High Honors For Staples Grads

It’s one of Staples High School’s many traditions: Every year, High Honors graduates — the top 4% of the senior class — are celebrated at a dinner.

But this is not your typical snooze-fest. Each honoree is asked to select one teacher to speak on his or her behalf. Each instructor has just a couple of minutes. But in that time they manage to be insightful, poignant, funny and real.

Taken individually, the short speeches give a quick portrait of some of Staples’ highest-achieving students. Taken together, they paint a wonderful canvas of a very diverse class.

This year’s High Honors dinner fell victim to COVID-19. But — showing a resourcefulness worthy of these 19 very bright young men and women — assistant principal for the senior class Meghan Ward helped organize a virtual ceremony.

Each honoree and teacher came to Staples last month. Alone, they were taped by Jim Honeycutt. The former media instructor then stitched everything together, in a video.

It was a shame that the evening could not take place in real time. The good news is: Because it did not, now every “06880” reader can honor our High Honors grads.

The video is posted in two formats: YouTube (below) and Vimeo. Clicking here for the Vimeo link enables you to download it and save; just scroll to the bottom of the Vimeo page.