Behind the Graduation Speech

I posted the graduation speech with a photo of five former students from my AP Literature class, and the photo reminds me of all I didn’t get to say. A few things happened during the drafting of the speech that made me uneasy. First was that my first draft lapsed into the litany of accomplishment. I quickly got over the litany, but in doing so, removed for myself the opportunity to praise some of the individuals and events that were personally meaningful to me. I was on Drood, which had incredible energy, and Katie Oxman, who I witnessed playing waffle ball with Emma, perhaps the only such sighting ever. But I didn’t even get to the Courant, not to Alex Bloedel (who is in the picture), Caroline Casavant and Olivia McLean, not to Dylan Hsu or any of the juniors about whom I have awfully nice things to say, but wouldn’t dare lest they know.

By the time I was halfway through the first draft I had already hit my approximate time limit, and I was dancing around specifics because I felt a need to be inclusive. So out the window went both baby and bathwater.

But I wish I’d had the time, and the audience, the interest, to mention the so many names worth mentioning in the speech. I sent a copy to Taylor Clarke the morning of the speech, and wore the Duke National Championship t-shirt she gave me as I delivered the speech (an interesting sentence if you interpret the order in which I’ve used modifiers). A few weeks before, I had been invited to Lisa Bonarrigo’s graduation party, so I was feeling a connectedness there.

I wish Bo had the chance to speak.

But what about everyone else who has given me inspiration? What about all those students from the class of 2001 who gave so much to me – the Narissa Changs, Katie Slemps, Brad Liptons, Jeremy Krinsleys, Matt Dorias, Mike Westfals, Melanie Chuens, Caroline Crosses…the list goes on? Emily Jones, anyone? What about all the Courant people who have kept in touch – Katie Stinchfield, Molly Carroll, Neal Suidan, Sara Sorcher, Dan Duray, Leigh Kiniry, Christine Friar? Or the ones who are still in college, like pretty much everyone from the Class of 2008 staff, much less the guys from the class of 2008 basketball team? Or Erika, Ginny and Melissa? What about the Hughes family, or the Fagers, or the Sissons? Or the Adam Markiewiczes and Kelly Budrawiches, whose minds have a certain creative genius that didn’t lend itself well to achieving in high school? Just because the name isn’t here doesn’t mean I can’t point to a specific moment as a gift from that person.

And then there are all the people who have overcome adversity, who I won’t name just because I don’t know if their adversity is anyone’s business.

And the teachers who came before me – can you say Mary Smith? She’s at the top of a list that has its share of math teachers and science teachers who were creating and rethinking even thirty five years into their careers.

It’s crazy, man, what I had to leave out. I could give so many names, so many moments. Even here, by naming names, I’ve left out others that I think of on a regular basis. It’s nice to have a job that doesn’t allow you to adequately recognize all the individuals who have inspired you.

I have one last thing to say before I complete this really incomplete thing. Andrew Leslie.

NCHS Graduation Speech

Good evening, family, friends and distinguished guests, all who have come to share this celebration with the most important people here, the Class of 2010.

Clearly, nobody thought about the implications of giving me a microphone and a month to prepare a speech. So much to say, so much to say. But don’t worry: at the intermission to my speech, vendors will be selling cold drinks and mist fans.

The truth be told, Mr. Pavia has me on the clock, his finger on a remote control that will spring a trap door beneath the podium should I exceed my time.

I blame the young people sitting to my left and my right for my problem, for giving me so much to say, but so little time to say it.

If any of you in this audience have heard rumors about America going to Hell in a handbasket, whatever that means, let me introduce you to the New Canaan High School Class of 2010. If you want to see why there is cause for joy in the world, you should spend a few days in my shoes. I have been inspired daily by these people, and the students who have preceded them; inspired to new thoughts, inspired to take action, inspired to emotions that defy description. And that, my friends, is what I want to talk about today: inspiration and the beauty, the power, of the choice to live the inspired life.

Ah yes, it was a warm May morning, and the nature of this inspiration was revealed to me through Shakespeare’s words as I lingered in Artmageddon, the Senior Art Show. Over and over again, through photography, ceramics, sculpture, painting, I felt that I was bearing witness to Shakespeare called “a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make his love known.” And I thought, that’s where inspiration comes from: from people who have a heart to love, and the courage to make their love known.

Don’t go and google this quote, because the actual context of the words, well, it isn’t pretty. They’re found in Act 2, Scene 3 of Macbeth. Macbeth has just murdered the guards who failed to protect the slain King Duncan, and he is browbeating his fellow nobles with the force of his words. Peer pressure, man. That’s not good.

