Steinmühle once again celebrated the 2022 high school graduation in the festival tent
The 2022 high school graduates were not always a homogeneous group. With their diverse personalities, they each had their own minds, their attitudes varied, and tolerance was required on all sides. Principal Björn Gemmer also emphasized this in his speech at the graduation ceremony in the festival tent, while at the same time announcing another fact: This group of young people achieved the best Steinmühlen high school graduation results to date.
“Nevertheless”? Or “therefore”? Was this a matter of causality or coincidence? The only thing that’s certain is that diversity among young characters isn’t really anything out of the ordinary. Even the children’s book author Andreas Steinhöfel, whom Gemmer quoted, presented such examples as a clear reality in his work *Rico, Oskar, and the Deep Shadows*, while the principal “didn’t want to look at anyone” and just smiled. In any case, Steinhöfel’s recommendation is to take children and adolescents seriously. Who, if not Steinmühle, offers the ideal setting for this? It has made it its mission to both enable the personal development of each individual and to achieve goals in everyday school life. Quite clearly, this is working out excellently.
Principal Bernd Holly introduced these contributions—which recounted the events and anecdotes that took place over the years during this eventful period—from the perspectives of teachers and students. But he did not do so without thanking everyone involved who, in a symbolic sense, keeps Steinmühle running: parents, students, the teaching staff, the non-teaching staff, and the boarding school.
There was an outpouring of emotion at the farewell celebration, which also spread among the guests who filled the festival tent on the Steinmühlen grounds. Following the successful high school graduation ceremony last summer, Steinmühlen Managing Director Dirk Konnertz had no trouble deciding to hold the prom on the school’s own grounds again, together with the students’ families.
The graduating seniors took a moment to look back on their first day of school on August 20, 2013, and smiled at the flyer from back then, which had been created especially for their “big day.” The young people extended their greetings and thanks to all the teachers, the administrative staff, in the dining hall and cafeteria, the cleaning team led by Erika Thiel, and especially to the teachers who had made their experiences unforgettable by organizing ski and rowing trips as well as the trip to Schuby.
