Before diplomas are awarded on June 6, Bekka Port and Ché Carter will perform a song they created together
By Jo Mathis/AAPS District News Editor
When the Huron High School Class of 2026 gathers for graduation on June 6, the ceremony will pause for something out of the ordinary: Graduate Bekka Port and Principal Ché Carter will step to the microphone together not for a speech, but to perform a song they created side by side.
The song is called “Ground Control (feat. Mr. C),” and it is already available on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
Bekka began writing “Ground Control” in the spring of 2025, when she watched her closest friends prepare to graduate while she still had a year left. The experience produced a tangle of emotions she found curiously underrepresented in the music she loved.
“When I think of songs about graduating or moving on into adult life, they tend to focus on just one aspect: the joy of independence,” she says. “But what about the uncertainty? The fear? The sadness? I believe ‘Ground Control’ captures all of that.”
She co-wrote the song with her sister Hannah, a creative partnership that has defined much of her output in recent years. But despite its honesty about the harder edges of a milestone moment, Bekka felt the song needed an uplifting ending.
“Its overall tone is hopeful,” she says, “which is something that needs to be constant no matter what other feelings might be happening.”
Mr. C steps up
The song’s unlikely collaboration began over lunch with a group of students on a school trip to Prague. Carter calls it an intergenerational collaboration between Gen Z and Gen X.
What emerged from that trip became a featured verse on Bekka’s released single—a development that was greeted with surprise when she told her friends.
“When I first told people at school that I have a song releasing with Mr. Carter, they didn’t believe me,” Bekka says.
She says that disbelief speaks not to Carter specifically but to what students have been taught to expect from those in authority.
“Throughout my 12 years of schooling, I have met plenty of teachers who take advantage of their power position, making me feel stupid for being young,” she says. “Mr. Carter is nothing like that. This whole past year of working on this project, he has treated me as his equal.”
Carter, for his part, deflects attention toward the students. When asked whether he is nervous about performing at graduation, he reframes the question entirely.
“I just care a whole lot about the people I serve,” he says. “Bekka and the band do all the heavy lifting. They are all super talented, and I am honored to be with them.”
His assessment of the song?
“The song is timeless,” he says, “and that is the main ingredient of a good song. Songs connected to emotions and that carry meaning are intergenerational.”
Building the band
Assembling a group of musicians to perform “Ground Control” live at graduation proved to be challenging, and ultimately drew from both Huron and Community High School: Nathalie Cho on cello, Salem Dinh on flute, Carlos Flores-Scott on drums, Helio Fong on piano, Grace Johnson on vocals, Camilo Ojeda on electric guitar, Maddie Pale on vocals, and JP Phelps on electric bass.
“I am not facing that nervousness alone,” she says of performing at graduation. “I am performing it with a group of amazing people.”
What Huron made possible
Bekka will attend the University of Michigan in the fall to pursue a double major in Voice Performance and Music & Technology. She and Hannah are also preparing to release a new EP: four original songs with, in her words, “escapist but resilient and jazz-clubby vibes.”
She says she’ll miss Huron’s school culture above all else.
“In your typical high school movies, you have the different cliques: jocks, nerds, artsy kids,” she says. “At Huron, all those cliques mesh together. There is no disrespect towards any passions. They are all supported and encouraged.”
Carter sees the song, which he calls “intergenerational collaboration between Gen Z and Gen X” as further evidence of that culture.
“How special is Huron that we foster an environment where students feel comfortable inviting their principal to collaborate and celebrate alongside them during an important milestone moment?” he asks. “With all my heart, I aim to foster and sustain a culture of connection, trust, and belonging one person at a time. That does not happen by accident.”
Sylvia Taschka, Bekka’s manager and mother, puts the project in a broader perspective.
“This whole project is not just about graduating,” she says, “but also about what can happen when the walls between students and teachers come down for a moment.”
If Bekka could distill a single message for her graduating class from “Ground Control,” she says it would be this: “There is a universe waiting out there for you, but do not forget the people with whom you have been waiting. Independence is great, but dependence is also important. Feel all the emotions that come with this moment: joy, fear, uncertainty, sadness, thrill.”
And on June 6th, she’ll stand beside the principal who welcomed her as a genuine creative partner and deliver that message in song.
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