[This was the speech I gave tonight at graduation. There aren’t many moments these days where I feel like I need to write out my speeches word for word beforehand. My preferred mode is to have an outline and then work the room. There was no way, with the emotions of the night, that I was going to be able to do that, so this speech is written pretty much as spoken. These kids mean the world to me, and I hope that comes through in the words on the page.]
What a day… what a celebration… what an incredible four years.
Four years and one month ago, many of us gathered in a room one floor below where we are now. It was the first time we gathered together as a community. It was a scary and exciting time, as we began the process of getting to know one another. In so many ways, that seems like yesterday and yet it also seems so long ago. There was so much hope… so much nervousness… For me, I will always remember the leap of faith you all made in coming to SLA. For the past four years, I have thought of that day many times, and I have thought of what it must have felt like to have been a parent in that room…. to have been a student in that room. To be willing to take a chance on a school that wasn’t even sure it would have a building ready for opening day. To the parents assembled, I can ask you now… what were you thinking?
But you did choose Science Leadership Academy… you chose to join us in taking a vision of what school can be and building it into reality… and we were and remain humbled by that decision. I can tell you that – every day – we have strived to be worthy of the choice you made. And it is my sincerest hope that today – of all days – you all feel that the choice was worth it.
And of course, there was that first day. Who needed door handles… floor tiles… o.k., bathrooms would have been nice. But we persevered. We refused to let anything stand in our way. This was our school… and we had the chance to make it into something, and – much like that first day – while it sometimes challenging, you took a pioneering spirit to everything you did in your four years at SLA, and you have succeeded gloriously, beyond our wildest expectations.
And today, as we celebrate all of your successes, we have to recognize that we rarely do it alone. And it is important, before we list the litany of your achievements, that we honor all of the people who have helped us get to this moment in time. So seniors, if you would please take a moment to recognize your parents, your families, your teachers… all the people who have helped you reach this milestone in your life by clapping for them, thus giving them the ovation they so richly deserve.
And now, think of all that you have accomplished over the past four years.
You have collectively spent over 500,000 hours inside SLA, and you’ve even spent some of that time in class.
You have gone to Advisory over 25,000 times.
You have spent over 7,000 hours in The Franklin Institute.
You have learned the difference between Moodle and Drupal, and you don’t even worry about sounding silly when you say those words anymore.
You have started ten varsity sports, and you have won divisions, competed at States, played in playoff games, and practiced and played at courts and fields all over the city, often at insanely early hours of the day.
You have run miles and miles through Students Run Philly Style — and through the halls of SLA in phys-ed class.
You have written original plays, produced and directed movies and constructed the most unique Do It Yourself black box theater the world has ever seen.
You have built engineering projects that have consistently pushed the limits of what people believe high school students are capable of.
You captured the stories of the City of Philadelphia on Election Day, 2008, and shared those stories with the world.
You have travelled to England and Costa Rica and you have rafted down the San Juan River… and on each of those trips you crossed cultural boundaries and spread your joy and energy and ideas to others.
Together, you have completed over 8,000 benchmark projects, and you complained about most of them.
You have completed ILPs at over 100 sites all over the city.
You have conducted over 2,000 interviews of prospective students.
You have done over 15,000 science labs.
You have written over 50,000 pages of homework and essays and lab write-ups and blog posts and wikis.
You have completed senior capstones that were documentaries, engineering projects, personal histories, original plays, science research papers and community activism. And in all of them, you have taken the core values of the school and you have made them your own.
You’ve also received over 10,000 extensions on papers and projects that your teachers swore they wouldn’t accept late but did anyway because they wanted to see you succeed. And you thought we weren’t keeping track.
You received over 300 acceptance letters to over 120 different colleges.
You have given hundreds of tours to thousands of educators from all over the world.
You have met scientists like Dr. Squyres, innovators such as Jeff Han and scholars like Dr. Cornell West… and some guy named Bill Gates. And you have shown them all what learning can be.
You have proven, over and over again, that students are capable of greatness when given the tools and guidance and respect they need. You have served as a model for teachers, students and schools all over the world with what you have done.
In short, you have built a school… a school that matters. Milly wrote in my yearbook, “SLA is only what we make it, and we have made it something great.” I could not agree more. That is your legacy. This is what you leave behind.
