The Class of 2023 Graduates

The 239 students in the class of 2023 graduated Sunday, June 4. The top ten seniors are Isabella Bacolor, James Diamond, Niklaas Door, Harsh Gupta, Jonathan Kwon, Raymond Lin, Silas Lorenz, Alayna Nolte, Victor Reyes, and Maxwell Taylor. Class speakers attended tryouts to be packed to speak at graduation. Anyone who wanted to try out had to say their speech in front of the principal, counselors, and faculty of SJHS.  

“7 seniors wrote and presented their speeches to a panel of judges. From there the panel judged how well-written our speeches were and how well we presented them,” Claire Caplea said.

Lincoln White, Harsh Gupta, and Claire Caplea delivered their speeches to their fellow peers on graduation day.  Baccalaureate is a ceremony held before graduation that showcases the class of 2023s talent. John Norland was selected to give a speech at this ceremony. Speeches rangedfrom humorous to somber and even joyous. 

“My speech is very nostalgic and mentions many memories throughout our years at St. Joseph Public Schools,” Claire said. 

While Claire's speech took a nostalgic and heartfelt tone to commemorate the class of 2023, Harsh Gupta’s speech thanked Saint Joe and took a humorous tone to thank his fellow classmates.

“From my speech you can expect a lot of gratitude towards the people in SJHS…[and] the speech is extremely funny and basically thanks the people of Saint Joe,” Harsh said. 

The teacher speaker this year was Mr. Lyle Hayden, psychology teacher. Every year the teacher speaker is picked by a vote from the graduating senior class. Previous teachers include Mr. Ryan Walters 2020, Dr. Jamie Culver 2021, and Mr. Lyle Hayden 2022.

photo by guneev gill

After the SJHS choir sang the Alma Mater, the 2023 graduates toss their caps in the wind. Once the caps hit the ground, they were off to the senior all night party.