GUILDERLAND — Guilderland’s 67th commencement ceremony ran the gamut of emotions — from bittersweet memories to pride of accomplishment, from tears to cheers — crescendoing to the final speaker: The commencement address given by Matthew Pinchinat.

“He has built relationships with each and every one of us,” said Kelly Nhan, a senior, in introducing Pinchinat. “He encouraged us to embrace and celebrate our unique differences.”

Senior Mirzad Glavic said Pinchinat used to teach history but he has now “made history as Guilderland’s first director of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Pinchinat was hired by the Guilderland school district as a high school social studies teacher in 2017 and became the first person to fill the newly created DEI post in 2021. He is resigning in mid-July and will work for the New York State Teachers' Retirement System as deputy managing director of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The 375 graduates seated in rows of chairs on the floor of Albany MVP Arena — the young men in robes of red and the young women in robes of white — cheered for the charismatic teacher. “Yay, Mr. P!” they shouted.

Pinchinat said he was starting off with an apology. “I really do love each and every one of you,” Pinchinat said as his voice cracked with emotion, noting this would be the final time he addressed the Guilderland students.

He described himself as the child of two immigrants.

Pinchinat is the middle of five children, raised by parents who came to the United States from Haiti. His mother is a nurse and his father, a teacher.

Becoming a teacher himself, Pinchinat told The Enterprise earlier, is one of the greatest privileges of his life. He has saved every letter that a student has written to him and plans to keep those letters for the rest of his life.

When he became DEI director in 2021, he said he would be shifting his influence from just the students in his classes to the entire school district, from kindergarten through 12th grade. He said he wanted to bring about system-wide change. The work, he said, called to his heart, reaching people “in that human core” and paying forward the support he has been given.

Pinchinat has always taught the whole child he said, and didn’t hide who he himself was. “I wanted people to be their authentic selves,” he said.

On June 23, he told the arena full of attentive seniors, “You have embraced me.”

He recalled how the students had responded to each and every obstacle in their path. He said they were living epistles of what it means to have happiness intersect with excellence.

“Class of ’23, can you do something for me?” Pinchinat asked, requesting that those in the audience flash their phones.

Just as people do at concerts, the audience flashed their phones throughout the arena — pinpoints of light came from the students seated on the floor and up the sides of the stadium where their families and friends sat.

“My palms are sweating … I’m nervous,” said Pinchinat, explaining, “My final sound as your teacher, your mentor, I’ve got to make you proud.”

He then launched into the rhythms of a rap as he had at last year’s commencement ceremony. “When I think of the future, all I see is you ….,” said Pinchat. “From you I have learned what it means to be great, to be free, to be me.”

To the resounding applause, high school Principal Michael Piscitelli stepped to the lectern to say how much Pinchinat would be missed. “He is an exceptional leader, a fabulous advocate for our students,” Piscitelli said as the administrators, faculty, and school board members on stage stood to honor Pinchinat.

The students joined in the standing ovation as Pinchinat sat in his chair and wept.

Thirteen years

The ceremony had started at precisely 11 a.m. last Friday with the familiar strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” played by the high school’s wind ensemble.

A small cadre of school leaders entered the arena first, robed in black. Then came the seniors, robed in the school’s colors, red and white, as those in the crowd stood to applaud and cheer the students.

Following the Pledge of Allegiance led by senior Maura Van Woert, Jaimee Lowe sang the national anthem. The audience’s applause started before the end of the anthem when Lowe perfectly hit an incredibly high note on the word “free” in the closing couplet of the first stanza:

O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

“Congratulations, you made it!” said Superintendent Marie Wiles, her arms spread wide as she clapped for the students before her.

“Each and every one of you should feel tremendous pride,” said Wiles

Wiles began her welcoming address by thanking a long list of people: teachers, staff, administrators, school board members, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters.

Families, she said, are “important partners” in educating children.

The major thread of Wiles’s speech was following the 13 years at Guilderland she had shared with the about-to-be graduates. The students had started kindergarten in the fall of 2010 just as she began her tenure as superintendent.

Wiles noted that, of the 375 graduates, 210 started kindergarten in Guilderland while 165 joined “somewhere along the way.”

Wiles said that “it might have been a little daunting for all of us” as she learned the ropes of being Guilderland’s superintendent and the young students learned how to line up, how to eat in a cafeteria, and how to read and write.

When the Great Recession hit, Wiles said, “Money was extremely tight all through your elementary years.”

While the adults “felt the pain” and drastic cuts were made, they wanted the students to remain “blissfully unaware,” said Wiles.

In June of 2016 came Moving-Up Day as the students left their elementary schools to attend Farnsworth Middle School the following fall. Wiles made a “mad dash” to attend at least part of each of the five elementary-school ceremonies, she said, and recalled students wearing their very best outfits and parents wiping away ears.

“I wiped away a few myself,” said Wiles.

In the fall of 2016, she said, there was an uptick in divisiveness across the United States and around the world. “It was a time when taking sides took center stage,” said Wiles, but Farnsworth Middle School was about building teams and learning to compromise.

The students coped with the “roller coaster of emotions” that comes with adolescence, said Wiles, and also had to face “a once-in-a-century public-health event.” She did not name the COVID-19 pandemic that required schools to teach remotely and then later to maintain social distancing while conducting in-person classes or combining them with remote learning.

