Online Graduation on Zoom

One of the sad facts of the world stopping on its access during COVID-19 is that your grade 12 students will not be able to celebrate graduation as they expected to. No dinner, no walking the stage. And while for some people that’s not that big of a loss, for others this is a highlight of life. So how can you as a youth ministry step in and make that happen?

Make it feel Important

This is where we have a chance to provide an experience not just to our church students but to their friends as well. Make it feel official, have people sign up for a free ticket online. Promote it on social media, have students invite their friends from school. Here you can fill a need and also make new connections at the same time.

Dress Up

 Part of the fun of graduation is having the chance to show off your new graduation dress or suit. They may be sitting down on a zoom call but have the students dress up. Potentially you could have them all send in pictures of themselves as kids, this will allow you to use the Zoom screensharing feature to present a slideshow of your students featuring their childhood picture and new grad picture. At the end of the day the idea of eating a fancy grad dinner that you made yourself on zoom (I picture a lot of pizza pocket dinners) in a grad outfit at home is a memory that will last a long time. If it cannot be classy, at least make it unique and funny.

Get students involved

Get students to send you a video of them telling a story of their favourite memories in youth/high school. A few short and funny memories will go a long way in helping your create some interesting content for the program of your online event.  A few screen shared videos will make an engaging and interesting program.

When it is all said and done. The key is to find the fun in this, by no means would it be a perfect replacement for the normal graduation event that your church or the school would do. But if you are creative you can help make a memory that will last a long time.

Jeff Kiers