Rather than walking across a stage, shaking hands and smiling for photos to commemorate high school graduation, students this spring turned to virtual ceremonies and socially distant celebrations.
On Saturday, students graduating from Pittsburgh Public Schools celebrated another way — drive-in style.
From their cars, students accepted congratulations on their behalf and honked their support for fellow classmates as speakers reminded students to stick to their future plans, regardless of COVID-19 disruptions.
“You guys have missed an awful lot, but I’m here to challenge this group. ... You cannot let these trials define you and your ability to contribute to society,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said in a video message to the students. “Let the standard remain the standard. Be the squeaky wheel. So that your big picture opportunities and goals don’t fall victim to these short-term circumstances.”
“It puts the plan on hold, it doesn’t derail the plan,” said Saleem Ghubril, executive director of the Pittsburgh Promise, an organization that funds scholarships for post-secondary education and works with students to form after-graduation plans.
Graduating students from Pittsburgh Public Schools were invited to participate in the drive-in-style event, which was hosted by the Pittsburgh Promise and the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena on Saturday.
Though not an official graduation ceremony, the event replaced a similar annual celebration that usually takes place at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum in Oakland and is typically a part of the student’s school day, Mr. Ghubril said.
Every year, the event serves as one of the few chances students from across PPS gather together, he said. This year, it doubled as a reunion for kids who hadn’t seen their friends in months and a celebration for making it through a particularly challenging end to high school.
“It was just really nice being here and hearing about how people believe in us,” said Joseph Jones, a recent graduate of Taylor Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill.
“And also kind of telling us that this is a [expletive] up situation but we know you will get through it,” he said. “That’s nice, having more people say that.”
Mr. Jones said he was “not as on the ball” with his schoolwork as he normally would have been.
Being cooped up in the same room for eight hours and lacking the stress (that serves as motivation, he said) of the actual school building made it hard from him to focus. That was exacerbated during long Advanced Placement exams, where he had to strain to remember any material from before the pandemic hit in full force in March.
Brothers Teshir Aliston and Khalil Schaeffer agreed that finishing high school online was difficult, dubbing it tedious and annoying.
For reasons unclear to them, teachers would block assignments or say an assignment wasn’t finished when they believed it was. If they ran into technical problems when submitting their work, the teachers would dock them points for being late. If they reached out to teachers with questions, they sometimes didn’t hear back for weeks, they said.
But the brothers are happy to be done and moving on to future plans — two-years at Community College of Allegheny County to study game design before transferring to a four-year university for Mr. Aliston and enrolling at Carlow University to study early childhood education for Mr. Schaeffer.
Anticipating that COVID-19 would make an already difficult time even harder for students, the Pittsburgh Promise hired three new staffers and raised more than $1 million for a COVID-19-specific fund.
Those funds are earmarked to help students who are food insecure, need mental health services or need help paying for college courses.
The money is meant for students who were counting on a summer job to pay the bill for courses they already completed this spring but are now having trouble finding work, or for students who have to retake a course because COVID-19 impacted their success, Mr. Ghubril said.
On top of that, the Pittsburgh Promise wanted to help students furnish their dorm rooms and provided each student at Saturday’s event with about $120 worth of new bedding, including a pillow, a pillow case, extra-long sheets and a mattress cover.
The bedding came from Duquesne-based American Textile, Mr. Ghubril said.
In the past 11 years, the Pittsburgh Promise has given out $145 million in scholarships to 10,000 students, he said.
Sophie Levitt, who is planning to attend The College of Wooster in Ohio, said her graduation from Obama Academy in East Liberty didn’t feel real until she received her diploma.
Before the drive-in celebration, she had participated in a virtual ceremony and a drive-by parade where seniors decorated their cars and drove by family and friends while teachers read their names and future plans.
The parade was such a success that families are requesting it become an annual tradition, said her mother, Karen Levitt.
One of 11 valedictorians in her class, Sophie Levitt gave a speech during her school’s virtual graduation. She focused her message on embracing future endeavors, channeling a motto from the school’s former principal: “Whatever you do in life, do it so well that no one living, no one dead or yet to be born can do it any better,” she said.
Speaking during a virtual ceremony was surreal, she said, but probably easier — and cooler — than speaking in front of hundreds of people on a hot summer day.
“I don’t know how I would have done that,” she said.
Mr. Jones, the Allderdice graduate, will attend Gettysburg College in the fall. The school recently announced the students would be able to come to campus next semester for a mix of online and in-person classes.
Mr. Jones is excited, while his mother, Yasmin Dada-Jones, is excited and nervous at the same time.
“I’m just a cauldron of mixed emotions right now,” she said.
The Pittsburgh Promise encouraged students who are still forming post-graduation plans to reach out for help. Students can text 412-701-7086 or email rick@pittsburghpromise.org.
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com; 412-263-1565.
First Published: June 27, 2020, 6:35 p.m.
Updated: June 27, 2020, 9:38 p.m.