“You managed to make it to the finish line ….,” said Wiles. “I see the 13-year transformation of kindergarten students to young adults,” said Wiles, noting that she, herself, had changed, becoming wiser and more measured.

Wiles concluded by calling the Class of 2023 “a class that I feel uniquely part of and will never forget.”

Student views

Joseph Ciccarelli gave the student welcoming address followed by a video that showed class members from their earliest school days to their latest, concluding with an inspirational graduate address by Maxine Alpart.

Ciccarelli began by thanking the school board, staff, family and friends but said “perhaps the most deserving group of all [is] each other.”

He named class accomplishments ranging from performers in “Beauty and the Beast” to the robotics team that competed nationally.

Ciccarelli described his class as  “a community of excellence, diversity, and achievement.”

“We exceeded all expectations,” he said, calling it “collective success” and attributing it to “the power of community.”

Ciccarelli, who will attend Merrimack College in the fall, urged his classmates: “Take pride in being part of something that I hope is special to all of us.”

The class video, set to various pieces of music, began with young children reciting the pledge of allegiance and went on to show a child at bat and another holding a sparkler. Some kids wore paper pilgrim hats while others played violins.

Parents in the arena seats cried out in recognition as the pictures were displayed on a large screen in front, and simultaneously on a chandelier of screens hanging from the ceiling of the arena.

Students were shown dressed for a dance, joining honor society, playing every form of team sports imaginable, and in various spots around the world, including in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The video concluded with messages from teachers. “May you have wonderful and brilliant careers,” said one. “I know you’re all destined to do great things,” said another.

When the applause had subsided, Alpart, who will be attending Colgate University in the fall, went to the lectern. “The way the world moves is constant,” she said.

The class’s 13 years of hard work, dedication, and perseverance culminates in a single moment, she said, as each graduate receives a handshake and a diploma.

“We will have the freedom to discover and write our definitions of who we are,” said Alpart.

The class has lived through “unprecedented times,” said Alpart, noting a series of “firsts” including the first pandemic in over 100 years.

“We are ready for the world but is the world ready for us?” asked Alpart who has been a member of the school board’s DEI Committee and helped organize three annual anti-hate rallies.

She called on her classmates to take risks and overcome failure. “This is the world daring you to see how strong you are …,” she said. “The potential that each and every one of us have is infinite.”

Graduation is just the beginning of the future, the push to move forward, Alpart said.

“As we go out into the world,” she said, “we will turn it on its head.”

Fantasmic

“Fantasmic” was performed by the Guilderland High School Wind Ensemble with Kathleen Richards Ehlinger conducting.

When the applause had quieted, Piscitell noted this was Ehlinger’s last performance “as she is retiring literally right after this ceremony.”

The announcement was greeted with warm applause as the long-time music teacher and conductor took a quick bow.

“Kathleen, you are an exceptional teacher and an even better person,” said Piscitelli.

Principal Piscitelli then went on to recognize outstanding students. Guilderland, for decades, has not named a valedictorian or a salutatorian; the speakers at commencement are chosen from among the graduates by the speeches they submit.

Piscitelli first had the honors students stand; they wore red and gold cords and had an academic average between 85 and 85.9, so designated on the Enterprise list of graduates along with the other graduates being recognized.

Next up were the high-honor graduates, wearing silver cords, with an average between 90 and 94.9 percent.

Next to be applauded were the highest-honor graduates, wearing medals, having achieved an academic average of 95 or higher.

Then Piscitelli recognized the students, wearing community service pins, who had dedicated 150 hours or more to charitable causes.

Finally, he asked students who had committed to serving in the military as well as members of the audience who had served to stand. Although the fewest numbers of students stood for this honor, the applause was the loudest.

Piscitelli then gave the penultimate speech, before Pinchinat’s.

He began by telling the class how each one of them had the power to change the world and listed various professions by which they could do this: as doctors, as teachers, in the military, or as auto mechanics.

“You can also change the world through the ideas you choose to support,” said Piscitelli.

However, he went on to say that the most powerful way to bring about change in the world is through daily interactions with the people around you.

Nothing impacts the world more than kindness, Piscitelli said. “Giving someone a smile, a kind word, or a helping hand,” he said, can create a ripple effect.

“By doing the right thing, you can set an example,” he said.

Piscitelli referenced a favorite quote from former UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden: ​​“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.”

The principal then went on to tell a story about his son when he was young, spotting something that turned out to be a duct-tape wallet with nothing in it but cash and a piece of paper with a telephone number.

While everyone is tempted, Piscitelli said, we are judged by what we decide to do. 

Piscitelli and his son overcame any temptation they might have felt to keep the cash, and instead called the phone number, which rang a person who was a friend of the man who lost the wallet.

When the young man came to retrieve his wallet, the Piscitellis learned he had just cashed his paycheck when he lost it and was panicking about how to pay his bills. He offered them a reward.

“Seeing the impact on him was reward enough,” said Piscitelli.

He concluded by urging the graduates, “Go forth and make a difference, one small act at a time.”

The next small acts were the conferring of 375 diplomas. The students, one by one, came to the stage as each name was called and, just as Alpart had said, received a handshake and a diploma.

As they left the arena, the graduates were engulfed in the hugs and happiness of their families and friends.