Academic Award Ceremony

Award Ceremony Welcome by Bob Hill on May 29, 2012.

Good evening Williston Northampton School and welcome to the annual Academic Awards Ceremony. As I was thinking about this evening, my first thoughts turned to the weather and the August heat we are having in May, but that only makes sense given that our January snow storm fell on Halloween. (Please take your jackets off if you have not done so already.)

Next, I was thinking of all of the talent, spirit, and determination arrayed before me and was pondering the number of projects, papers, recitals, home work assignments, and labs that are represented by all of you sitting here.

I was thinking it would interesting to try and total that amount of work—like the cool “by the numbers” section at the beginning of Time Magazine: average number of texts made by teens in a day, 111; average number of times students make an excuse for late work; number of times that excuse is that your computer ate the paper.

Students and teachers working together and inspiring one another is what makes Williston’s experience so transformative—and it is an experience that should not be taken for granted when you consider how lucky we are to be here together.

You students work incredibly hard to achieve illustrious results, and so do your teachers. Consider this: a typical teacher at Williston who teaches four classes spends 23,380 minutes in class each year. Multiply that by the average number of students and you get 1,356,040 contact minutes with students. That’s a big number.

As we begin this evening’s program I want to thank all of you students for striving to reach your full potential, and I want to publicly thank Mr. Tuleja, Mr. Ketcham, and Mrs. McMullen for organizing this program. Mrs. McMullen painstakingly wrapped the over 100 prizes you see here.

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