”
saying in her introduction, “I’ve never felt so inspired when someone speaks.”
Veteran history and social studies teacher Kathy Cadwell delivers the commencement address as Harwood Union Superintendent Brigid Nease and HUHS Co-Principal Meg McDonough look on. Photo by Andy Bishop
Cadwell however, turned the tables telling the class, “You, my students, have been my best teachers, my most honest critics, and my partners in learning.”
She recounted her early days of teaching that began in 1981 at Harwood. “I had an undergraduate degree and two graduate degrees, yet nothing I had ever learned had prepared me for being a public high school teacher,” she said. With 153 students in six classes, Cadwell recalled having no supervision, no mentoring, no preparation to deal with “school politics and the community drama” that came with the job. “By Fridays, I would regularly leave the building in tears. I was over-stressed, overwhelmed, and gobsmacked at how hard this job really is.”
Yet she stuck with it and 40 years later she looked out at an audience that included recent students and many parents and family members who she taught over the years. She reminded the class of the importance of listening and learning from others and her mantra that “None of us is as smart as all of us.”
Today more than ever, she said, “It’s important for us to learn to understand perspectives other than our own. We live in a bubble in our mostly white, small-town Vermont community. Yet this beautiful bubble can also be an echo chamber where we hear only what we want to hear, and where our beliefs and ideas are reinforced.”
She encouraged the class to work at tolerating different viewpoints and disagreeing respectfully. “Civil discourse doesn’t come naturally,” she said. “Democracies are fragile and democracies can be broken.”
Music, gifts, reflections
The ceremony included multiple musical performances starting with the traditional bagpipes played by piper Ben Montross as people gathered for the ceremony. The music set the tone given that Harwood’s mascot is a Scottish Highlander.
Members of the Harwood Jazz Band performed “Pomp and Circumstance” for the class procession to their seats under the tent. Later, the I Cantori choral ensemble performed the Beatles tune, “The Long and Winding Road.” Unlike speakers, singers were required to wear masks to perform. Band Director Chris Rivers and a few of the Harwood Drum Line finished off the ceremony to accompany the exit.
In keeping with tradition, the class of 2021 had a gift to bestow as one of its parting acts. Senior Jasper Koliba announced that the class decided to divide its fundraising to contribute $2,500 to the school for a new lacrosse scoreboard (cue more cheers for the boys championship the night before); another $1,500 was earmarked to donate to the UVM Children’s Hospital.
Senior Connor McCarty addresses his class and the commencement audience. Photo by Andy Bishop
Several seniors addressed the gathering: Connor McCarty, Siena Mazer, and Sage Devereux. McCarty regaled the audience with stories of growing up at Harwood, the son of a staff member. He described his trajectory from a precocious toddler who pulled a fire alarm, to a high school wrestler recruited to join the assembly crew which led to him becoming immersed in the theatre department instead. His signature role was Shrek in the school musical in 2019.
In a nod to music teacher Stefanie Weigand and classmate Winter Haberle who steered him on that path, McCarty quipped that without them, “I’d still be a wrestler and I’d be pretty ripped by now, so thanks a lot you guys.”
Striking a more serious note about high school, however, he said he knows now that “you get what you put into it … I wish I learned that a little bit sooner.”
Harwood Union’s graduation was recorded and can be watched online at tinyurl.com/HUHS2021grad. More coverage includes a gallery of senior portraits and the list of class awards and scholarships; a look at Harwood staff retiring and moving on this year. Harwood teacher and photographer Andy Bishop has a large gallery of photos online to share with students and families; the public may purchase images with proceeds going to the HUHS Wellness Center.
