I think because I was standing in the library with my 7th grade class watching the Challenger shuttle when it blew up, it has bothered me more than most disasters, even to this day. It was supposed to be such a glorious event, the first teacher in space, but it jarred all of us who were watching. It made this a difficult speech to get through. But it was well received by the audience, and I even got a couple of laughs from the kids.
Commencement Address
May 22, 2016
Wauconda High
School
John Armstrong
Parents, friends, faculty, and members of the fraduating class of 2016:
On behalf of the
District 118 School Board, I am pleased to welcome
you to the 100th
annual commencement of Wauconda High School.
I was standing in the
hallway outside the auditorium at Wauconda High School after Honors Night a few
weeks ago, when I was approached by Mr. Roy, one of the school counselors. He
told me he hoped that my graduation speech was funny, because he enjoyed them
more when they were. I know the Board of Education agrees with him and probably
most of the rest of you would as well.
So I was thinking about
jokes I could tell, but I realized that after teaching high school math for
many years, a lot of the jokes I knew were math jokes. Like, when I grew up, I
lived out in the country surrounded by farms and one day my Dad and I were
leaning on the fence talking to my neighbor and my Dad asked him how many cows
he had now. And the neighbor said it all depended on where they were. We didn’t
understand that at all and asked him to explain and he said, “Well, if they are
out in the field there are 196, but when I round them up, there are 200.”
And then I realized that
maybe because I grew up in farm country, that a lot of the jokes I knew were
about cows. Like two cows are standing out in the field and one of them says, “Did
you hear there was another outbreak of mad cow disease going around?” And the
other cow says, “Good thing I’m a helicopter.” And then I thought maybe I’ll
just save the jokes for someone else.
There are certain events
that are so traumatic on a national level that people automatically remember
where they were when they happened. I was in the hallway outside Mr. Martindale’s
Social Studies classroom when I heard over the loudspeaker that JFK had been
shot. And I was in my own classroom when I heard about the 9/11 attacks on the
World Trade Center in New York. And lately I’ve been thinking about another
such incident because we just passed the 30th anniversary. Partly
because I am such a math/science geek, but primarily because I grew up 10 miles
from where Neil Armstrong grew up, I have always been fascinated by the NASA
Space missions. It was even more exciting when, in 1984, in my 10th
year of teaching, Ronald Reagan announced the Teacher in Space program. NASA
wanted to find an ordinary person, a teacher, to be the first civilian in
space. More than 11,000 of us applied for the job. In 1985, Christa MacAuliffe
from Concord High School in New Hampshire was selected. And in January of 1986,
she boarded the space shuttle Challenger with six other crew members. I was
standing behind my 7th grade math class in a junior high school
library watching the TV as Challenger lifted off. In the library was a poster
some of the older folks here today may remember – it had a picture of Christa
MacAuliffe in her space suit and the words, “I touch the future – I teach.”
Most of my life, as a child and an adult, has been spent in schools, on one
side of the teacher’s desk or the other, so it is not a surprise that all of
these events occurred while I was in a school. And those words “I touch the
future – I teach” had a huge impact on me as a young teacher. And I would guess
that the teachers sitting beside you today take that message to heart as well.
I would like you to give some thought to that message as well.
There was a time a few years
ago that I would not have encouraged a young person to give some thought to
teaching. The ideas and procedures of No Child Left Behind were guaranteed to
steal the heart and soul out of good teachers. The thought that all that was expected
of you by those outside of teaching was to teach your students to do well on
the state tests seemed to be a mockery of Christa MacAuliffe’s phrase “I touch
the future – I teach.” But in recent years, things have started to turn around
somewhat.
Now, I know that many of you
have a specific career in mind right now. You may want to be an engineer or a
physical therapist, a finance person or a dentist, a soldier or an entrepreneur.
And those are all worthwhile careers. But one of the things we know now is that
careers don’t tend to last as long as they used to. The fraction of the work
force that stays in one career for 45 years, and then retires is significantly
smaller than it used to be. A large percentage of employees are going back to a
community college in their thirties, forties, and even fifties to be retrained
for a new career.
And so, it may be that, 20
years from now, you may find the prospect of getting a teaching certificate is
intriguing. I hope that you give that some serious thought. You have a lot of
good role models sitting near you today. And if you become a math teacher, you
may get to hear what I heard from a 7th grade student, “Mr.
Armstrong, Do you know what Zero said to Eight? Nice belt.”
Thank you for listening and
congratulations on reaching this milestone in your life.
