Thousands of high school seniors in Oakland are getting ready to walk across the stage and get their diploma this week.
The path to graduation hasn’t been easy and it’s been far from traditional for the class of 2023.
They survived not only high school, but a pandemic, remote learning, historic wildfire seasons and a teacher’s strike that shut down classes, once again, weeks before their graduation.
“I’m ready to grab that diploma,” said graduating senior Khoa Nguyen. “It was a pretty long journey, it was pretty difficult too.”
Elizabeth Feng was a freshman in March of 2020 when students were ordered to stay home -- initially for a few weeks, and ultimately, for a year and a half.
“We were all like ‘yay, we get off time from school’ we all thought it was going to be two weeks and then I think we soon realized it wasn’t going to be just two weeks,” said Feng.
When she did return, it was with a mask, social distancing, and frequent testing. Now she is planning to go to UC Berkeley in the fall.
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“I think overall it just made us stronger and really appreciate the little things that we had,” said Feng.
A combination of struggling with remote learning and fierce fire seasons added to high school challenges for Daviant Price.
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“Most of my high school experience was ruined by climate change. Right now, I’m going to Laney to be an electrician but when I was a freshman I wanted to be an astrophysicist,” said Price. "I remember the pandemic decreasing my motivation for school.”
Other classmates believe the pandemic gave them an advantage for life post high school
“I started to be more calm, I started to change and I started to focus more on school and to actually start being smarter with my decision making,” said Nguyen.
Four years later, despite the obstacles, the class of 2023 is wearing their gown and caps with pride and reveling in the lessons learned beyond the classroom
“It just feels amazing that we did it and we did it as a community. We all never gave up on having our main goal of graduating,” said Feng.
