Moments matter.

That was the message from Daniel Spotts, a new graduate of Daniel Boone Area High School, while speaking at the school's graduation ceremony on June 5 at the district's stadium in Birdsboro.

Spotts said the inspiration for his remarks came from his lacrosse coach, who used the phrase regularly.

"At the time, I never realized how meaningful such a simple phrase could become," he said. "Most people think moments matter only when something good happens, like winning a game, acing a test or accomplishing a goal, but I think the moments that matter most are often the difficult ones. Moments matter when you fail, because failure teachers you what not to do. Those are the moments that force you to grow."

Spotts, who received third honors in the Class of 2026, asked his fellow graduates to appreciate the moment happening right in front of them.

"At almost every school, the valedictorian and salutatorian give speeches, while third place basically gets a participation trophy and moves on," he said, noting his unfamiliarity with public speaking. "Then I found out Daniel Boone is apparently one of those rare schools where a third of the class gets to speak."

Class valedictorian Christopher Landis delivered remarks centered around challenging his peers to think for themselves in a world where it is so easy to do the opposite.

"When I sat down to write this speech, I thought it would be easier to use ChatGPT, make a few edits and then read it to you all here today," he said. "The fact that AI could have done this for me isn't the interesting part. What is far more concerning is that whenever we use AI for something, we're letting someone else do our thinking for us."

Landis harkened back on the hundreds of essays and thousands of math problems that his class had to solve over the course of 13 years to graduate, most of which came long before artificial intelligence was developed and became widely accessible. He said that most students won't remember court case precedents or regularly use sine, cosine and tangent, but that those classes mattered in a different way.

"(Those classes) taught us how to think," he said. "Improving ourselves means we all need to keep putting in a lot of effort and keep thinking. Leaving this school tonight should not be the end of learning."

Similarly, class president Samuel Tighe asked his peers to keep a youthful mindset, saying that childhood does not end on a random Friday. Salutatorian and class vice president Taylor Morba also delivered two separate remarks, most notably using the analogy of a pencil and how it is sharpened and can write whatever it wants to.

This year's graduating class was the 70th in Daniel Boone history. Brianna Bodolos was the class secretary, while Callista Basile served as class treasurer.