Johnston High School senior class advisors Nadia Cricco and Vincent Verardo have done everything they can to help their students adjust to the coronavirus pandemic – working around cancellations, hosting their own weekly talk show and helping normalize a graduation process initially thrust into uncertainty.
Despite the success they’ve had, their hearts break for the kids, for their parents, for everyone who expected a regular spring. Both teachers expressed disappointment for their students, whom they’ve known for more than four years – they won’t get to enjoy Senior Prom, or a graduation at PPAC or the VETS Auditorium.
“Our hearts break for the parents. Some of them, this is their first child to graduate high school or some of them it’s their only child, their last one or their baby,” Cricco said in a joint interview with Verardo via Google Meet. “It might be the first one graduating high school period.”
“It might be the only graduation they ever receive,” Verardo said. “Some of these kids aren’t going to college, they’re going into a career, they’re going into a trade school or they’re going to CCRI for a year and then try to transfer some place. For a lot of these kids, this is it.”
The students have remained resilient, though. In fact, Cricco and Verardo have known that about their seniors since well before coronavirus took hold. In November, when the yearbook was being planned, Verardo said they were approached to pick three words to describe the class of 2020. They settled on “trailblazers,” “perseverant” and, yes, “resilient.”
“The last four years for them as a class, I wouldn’t say it’s been the easiest road because they’ve always been original thinkers and they have different perspectives on stuff,” Verardo said. “You might have what would be considered something of tradition and they take a look at it, and they’re [saying] either, ‘Can we make this better?’ or ‘Can we change this?’ They want to have an impact on something.”
Cricco said that the students were obviously not excited with how their senior spring played out, but if there was any class that could handle it, it was this one.
“I’m in awe by how well they’re taking it and, yeah, they have their moments, all of them, where they’re upset, hurt and I’ve gotten the messages with them crying and I’ve cried right along with them, but they’re getting through it and they’re trying to stay positive and they’re going to come out on the other side and they’re going to be stronger than ever,” Cricco said.
Cricco and Verardo have done their best to keep the students smiling. They recently drove all across town delivering lawn signs and tumblers, greeting them from a distance.
They’ve also been producing a weekly show – in the same vein of “Live with Kelly and Ryan” – called “2020: Years in Review,” where they engage in their usual back-and-forth banter for 25 to 30 minutes. They said it’s received an overwhelmingly positive response.
“We send out a video to them every week and we tell them how things are going and we reminisce about freshmen, sophomore and junior year and our favorite memories and the feedback for that has been really awesome,” Cricco said. “The kids really seem to enjoy it.”
“We riff off of each other and we kind of rag on each other and I think they miss that because they don’t see us every day anymore so seeing these weekly episodes, they see that we still have our usual banter going, and they’re like, ‘Oh, nothing’s changed. It’s just usual Ms. Cricco and Mr. Verardo,’” Verardo added.
The two have also been working on rebooking and reinventing a couple of events that have been postponed. They are currently looking to move the senior trip to Disney World, which was set for April, to late July or early August. Disney World recently announced plans to reopen in July.
“We’re waiting for Disney to open and then we’re going to rebook the trip with a smaller group of students that are interested obviously, but we’re looking toward late July, early August, if they’re open, to rebook – not as a class, because they’ll have graduated at that point, but as independent citizens where we go with them as friends, more or less, not as teachers in that respect,” Verardo said.
Then, in November or December, they’re attempting to hold an early reunion of sorts, so students can get together with teachers to sign yearbooks and enjoy the senior banquet they were supposed to have.
These adjustments are only a couple examples of the out-of-the-box thinking the class of 2020 has become known for.
“They’ve always kind of made their own path,” Verardo said. “They have such original ideas and they’re not afraid of breaking away from a tradition.”
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