What is good is finding beauty and truth in little things. Inspiration needn’t be epic, needn’t be accompanied by flashes of light and stentorian voices from the heavens. In fact, it is best served in small helpings, because snacking daily on inspiration will help you develop the habit of being inspired.

Back to Artmageddon. I’m walking through the gallery, and I stop to enjoy Clare Ashforth’s pottery. And while I’m admiring her work, I remember a moment from six or seven years ago, when Clare had a drawing in the district calendar. I was distributing the calendars in my sophomore English class, and there, Clare’s sister Megan said something – I forget exactly what – that was just dripping with sisterly love and pride.

Now I have two girls, Emma and Katie, and there are moments, when they’re playing together or helping each other, and there’s such joy there, that I get flooded with this emotion that I can’t explain. Well, Clare’s art, and the memory of what her sister said, inspired me to that emotion. When you let that happen to you, when you’re overwhelmed with happiness for no apparent reason, you want to be inspired to that moment again. So you learn to keep your eyes, and your heart, open.

Here’s another senior moment: You may have seen the photo in the Advertiser, Dolly Meckler’s homage to Annie Leibovitz’s iconic Vanity Fair cover. I’m looking at it, but pretty quickly I start to see beyond the image, beyond the staging and execution of the shot. I see ten young women who made the time to commit themselves to the fulfillment of a friend’s artistic vision. And what, really, is an art exhibit, or a theatrical performance, or a game, other than a collection of hearts that love a thing greater than themselves – form, principle, beauty – and have in their willingness to participate, perform, present and play the courage to make their love known?

Let me get off names, or this really will take forever. In the last ten months, one hundred and ten of you seniors were forced to sit in classrooms where I was allegedly teaching. And one hundred and ten of you produced original work for public consumption, whether you wrote something for the Courant or Courant online; or you performed poetry in front of the class; or you posted a poem or a project in the school hallways; or you used sidewalk chalk in the open air (sorry about all that unauthorized poetry, Mr. Pavia).

Yes, I was witness to a lot of displays of inspiring work, of the courage that made your loves known. But truthfully, I find the most inspiration from a different, less visible kind of courage. Every day, young men and women walk through the doors of this school carrying burdens none of us can see – a lost loved one, the disequilibrium caused by divorce or separation of parents, an internalized inability to meet very high expectations. These are things that can appear to others as if they happened at some point in your lives, but to you they’re happening every day.

I had my challenges growing up. No one had more of a heart to love than my mother, but there were five of us and only one of her. And I could have done better with things than I did, but I lacked a certain amount of courage. So when I, as a teacher, read what some of you write about the things you carry, listen as you talk about things I never could when I was your age, watch as you walk with such dignity, such grace; I am moved. You inspire me to constantly try to be a better man, to find in my heart the same courage.

Why should I be surprised? You are lucky to be nurtured by a community that doesn’t suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune lying down. Just look at the inspiring work done by the Fetchet family with Voices of 9/11. At the book, Messages: Signs, Visits and Premonitions by Loved Ones Lost on 9/11, by Bonnie McEneaney. At the Red Out here this past April when Kenny Slattery, class of two thousand eight, ran the Boston Marathon to raise money for the Joseph Kelly Heilbron Foundation. At the community response to Miles for Mikey to support the Mikey Czech Foundation.

But you needn’t look only at these demonstrations of strength and action in the face of tragedy to find inspiration from your community. You have been raised in a community where being a citizen matters, in a community so civically responsible that it supports two local newspapers and three news websites, while all around the country newspapers are shutting down or scaling back. Your parents open the doors of their workplaces to provide students here with best learning experiences they could possibly imagine. And post-prom is one of the best examples you could ever find of total community involvement in the well-being of its young people. These, my friends, are examples of hearts that love, that have in those hearts the courage to make their love known.

One last thing, a little closer to what it is that I do here. You’ve heard about Tom Smith today, but consider his story from the perspective of a teacher. In his last year of teaching, rather than cruising into retirement by teaching all the old familiar courses, Tom takes on a new, high-stakes course: Yearbook, the class whose product is the most enduring tangible thing a high school produces. The design, planning and resultant work probably take up more of his time than all his other courses combined. In his last year of teaching!

Tell me, is this not a heart to love, and in that heart the courage to make his love known? If, as a colleague of Tom’s, I’m not inspired to embrace new challenges myself, no matter how much experience I have, then those EMTs over there better sprint over here and check my pulse, make sure I have a heart, see if there’s any courage in there.

I can feel the ground shifting beneath my feet, can sense Mr. Pavia’s finger on that remote. The time for words is over. So here’s the thing: if you commit yourself to seeking Inspiration, you will always find it. It will never let you down. All you need, and all I wish for all of you to find within yourselves, is a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make your love known. Thank you.