One week from today, the first class of the Science Leadership Academy will walk across the stage at The Franklin Institute as our first graduates. For the kids, it represents an incredible rite of passage into adulthood and all they will accomplish once they leave our walls. Tonight, I want to try to unpack how I feel about all this. I’m not sure I can.

I’ve said the following words a lot — "How can anyone transform the life of a child if they are unwilling to be transformed themselves?"

Being the principal of SLA has been — and I’m sure will continue to be — the most challenging and exciting and difficult thing I have done in my professional life so far. And my life has been so profoundly impacted by the time I have spent with the students and faculty of SLA. The hardest, most profoundly humbling thing about every day is trying to live up to the vision of myself that I see reflected back at me by the students. There are so many pieces of the puzzle of the last four years of my life that have demanded the best version of myself… and days when I felt like that wouldn’t be good enough. But mostly, it has been an incredible ride to share a vision with teachers and students and parents and staff and see that vision come to life and change and grow as others breathed life into it.

Sharing a dream is a scary, thrilling thing, because the only way it comes to life is to share it. But of course, the dream is changed when it is shared. That’s a good thing, because synthesis is good. But it requires giving up being the only keeper of the dream. It means understanding that the flawed and wonderful reality is better than the unrealized dream. It means being willing to try and fail and risk and risk again. It means trying to anticipate so many different outcomes and then having enough Zen inside you to roll with all the moments that you never saw coming.

Through it all, we’ve had our first class of students. They have demoed every idea, they have "broken in" new teachers. They have pushed and challenged and been pushed and challenged, and they have grown with us, always aware of their roles as the first class of the school. Now, they are graduating, and the school will change as all the new classes from this time forward will see is as a "school," and the onus is now on all the other students to continue the sense that SLA is different and needs nurturing and is a work in progress. I believe deeply that the legacy that the first class leaves will continue that mission, and I am proud of what I see from our younger students. (And I am sure that, while the rising seniors may miss the graduating seniors, they are ready to lead.)

We are one week away from our first graduation, and with that event comes the end of the first cycle of SLA’s life as a school. We are still a relatively "new" school, and there is so much about us that must continue to improve. But we have come so far in the past four years, and I cannot wait to see — and be a part of — what happens next.