MARYSVILLE – It has to be one of the best high school graduation traditions around.
At Mountain View, during commencement, the graduates go along a receiving line of the teachers – and they exchange hugs.
That sense of love and togetherness starts with their principal, Dawn Bechtholdt.
As she was talking at graduation Thursday, she choked up and teared up often.
MVHS is a small alternative school where faculty works closely with students to get them to turn their lives around and help them succeed. As a result, tight bonds develop.
Student Emily Stanley talked about that bond in her speech. “Mountain View is family,” she said. “They want you to graduate as much as you do.”
Emily said she had a rough start in high school, accumulating only 11 credits her junior year. But she was able to make it, with a lot of support.
“We’ve gone through a lot of changes, but we made it,” she said.
The other student speaker, Zach Thomson, said he enjoyed the small learning community there, even though it took him an extra year to graduate.
“It doesn’t matter how long or short” it took, he said, we should be “equally proud.”
Zach added that students there don’t always fit the “norm,” and they don’t all learn the same way.
Zach had some humor in his speech, too.
“You need to get your work done as soon as possible, although I never learned that myself,” he said, later ending his talk with a speech made by El Wood in the movie “Legally Blonde.”
Zach also talked about math teacher John Ovall.
“His corny, bad jokes were so not funny they were hilarious,” Zach said.
Ovall privately gave an example: “A magician said he could disappear in three seconds. He counted, ‘Uno, dos’ and then he vanished without a trace.”
Bechtholdt talked about how great it was to have graduation on their own campus. Previously, Mountain View was housed in a few small buildings. They held commencement at a middle school.
But this year they moved to the Tulalip campus of the Marysville School District, and combined with the other alternative schools.
Bechtholdt proudly told the crowd that seven of the graduates should only be juniors.
“To reach this is so special in your lives,” she said of graduation. “We will be here for you. May you have many more successes in your life.”
