Hakeem Howard, a senior at Quince Orchard High School in suburban Maryland, the United States, was in his first-period class one morning listening to announcements when he heard that the school was looking for graduation speakers and valedictorians.

Grade-wise, he told me, he definitely wasn’t a valedictorian. But, he said: “I knew I had something great to talk about. I felt like I could take something that happened to me and talk about it in a way that would touch others.”