Celebrating The Class of 2026

Yesterday, as the Shanghai American School Class of 2026 gathered for graduation, the room held the feeling of a thousand small memories coming into focus all at once. Moments like the first days of school, rehearsals, exams, projects, performances, bus rides, inside jokes, pep rallies, and late nights that once felt ordinary, but now feel like the story of a class growing up together.

One by one, 237 graduates crossed the stage and into the next chapter of their lives. As they did, they carried the spirit of Shanghai American School: the passion to pursue learning, the integrity and compassion to care for others, and the courage to live their dreams.

The ceremony honored a class that has learned, led, performed, competed, created, questioned, and grown together. But what made the day especially memorable was the way the student speakers captured what it felt like to arrive at this moment: proud, nostalgic, a little stunned, and deeply aware that the ordinary days had become something worth holding onto.

During the Pudong ceremony, Senior Class Speaker Lindon Shen brought humor to the stage as he compared high school to “cooking random recipes” without quite knowing what the final product would be. Looking back on four years of essays, all-nighters, mistakes, and momentum, he offered his classmates a fitting sendoff: “I wish us all to continue to successfully tumble and to learn in our future endeavors.”

Valedictory Speaker Marina Zhang reflected on growth, creativity, and the importance of holding onto wonder in a world that often pushes students to compare and compete. She reminded her classmates that their value is not measured against anyone else’s achievements, saying, “Do not let anything make you feel small. Let it become the fuel for your growth instead.”

From Puxi, Valedictory Speaker Michael Mushinski invited the Class of 2026 to look beyond rubrics, resumes, and the pressure to become someone impressive, and instead to become more fully themselves. “Strive, not that you may finally become worthy, but because you already are,” he said, encouraging graduates to carry forward the curiosity and joy that first made learning feel alive.

Class Speaker Weiwei Koh captured the bittersweet feeling of leaving through the image of a photograph; the kind graduates may one day look back on and laugh at: caps slightly crooked, gowns wrinkled, awkward smiles. But, she reminded her classmates, the perfection of the picture was never the point. “One day, these photos will become proof that this moment existed at all. Proof that we were here together. That for four brief years, our lives were somehow intertwined in the same orbit.”