Our annual Closing Ceremonies are an important way for our community to cap off a school year. And after the challenging year that was 2020-21, the final gatherings at our Middle School were a meaningful and poignant opportunity for students to come together one last time before their Summer Break, while looking back on the last 10 months of school.
As part of this year's Middle School Closing Ceremonies, students from Grades 6-8 wrote reflections on the year and shared them with their classmates and teachers. Excerpts from those student reflections can be found lower in this story.
Keep an eye out for the June 25 SMUS Weekly, the last of the 2020-21 school year, when we will share links to all the photos from our year-end celebrations and festivities.
We also live-streamed our two, cohorted Grade 8 Closing Ceremonies, which you can watch in full in the video at the bottom of this piece. Our Middle School faculty and staff also organized a great SMUSapalooza event for the Grade 8 students as a way to celebrate their departure from the Middle School.
Grade 6
by Anna, Bella, Isabella and Michael
This was such an amazing and fun year and exciting year for all of us! Here are just a few of the best parts of Grade 6. TAG challenges were a big highlight of Grade 6, and the whole Middle school! It was super fun to compete in things like Reindeer Games, Halloween celebrations and other fun activities that happened in assembly from our amazing content creators.
We have had so many leadership opportunities this year. Some awesome opportunities we had included; getting to join councils and becoming reps, also, we got to lead assemblies and become content creators and video crew. To continue, we had the best WEB leaders! On the first day of school our WEB leaders made sure we had fun and got to know all the other students. They also showed us all our classes and teachers so we knew where everything was. All throughout the year they created fun games so they could get to know us and we could get to know them.
Thank you to our teachers, our classmates and everyone in the Middle School building for making this such a good year.
Grade 7
by Anderson, Braelyn, Matty and Yingfan
We have all grown intellectually, emotionally, and physically as people, but without the opportunities given to us, we wouldn't be where we are now.
As always our teachers have created many amazing learning opportunities for us, Mandarin students have gone to Fairway Market three times this year to practise their Mandarin and buy food items relevant to Chinese culture. Science students all produced inspirational videos about how we need to take action to change our world’s climate situation, and later presented them in assembly.
Still, even among all these memorable events, there is one defining feature that made this school year different, though not necessarily for the better. COVID. As a community, we had to confront and overcome numerous hurdles, forming cohorts, wearing masks, and possibly using more sanitizer than we drink water. But we also count our blessings for having our teachers, family, and friends during this unusual time (even if we aren’t allowed to give any hugs).
I hope we can somewhat get “back to normal” next year. I would like to give a big congratulations to everyone for making it through this year. It was a challenging year, but we made it to Grade 8! I would also like to extend a huge thank you to our teachers and all the adults who worked so hard to make this a great year for us.
Grade 8
by Ben, Kiyomi, Larisse, Matthew and Will
This year has passed in a blink of an eye and with it comes our last day of middle school. We've roamed these halls searching for the right class, laughed so hard our ribs hurt, met new people, made friends to last a lifetime and at the end of it all, all I remember are the good memories.
We all know it’s been a hard year; an annoying year that sort of started hard, and just kept getting harder. But just because COVID was a big part of our year, that does not at all mean it ruined it. I should say though, the most important thing I realized this year was the great community we have here. It is easy to forget, but we are all connected for better and for worse. Worse being when we feel bad, and better when our community makes us feel better. This year was full of great moments.
Though we were split into cohorts, that didn’t stop us from making new friends and trying new things. We played sports to the best of our abilities, collaborated with each other for many group projects, made movie trailers, explored the outdoors, participated in science fair, created a film, joined new clubs and councils, and showed leadership in and out of the school.
We couldn’t have done any of this cool stuff without the help of our teachers, especially the various homeroom and other teachers who have helped me throughout the years, all of the administrators, and everyone else who has helped me in any way, big or small. My classmates also helped me a ton.
I will definitely miss the Middle School, especially all the people in it. It will be good to move on to Grade 9, but I will never forget the unique experiences I had in my classes this year and the past.
Grade 8 will always hold a special place in my heart.
