Posted on 06/21/2014 5:59:03 AM PDT by Loyalist
Kerstyn MacLellan will omit a common introductory phrase from her graduation speech Friday at Advocate District School — fellow graduates.
MacLellan, 18, is the lone graduate at the Advocate Harbour school, which has 56 students in grades primary to 12.
She’s probably heard all the cliches: a class of her own, one of a kind, the one and only.
But it doesn’t seem to bother her.
“At graduation, the graduates usually sit on the stage,” MacLellan said. “I’ll be the only one this year, so I’ll be doing the valedictory speech.
“I don’t think there is any problem. I feel very prepared for (graduation) and I don’t mind being the only one.”
MacLellan knows something about being the only one. She’s an only child to parents Tom and Kim MacLellan, making her way daily by bus from nearby Apple River to Advocate District.
In Grade 9, she was by herself, MacLellan said. In grades 10 and 11, there was one classmate. She’s been going solo in Grade 12.
Has she been missing out by not having classmates, peers to share the ups and downs of the final year of high school?
“A lot of people ask me that, but not really,” MacLellan said. “I’ve always really liked working independently and I don’t mind working with people who are younger than me so I don’t really feel like I missed out on anything by not having other people in my grade.”
Principal Don Gamblin said some of MacLellan’s classes in the Cumberland County school have kids from other grades and that a number of the grades 7 to 11 students will join her on graduation day.
The principal described MacLellan as “a conscientious student, an independent worker.”
And when she yearns for some inter-dependence, the remainder of the student body at Advocate District fills the bill.
“Because it is such a small school, you have a lot of opportunities to talk to people at different age levels,” MacLellan said. “It’s really a great atmosphere because everyone in every grade pretty much gets along. Pretty much everyone from Grade 6 to Grade 12 knows each other and gets along and communicates well with each other, which I think is interesting because it’s probably not something that people in bigger high schools get to experience.”
One of the small-school experiences for MacLellan was a chance work in the one-room library.
“The entire time since I’ve been by myself, it’s been a unique opportunity, especially this year. I have a co-op course with my school’s library. I’m very interested in library studies and it was really helpful to be able to work with a mentor and learn more about how libraries work.”
When school librarian Jennifer Calder moved on to a job with the Cumberland Public Library, MacLellan became the de facto librarian.
“I had a really unique opportunity to kind of manage the library on my own and I got to work with a lot of elementary classes, reading classes and crafts and things like that. It was really a good opportunity.”
Besides reading to elementary students every Wednesday and Friday and spending a lot of time on her co-op program work, MacLellan had three full courses in her final school year. There was English 12, Drama 12 and, of course, Independent Living 12.
Next year, MacLellan is doing an about-face. She will move to Halifax to enrol in the first year of the journalism program at the University of King’s College. The registrar there says some of MacLellan’s foundation-year classes will have 300 students.
“Yeah, definitely,” she said, anticipating the change from being the one and only to being one in a packed theatre lecture room.
When school librarian Jennifer Calder moved on to a job with the Cumberland Public Library, MacLellan became the de facto librarian.
“I had a really unique opportunity to kind of manage the library on my own and I got to work with a lot of elementary classes, reading classes and crafts and things like that. It was really a good opportunity.”
Truly a young lady in a class by herself, in the best sense of the phrase.
interesting choice of books and there is an elephant drawing behind her.
Nothing special about her; she finished at the bottom of her class.
How many kids finish at the bottom of their class and still get to be valedictorian?
Amazing kid
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