High school valedictorians put a year like no other in perspective

Joe Heim:

The word valedictorian comes from the Latin vale dicere or “to say farewell.” So it is a goodbye speech, but also a “Look at what we’ve done” speech. And what seniors have done this year has never been done before. From start to finish, this school year has been under a cloud. At some schools, the doors never opened and learning took place not in thousands of classrooms but in millions of bedrooms and kitchens, on back porches and in parking lots or wherever the WiFi signal was strongest.