There’s a longer post to write… but here is (without last minute edits) yesterday’s graduation speech. I was the closing speaker, so I felt the extra weight (probably completely self-imposed) of making sure my speech actually was a bit of a homily — without being too preachy.

What was wonderful about the entire ceremony is that the message from all the speakers, from administration to teachers to parents to kids alike, was similar. It was one of those moments where, despite all the self-doubt we may have about whether or not we actually achieve our goals of being "more than just a good school," we really could see that there is a shared vision and shared sense of morality that runs through what we do. And the kids get it and believe in it. There was, as I was speaking, an unexpected moment of applause yesterday. It came at the line "Create one." As you read the speech, you’ll see why it made me really happy and proud that a group of 200 high school seniors would cheer when I said that.

With that… here’s the speech.

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Suffice to say that this was the week from hell. There are lots of things we can’t put on public blogs for all sorts of reasons, and this week seemed to hit all of them. I’m still trying to figure out if I can write about some of what happened and still respect student privacy, and I haven’t figured out a way yet.

But some weeks are harder than others. This was one of them.

… I was looking back through old yearbooks for inspiration for a piece of writing I have to do, and I stumbled across what I wrote to the class of 2003 in their yearbook:

"Look back fondly on your time at Beacon — hopefully most of you will. If the experiences you’ve had, the friends you’ve made, the things you’ve learned, the ways in which you’ve grown are to mean anything, then remember that everything that happened here happened because a group of administrators, teachers and students got together and said that ‘good enough’ wasn’t, and they dared to dream of a school that was more than ‘good enough.’

And, if Beacon has taught us all anything, remember that ‘good enough’ rarely is, and that you have have the power to make the world around you so much more than ‘good enough.’"

Two years later, nine years into my experience there and thirteen years into the experiment, that still rings true as to how the place is just so special.