On Sunday the regional high school class of 2024 will walk across the Tabernacle stage, traveling in that short distance from high school students to the next steps in their young lives: college, work, travel, the possibilities are limitless.

The graduates will wear purple and white to represent the Vineyard, along with other accents to honor the many countries the class is made up of. Much of the ceremony will be in both English and Portuguese, an inclusive addition in recent years to honor the Island’s thriving and growing Brazilian population.

There will be cheers and tears, as there always are at such a momentous occasion, a finish line of sorts crossed in an educational journey that began in preschool or kindergarten, here on the Island or around the country or world.

The class represents a variety of individuals and cultures, however, each student carries with them one common fact: high school began at home, the world still in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic at the start of their freshman year.

Every grade confronted the difficulties of remote learning but to experience the start of high school, that key moment in anyone’s educational and emotional development, through a Zoom screen was especially daunting and depressing. There was no high school orientation, no classroom camaraderie, no sports or pep rallies. There were no dances or fundraisers, no first-day of school butterflies or awkward moments in the lunch room of where to sit and with whom — those experiences large and small that transfer to big successes as fears are overcome and new friends are made.

And when the students did finally return to school they wore masks for the rest of the year, creating a new form of social separation.

Each one of these students carries with them the weight of those times. It is important to remember this and applaud them all the more for persevering.

It is said that the only constant in life is change, and yet humans are often uncomfortable with change, trying so hard to hold on to what was rather than engaging with what is and growing from new experiences and new ways of thinking. But these students have faced the greatest shift the world has ever known, a complete shut down of society in all its forms. It was not easy and took its toll in ways still unfolding.

And yet to spend time with the class of 2024 is to marvel at their resilience, their joy, their maturity and their thoughtfulness. The high school community experienced numerous tragic losses this year, but often it was the students who led the way in showing what it means to be a community, and how to be present with their grief rather than letting sadness and uncertainty have the last world.

A class marked by so much change may become the most suited to navigating and embracing change, a quality the world so desperately needs. We look forward to following wherever they lead.

Hats off to the graduating class of 2024.