When the class of 2026 attends their graduation in June, an important speech will send them off into the next chapter of their lives. This year, that speech will be written and delivered by class speaker Shaivi Shah. To prepare for this responsibility, Shah has spent her senior year reflecting and searching for the right words to represent her class’s shared experience.
Shah was selected as the class of 2026’s speaker at graduation, which will be delivered June 5 on the turf at WA. Shah was chosen through a speech contest in artistic director and English teacher Michael Towers’ Public Speaking class and will represent her classmates’ experience through their past four years at WA.
“I was really happy [when I found out I was going to be class speaker] because there’s usually a certain population that goes for it. So, I myself was kind of surprised,” Shah said.
According to Shah, she first started at WA as a notably shy freshman who had not yet gained the confidence she needed to speak in front of her class. However, during her years at WA, she has taken classes specializing in public speaking and has gotten comfortable with using her own voice in order to get the courage to go up to the stand to speak for her class.
“The fact that I will be able to say a speech at graduation represents how I’ve progressed in my confidence over these past four years,” Shah said.
According to Shah, one of her first introductions to public speaking was through Towers’ Public Speaking class her first semester of her senior year.
“I have a couple [public speaking] experiences prior to taking that class of just family events that I’ve emceed at like family speeches, but I didn’t really learn any of the skills that I needed to know until I took Towers’ class,” Shah said.
According to Towers, Shah uses her ability to be not only driven but able to accept constructive criticism using the feedback to become more successful in her writing and speech.
“Shaivi happens to be a person who wanted the feedback, and that’s why she spent extra time with me throughout the year. Long before this particular opportunity, Shaivi was a person who would always come and say, ‘Tell me more’,” Towers said.
Another important teacher that helped indirectly push Shah into public speaking was English teacher Rashmi Kumar, who she worked with through the South Asian Student Association (SASA).
“In the first year she was on the SASA cabinet as a co-secretary, she would diligently record meeting minutes and fulfill all her duties with meticulous precision. This school year, her second year on the cabinet, she has been an amazing co-president, truly collaborating and jointly sharing the responsibilities of this role,” Kumar said.
Alluding to her speech, Shah mentioned she wrote it during a unit in Towers’ public speaking class. She stated that she wrote it the night before it was due and only revised it once more before the contest rounds began in class.
“The thing that separated her [from the rest of the candidates] was not only that really remarkable combination, but also just the readiness, the preparation. She had done what she needed to do to come in on that day and be the very best version of herself,” Towers said.
Though Shah can’t fully disclose what her speech will be about, she plans on going for more of a cliche approach.
“It’s light hearted, it’s significant, and it’s clear, and her peers and this entire community should be able to embrace it,” Towers said.
According to Shah, out of all the stress that saying a speech in front of one’s whole class causes, the hardest part is making it relatable to everyone. In order for everyone to feel included, Shah listened to her peers and friends to get a mix of different students’ experiences at WA, and tied it into her speech.
“I feel like obviously you can’t hone in on certain people’s experiences, because their experiences could be different from yours, but I did try to keep the general, overall experiences of what we went through in high school,” Shah said.
Shah notes the class of 2026’s experiences as unique and is proud to have grown with them throughout the years.
“We have always been the class of either the first or the last things,” Shah said.
