Letters from the past: grads re-visit Grade 9

Grads re-visit Grade 9. Parry Sound High School graduate Vanessa Fraser. Submitted photo

PARRY SOUND – Five graduating classes of Parry Sound High School (PSHS) have taken a look into their past, seeing it again in their own words.
Through the high school’s Virtues Project, Grade 9 students write letters to themselves, to re-open in their graduating year, penning their hopes and dreams for the future. The letters are put away and given back to the students upon their graduation four years later.
“The grad letter evolved out of the teachers who were here at the school taking that (virtues facilitator) training and trying to figure out how can we then get the students to use the language of the virtues and think about what are (their) teachable moments in life and going though school – there’s lots of those moments for sure,” said PSHS teacher and Virtues Project leader Patti Jenkins. “Graduation is a moment where you really celebrate and honour what someone has accomplished, so (the teachers) thought okay, let’s get the kids in Grade 9 to envision where they want to be in four years and to write themselves a letter of encouragement, or (of) hopes and dreams using the language of the virtues, knowing that you’re going to be hitting those teachable moments and giving them an opportunity to honour themselves. It’s one of the ways the high school teachers chose to utilize the Virtues Project specifically here.
“We take the letters, put them in alphabetical order and put them in a very nice box and we put that in the vault in the office,” said Jenkins. “So these letters are now down in the vault, waiting for them to graduate.”
Jenkins said the grad letters are akin to goal setting for the students - the goal of graduation – and help push them to succeed.
“I’ve had some kids in my Grade 12 class, this semester, talking about how excited they are that they’re going to be getting the letter back,” she said. “ They do remember, they know that they wrote that letter and that letter’s in a box in the vault waiting. They’re excited to know what they wrote.”
Change surprising
For Vanessa Fraser, 18, who graduated last year, the changes in her life in the four years since she started high school were surprising.
“I was lucky enough to be part of the first Grade 9 class who experienced the full-grade Virtues Project initiative in 2005, Fraser wrote from Oakville where she is taking print journalism at Sheridan College. “As part of that, we were asked to write grad letters to ourselves that we would open on graduation day. I didn’t remember a lot of what I had written about, but I knew that I would probably be shocked when I read it again at convocation. So much had changed for me in my four years of high school that while I sat there reading my messy handwriting on the day of my graduation, I could barely recognize the opinions of the Grade 9 who wrote them.”
Fraser said principle things in her life, like friends, faith and who she lived with had all changed.
“It was a great experience to be able to look back on who we were and what we had become – a perfect addition to our graduation ceremony,” she said. “I’m grateful to the Virtues project for giving me a tangible way to see the change, the progress I had made over four years.
“I hope that Mrs. Jenkins and the Virtues Project team continue to use the grad letters as part of the Grade 9 Virtues initiative, as it’s a special and unique memento that adds to the experience that is leaving PSHS.”

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