For more photos of the event visit our Flickr album.

On a humid Thursday evening in June, family, friends, faculty, and staff gathered in the City Tech Theater in downtown Brooklyn to celebrate the class of 2025 as they prepared to set out on their next great adventure.

 

 

Speakers touched on several recurring themes throughout the evening—the seniors’ consistent willingness to help others, the importance of active listening and building bridges, and the legacy the Class of 2025 will leave at Packer. Each address, from Dr. Jen Weyburn’s advice on thinking deeply, to Upper School Head Maria Nunes’ reading of stirringly familiar excerpts from A Long Way Forward, a history of Packer’s first 100 years, written by former English Teacher Marjorie Nickerson in 1945, felt timely and inspiring. 

 

Several members of the graduating class performed on stage, with Eli Haider-Bierer, Sean Robertson, and Jane Siegel singing You’ve Got a Friend by Carole King, Ben Harrington and Jasper McLaughlin performing their original piece called Lampposts, and Caius Ko and Daniel Warren delivering their rendition of Piano Man by Billy Joel. The musical performances culminated with The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell, sung by the group of seniors who had performed the same song at their Fourth Grade Moving Up Ceremony at Packer eight years previously.

Aaron Paul, the class’s selected student speaker, spoke about the genuine love and support his classmates showed each other and the wider Packer community during their time there.

 

 

 

 

After the ceremony, graduates and their guests celebrated together in the newly renovated Packer Garden under the setting sun.
 

 

Enjoy excerpts from each of the Commencement speeches below:
 

“We tend to think of speaking courageously as making a bold statement, a proclamation—a mic drop. Sometimes this is what is called for. And, as Packer graduates, I know you are prepared to speak up in the face of injustice. But I think you will find, much more of the time, speaking courageously is quieter than that. It is about making an invitation, signaling curiosity, offering kindness, drawing others in. This kind of courageous speaking often doesn’t result in applause or acknowledgement, in “likes” or “reposts.” In fact, it is often entirely unseen.”

DR. JENNIFER WEYBURN
HEAD OF SCHOOL
 

“Senior year is supposed to be stressful. College applications, decisions about the future, the fear of leaving everything we know. It would have been easy and honestly understandable to pull back. To become a little more closed off. To focus only on ourselves, our own goals, our own futures. But we didn’t. Instead of turning inward, we leaned into each other. We gave this place, this school that helped raise us, everything we had left. We made time for one another. We made time for joy. For service. For leadership. For reflection. We stayed present. We didn’t let the pressure of the future steal the beauty of the now. We poured our energy, our care, our attention back into the community that shaped us. And I think that’s part of why this year felt so meaningful. Why this goodbye feels so full, even though it’s hard. We didn’t just count down the days. We made the days count."

Aaron Paul 
SENIOR SPEAKER
 

“My final ask of you at the start of junior year was to serve as mentors for your younger peers.  As you stepped into your position as upperclassmen, you delivered on this promise time and time again. In both formal and informal ways, you have mentored your peers on the athletic fields, on the stage, in classrooms and beyond, and they are all the better because of you.”

Cameron Lemley 
Dean of the Class of 2025

 

“As you leave Packer and enter your new communities, I hope you remember the impact of your individual actions. That with your actions, you go out of your way to shape those communities for good; that you approach difference with curiosity, not judgment; and that you hold on to the value of dialogue—the “contact of mind with mind”—and resist the false comfort of interacting only with those who agree with you.”

Maria Valentina Nunes 
Upper School Division Head