Graduation

Jessica Kianmahd had a lot on her plate a year ago, between volunteering as a Big Sister, involvement in her high school’s social activist group and various musical pursuits.

As editor-in-chief of The Boiling Point, Shalhevet’s award-winning newspaper, Lexi Gelb grapples with social and political issues that range from the conflict in the Congo to the intersection of fashion and philosophy.

A few years ago Mason Kroll went with his family to see a touring production of “A Chorus Line.” On the way home, Kroll recalled, “My dad turns to me and says, ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a musical when he was in college. What are you doing?’ I didn’t take him seriously at all.”

It is almost pointless to ask Jeffrey Kessler what he does in his free time because it is hard to imagine he would have any. Sure, he takes time to sleep, but very reluctantly.

At age 12, most kids have plenty to worry about with social pressures, schoolwork and extracurricular activities. For Sheva Gralnik, age 12 also marked the time that her life changed forever.

Most kids have a “why” phase, but Harrison Tasoff’s was both particularly intense and long lasting.

Jesse Tohl played the Persian peddler Ali Hakim in his school’s production of “Oklahoma!” this spring. What makes that fact remarkable is that Tohl was born with oral apraxia and dysarthria, conditions in which facial muscles that control speech do not function properly.

Madeline Chais grew up in the privileged world of private school where pretty much everything she wanted, she got. Then in sixth grade, while volunteering to organize a book drive at the John Thomas Dye School, Chais learned about the abominably low literacy rates at public schools throughout Los Angeles. That same week, she helped mobilize 300 students to collect more than 8,000 books, which were then distributed to needy schools through the nonprofit organization Bookends.