You have done all this in the face of innumerable obstacles. High school is a incredible time in a person’s life… all we had to do was look at the pictures on the paper plate awards yesterday to see how much you have changed in four years, but more than that, you accomplished so much in the face of personal loss, in the most challenging economic times our country has known in over seventy-five years. You have faced the nights when you had three and four benchmark projects due the next day, and of course, as our first class, you have done this as the group that had to help us figure out who we were and what so many of our ideas meant in reality.
But you did all this all in the name of a shared belief that school could be about more than textbooks and quizzes, more than the aggregate sum of a bunch of classes. You breathed life into a dream… into a dream I had. For all that SLA has given you, you have given us that. And let me say, more personally, you have given me that. You — and the teachers and parents who have walked this walk with you — have taken a dream I had and made it real, and in doing so, made it so much greater than I ever could have imagined. Your energy, your effort, your belief, your sacrifices… you have done this all in service of a dream that the name “Science Leadership Academy” should mean something. And now, thanks to you, it does.
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I have been awed and humbled, time and time again, by what you have done… by how you have shared this dream with me, and for that, I stand before you and I say, simply, humbly, thank you.
It’s a funny thing about dreams… we can hold onto them. We can keep them inside as our private stories, or we can share them with the world. I can tell you from what you have given me, share your dreams. Let them live and be changed by those around you. Let your dreams inspire others to dream themselves. Yes, there will always be those who will tell you that “it can’t be done,” who try to tell you that you cannot… you will not… that it is just not possible. All of you know how many people said that about us.
But know that those who would try to keep you from your dreams often times only do so because your willingness to share, your desire to try, to believe, to succeed – only shines a light on what they could not — or would not — do. The world is filled with those who settle for what is, rather than what could be. But that is not how we make a better world. That is not how honor the spirit of inquiry. We gather today in a building that honors those who have dreamed and those who shared their dream with the world. Our dream of school was born jointly with the dreams of the people in this building, and as you leave us, you take this dream — co-mingled with your own dreams — with you wherever you go.
And now that you leave us, many of you have talked about how you will miss SLA or that you are not ready to leave. And while we — I — will miss you all, let me say that you are all ready to go. We would not have done our job if you weren’t. And if you will miss the community that is SLA, then my challenge to you is this — build one. Each of you carry the best of us within you now. It is my hope that the spirit of this community is not only contained within the walls of 55 N. 22nd St, but that it is a state of mind that is not just about how we build a school, but is about how we build our lives. All of you know the work that is necessary to create communities of meaning and care. And all of you know the benefit of being part of such a community…. and how badly we need more.
So where you have learned to question deeply, teach others the spirit of true inquiry.
Where you have learned to seek out complexity, teach others to never settle for easy answers, because we have learned that easy answers rarely hold the value we think they do.
Where you have learned to collaborate, teach others to value the ideas of others. Show people that we can argue to learn, not just argue to win, and that the synthesis of our ideas often creates something much greater than the sum of its parts.
Where you have learned to present across so many media, continue to let your voices sing out, but remember to teach other the value and power and meaning of their voices, and remember that every presentation needs an audience that will listen and interact and take action.
Where you have learned the value of the quiet moment of reflection, teach others to look past the obvious lessons of a moment, to question themselves, their actions, and to always seek to grow wiser in their journey.
And where you have spent four years within a community that strives to believe in the ethic of care, pay that forward in the lives you lead. All of us in the room have had moments in the past four years where others showed us compassion, showed us care… where a teacher treated you as a person, not just as a student or where you took the time to ask a teacher — or even a principal — if they were o.k., and cared enough to listen to the answer. Teach others the value of that. Teach others to listen deeply with an open heart. Teach others that the moment it takes to care about another is paid back tenfold… that care begets care in ways that are immeasurable. If you do, there will be no end to the impact of the lives you lead.
For years now, I have been asked the question, “How will you measure SLA’s success?” I think people were looking for hard numbers. Test scores and attendance rates and college acceptances. And yeah, you did that too… but that was never what mattered most to me. I have long said that what I hoped for SLA students was that they grow up to be thoughtful, wise, passionate and kind. And today, as I look out upon you now, I know that you are that and so much more.
You have all learned more than we could have ever hoped… you have all created artifacts of learning that we could have never imagined… and now, as you graduate from SLA and leave our walls, the time has come for you to lead.
Congratulations to the Science Leadership Academy Class of 2010, good luck, and from the bottom of all our hearts, thank you.