WHS Commencement Address, 2013

It's graduation season again! Wauconda High School's Commencement was Sunday afternoon and we just finished the Wauconda Middle School / Matthews Middle School Promotion ceremony tonight. Once again I had the privilege of addressing both groups to offer my take on what it means to move on to the next level. The High School address is posted below. The middle school address was a recycle of one from two years ago.  I had a speech for them pretty much ready to go this weekend, focusing on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. But after reading it through again, I decided it was probably too dark a topic for middle schoolers and their parents. I did include the 50th anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak in the same speech, but that didn't really lighten it up much. So at the last minute I punted and went back to the 2011 address. Probably the right thing to do. If the parents are crying at graduation, it should mostly be because they are happy, not sad. And the grandparents at the ceremony wouldn't be listening anymore, just thinking about where they were and what they were doing when Kennedy was shot. Which is what I did when I realized that it was fifty years ago this year.  So, enjoy the high school speech. If you have a topic for me for next year, let me know. I depend on Ann to think up topics for me now. This idea was hers. Although it was my idea to use a quote from Judy Garland, which may be a first for graduation speeches. And for the people in charge of graduation, their only requirement is that it not go too far past five minutes.  Nailed it!   

Commencement Address

May 18,2013

Wauconda High School

John Armstrong

Parents, friends, faculty, and members of the graduating class of 2013:

On behalf of the District 118 School Board, I welcome you to the 97th annual commencement of Wauconda High School.

The American writer Ambrose Bierce loved definitions. He said an egotist is someone who is more interested in himself than in me. And an acquaintance is someone you know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to.

If you are a math geek as I am or a math teacher as I was for a long time, the notion of a definition is a very important concept. For example, we all know what a square is: a four sided figure with equal sides and four right angles, but different geometry books use different definitions. You could define it as a rhombus with a right angle or as a rectangle with adjacent sides equal. I don’t know if anyone ever asked a square what definition it wanted, but that is what I would like to ask you about yourself today. All through grade school, middle school, and high school, you have been defined, often by other people. You may have been the arty one, or the jock, or the math geek. You may be defined by some action good or bad that you did in school: you may have been the person who did so well in the school musical, or you may be the person who accidentally kicked the ball in his own goal during the playoffs. Those definitions have been attached to you for some time by your family or your friends, or maybe by people that weren’t as friendly as they could have been. But starting today, you move into a new phase in your life and the question I have for you is, “How do you want to define yourself?” 

I have a good friend who makes her living as an artist. She has described to me how in her early art classes, the students would go to a museum and draw a copy of another artist’s work. It was a way for them to learn the techniques of the masters. As she grew in her art, she began to develop her own style, but she still does copies from time to time. “Sometimes,” she says, “I just hope some of their magic rubs off on me.” But in order to sell her work, she has to be able to be herself as an artist, with her own perspective and her own approach to painting.

We live our early lives like that as well. We see another person who is interesting or popular and we think that we could be like that too. We adopt his or her mannerisms or speech patterns and try very hard to be them. And we generally find that it doesn’t work.  I found that when I started teaching. I would be invited to sit in on another teacher’s class. But when I tried to teach the way they did, it usually didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. That’s not to say that we don’t adopt qualities from others we admire. I learned from watching other teachers that I could be more supportive, more understanding of failures, and more patient in my listening. But, just as my artist friend did, I needed to find a way to implement those traits in a style that was authentic to me and not just copies of them.

That well known philosopher Judy Garland said, “Always be a first rate version of yourself, instead of a second rate version of somebody else.”

If you are a parent, one of the most disheartening things to deal with is when your child is bullied. There are few things that make you feel more powerless as a parent. Our school district, through its adoption of PBIS (Positive Based Interventions and Supports) is attempting to reduce the amount of bullying by changing the school climate and by educating students on how to deal with it when it happens. A bully is all about defining who you are. As an adolescent, when you’re not sure yourself who you are, a bully can have a lot of influence on how you see yourself. We hope as parents we can instill in our children the words of Robert Frost, “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”

As you move into the next stage of your life, you will have opportunities to decide how you want your life to unfold. What qualities will people remember in you? What traits will other people want to emulate? What defines you? I hope you take time as you move on to reflect about why you are the way you are. Is it a choice that you are making? Or are you being defined by someone else?

Mushalam Zusya was a very influential rabbi in Poland in the late 1700’s. The story is told that while on his deathbed, a student asked him, "Rabbi, what worries you about your death? Surely you will be welcomed into the gates of heaven."

The rabbi sighed. "My son, I am not worried that God will ask me, ‘Zusya, why weren't you more like Moses?'  I am worried that God will ask, ‘Zusya, why weren't you more like Zusya?'"

We get sidetracked sometimes from being the best that we can be when we try to be somebody else or try to be what somebody else wants. Congratulations on completing this stage of your life and I hope that the rest of your life will be whatever you define it to be.

Thank you.