Guilford County Schools

| About a month before her graduation, Tyanna Whitehead entered a Starbucks in Greensboro wearing a tiny pink swim float around her waist and matching swim goggles on her head. She hobbled on crutches, looking a little nervously around the parking lot. She had sprained her ankle during a soccer game the night before and moved slower than she normally would. She hoped no one from her school saw her in the parking lot.

Her classmates at Northeast Guilford High were participating in a game called Senior Assassins. It’s a student-organized elimination game where high school seniors use water guns to “tag” assigned targets to win a prize—or bragging rights. As long as she was wearing her float and goggles, she was “Safe.”

Whitehead has one of those 2,000-watt smiles that’s impossible not to respond to. After graduation, she plans to earn her welding certification and diploma at GTCC. She’s one of few female welding students in the program. She picked it up from her dad because he liked to weld things at home.

Read more of Tyanna's story at www.gcsnc.com/graduation.

| The list of accolades next to Josh Covarrubias’ name in the Penn-Griffin School for the Arts graduation program is long, almost stretching to a second line. Magna cm laude. National Honor Society. Global language endorsement. Arts proficiency endorsement. Citizenship proficiency. National music honor society. Student council.

But there’s an additional accolade that won’t be reflected in the program, because he’s the only student to do it. Josh is the first student in school history to earn an associate degree before he graduated from high school.

His College Transfer Pathway degree will put him two years ahead at UNC Charlotte, where he plans to get a degree in political science before applying to law school.

Read more of Josh's story at www.gcsnc.com/graduation.

| That moment when you and your twin sister are Valedictorian and Salutatorian of your graduating class.✨💙🎓

Natasha and Felicia D**g graduated from The Academy at Smith last week and will both attend The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall.

| Beatrice Simu once thought that her peers would think differently about her if she changed herself to fit in. So she downplayed her Romanian heritage by asking her mother to pack sandwiches and chicken nuggets for lunch, instead of her favorite Romanian foods. She chose to only speak English and never let on that she knew another language.

“I believed that if people around me knew my background, they would treat me differently. Yet, no matter how hard I tried to fit in, I was still viewed as different,” she wrote in her college application essay.

The Northern High School senior doesn’t hide that part of herself anymore. Simu, who plans to study Business Administration and Political Science, with a minor in Spanish, is proudly Romanian and eager to learn about more cultures.

Read more of Beatrice's story at www.gcsnc.com/graduation.

| Darius Chukwuemeka is known for making quick, smart decisions before a stadium filled with people when a football game is on the line. But the thought of giving the valedictorian’s speech at his Smith High School graduation filled him with anxiety.

Chukwuemeka (pronounced chook-wu-meka), goes by “DC,” and exudes a calm, focused presence. He was an All-Conference running back for Smith and will attend Sacred Heart University, a private institution in Connecticut, on a full scholarship to play football. He signed with the Division I school for both its football and mechanical engineering programs.

While he gained notoriety beyond Smith for his football prowess, Chukwuemeka’s goal of becoming a mechanical engineer was established well before he became a D1 football recruit. In the classroom, his teachers describe him as curious and attentive. Coaches and teachers commend him on his work ethic and problem-solving skills.

Read more of Darius' story at www.gcsnc.com/graduation.