News Detail
Commencement 2026 Speaker Highlights
When someone needed help, people stepped in without hesitation. Classmates checked in on each other, shared resources, gave rides, donated clothes, offered comfort, and reminded one another that no one had to face everything alone. Teachers became sources of support and stability. Friends became family. In a time defined by loss, our community responded with compassion. That is what I will remember most about this class. Not only our resilience, but our heart.
Leah Burns ’26, Senior Class President
Our teachers have seen us fail and given us the means to think for ourselves. To come back with relentless resolve, our ambition rebounding in screaming color. On this stage with me are future doctors, lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and surfers. As we venture to become the best version of ourselves, we will undoubtedly stumble when we take our first steps, trip over our own shoelaces, and run headfirst into a wall of our own making. Should you falter, try, try, try again! Our dreams are a labor of love, and we must prune their branches to see them bloom in glorious green.
Anna Nguyen ’26, Salutatorian
The words that we write are based on other people’s work, Ernest Hemingway’s personification in The Old Man and the Sea, similes and metaphors in Romeo and Juliet. Now, we write our own stories. Everyone’s book wil be different, even though we were all taught the same alphabet, grammar rules, and literary devices. Some of us may choose the Oxford comma, or abandon punctuation all together. We may write our stories with alliteration, metaphors, and symbolism. The way we use our letters will result in quite opposite stories. Take it one letter at time, which is something we have been doing for the last decade.
Layla Merrill ’26, Valedictorian
Instead, remember that the pathway from impossible to possible is the audacity to imagine it. So use your imagination to lift you up and lift you out. Don’t just see with your eyes today. See with your mind for tomorrow.
Our imagination is a place to be completely at liberty. It is a gift, it is ours and if our imagination is strong enough and wild enough and potent enough, then even those around us will start to see the image we hold for ourselves, and they will start to believe it too.
Mrs Jessica Lucia, Maui Prep Educator
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Maui Preparatory Academy is a preschool through 12th grade private school located in West Maui.
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