Class of 2020 Lent Day 2

This morning I woke up to the news of the Matric IEB results. It was an excellent morning. My subject, Drama, achieved an average of 80%. As a school five of our matric subjects achieved an average over 80%. The results are exceptional. 

It’s a very strange experience looking down a list of names and marks at the end of a year like last year. That singular mark will never encapsulate everything that was sacrificed, laboured over and fought for. It will never show the hours of sweat drenching masks as we tried to create practical examination pieces that respected social distance but still allowed our students to shine. It will never show the boy who worked his entire life to make first team rugby having to pack his boots away after just one game. It will never show the cancelled flights to the World Choir Games. It will never show a group of eighteen year old boys having to put their dreams aside for the greater good of society. 

In the end that mark is just a number. And the older these boys get the less important it is going to become for them. 

But I will never forget. And I will never stop being proud of them. And the scripture that I live by will ring true for this generation of boys - ‘for we rejoice in our suffering because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character and character, hope’. 

I know that millions of people have gone through far worse during this pandemic but today my blog is dedicated to my boys. Boys who understood that there was a bigger battle being fought and who did what was necessary to play their parts. Boys who refocused their energies on the things they could control in order to exceed even their own expectations. 

Class of 2020 I salute you. If this grit is what your generation is made of then we have much to be hopeful for.