To continue the tradition established last year, the Class of 2020 elected English teacher Sara Cohen as their faculty speaker. Cohen will deliver the closing speech at this year’s Senior Ceremony on Sept. 15.

“I’m extremely honored to have been chosen to speak,” Cohen said. “[I’m] totally surprised. I had to read the email from [President Rick] Commons two or three times before it sank in.”

The senior class chose Cohen to represent their grade through a vote including all of the faculty members. Last year, the Class of 2019 selected Upper School Coordinator of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and science teacher Nate Cardin to speak at their ceremony.

Jaya Nayar ’20, who was in Cohen’s English class as a junior, said she believes Cohen’s compassion, dedication and ability to connect with students both in and out of the classroom will enable her to give a particularly poignant speech.

“She is one of those people I look up to, not only as English teacher but also as a person,” Nayar said. “She is very willing to help students in any way that she possibly can. I think she demonstrates the role of what it’s like to have a teacher who cares a lot about the students and that will also teach them a lot of meaningful things.”

Cohen said that she is now focused on writing her speech for the event.

“The speech is still a work in progress, and also, I don’t want to reveal too much,” Cohen said. “Let’s just say there will almost certainly be at least one literary allusion. I came up with the topic the way I come up with all of my class discussion topics: I thought about my students, about who they are, what they’ve shared with me about themselves and about the role I play in their lives. And of course, I thought about literature.”