BRATTLEBORO — Barreling down a hillside on bicycles donned with motorcycle helmets accompanied by the sound of Led Zeppelin, Hilltop Montessori School's 12 graduates made quite an entrance to their ceremony on June 12.
The weather held long enough for all 12 to deliver their speeches to 200 guests under a tent on the Hilltop campus. As is tradition at Hilltop, each graduate prepares a speech about their growth as a person and learner during their time at Hilltop, along with thanks to teachers, family, and friends.
Greta Wolfe, a graduating eighth-grader, wrote this:
“Each piece of my experience taught me a lesson I will hold dear forever: the quadratic formula, five paragraph essay structure, standing where Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth led many in the Civil Rights struggle. Each piece of knowledge or experience I have gained has been woven into a chrysalis.
“Memories, feelings, encounters, inexplicable discoveries: steam rising in the crisp air of the morning from my hot cocoa at Upland, discovering how the removal of cat tumors fits into the greater Brattleboro community, the constant joking banter I share with my teachers, young Alabama children's arms wrapped around my neck.
“It is not just facts or lessons I have gained here, it is experiences, relationships, fascinating connections of how we live, all stitched into creating the whole of what I have become. Every color painted onto my wings, from minuscule realizations to obvious encounters, has changed me as a human in this world.”
Graduates Izzy Snyder, Archer Parks, Sophie Lurz, Emmanuel Keppel, Bella Bonneau, Ethan Hubbard, and Wolfe will be attending Putney School in the fall. Holden Hiler, Aidan Murphy, Elery Loggia and Selena Perez will be attending Brattleboro Union High School. Calvin Stebbins will attend Vermont Academy.