Graduation Remarks
May 27, 2011
St. Andrew's Episcopal School Students, Faculty and Staff, Parents, Alumni, Friends, and, most especially, members of the Class of 2011 and their families: Good morning and welcome to the 47th St. Andrew's Episcopal School Promotion Exercises and the third 8th Grade Graduation.
Clara, Pierce, and Grayton--Today is about many things. Today, we celebrate the culmination of the 2010-2011 school year, of all that we have accomplished as a school and as a community. Today, we promote 163 St. Andrew's students from Pre-Kindergarten all the way through 7th Grade. Today, we transition from today to tomorrow and begin to envision what 2011-2012 will bring, our same beloved school but with approximately 15 more students than at present, with new faculty, new programs, and the promise of a new field turf and renovated playground area.
Today is indeed about all of these things, but more than anything else, it is about you. It is about your courage and steadfastness to enter and complete your final year of Elementary and Middle School education as a vital component of a unit of three.
What conviction you and your families placed in the St. Andrew's community, to experience your senior year here at St. Andrew's as one third of our triangular core, the St. Andrew's Class of 2011. Triangular--your teachers, and especially your math teacher Mrs. Newman, must agree--that some days you were Isosceles, other days Obtuse, and on your finest days, Equilateral. No matter your precise dimensions, disposition, or distribution, you were and are a
unit. Three sides, three unique individuals, each dependent on the other to strive and succeed here at St. Andrew's.
Consider the alternatives--A class of one? Well, that wouldn't be much fun. Of two? Far too linear for you. Four? That would be square...which you are not. No, three, is your and our perfect number.
Clara, you joined this community four years ago as a 5th Grade student, and you have blossomed into a thoughtful, articulate, and mature leader at St. Andrew's, having earned the prestigious Presidents' Scholarship at De La Salle High School. Grayton, in just two remarkable years at St. Andrew's, you have become a confident, kind, creative Student Council President, and you have earned a competitive spot in the inaugural full-time class at NOCCA. And Pierce, in your two years at St. Andrew's you have grown tremendously, maturing into the analytical and intelligent navigator I got to know on our trip to Washington, DC and someone who will go on to wonderful success at Country Day, I am sure.
As I ponder your careers over the past several years at St. Andrew's, it is striking to me what turbulent and rapidly-changing times form the backdrop of your St. Andrew's education. Never mind the significant enrollment, faculty, leadership, facilities, and programmatic changes you have experienced during your time at St. Andrew's.
Instead, consider the host of historic events, national and global, you have witnessed of late, and then let us all ponder what it must be like to be an adolescent in 2011.
Looking back just four years, our graduates have known their country at war in two foreign countries, under continued heightened domestic alert in a post-9/11 era; they witnessed the launch of the iphone and the now ubiquitous impact of smartphone technology, texting, and instant everything; they were just 6th graders during the onset of the Great Recession and the associated stock market crash and global financial crisis; U.S. unemployment hovering just under 10% has been the norm during their time at St. Andrew's; domestic and international debt crises; the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill; the triumphant Saints season of 2009; devastating natural disasters in Haiti, Japan, and now the southern and Midwestern states of the U.S.; a precariously rising Mississippi River; conflict and violence in the Middle East continued for much of their St. Andrew's era, though they were struck, as all of us have been, by the recent Arab Spring of protests, of a largely peaceful revolution, and demand for democracy and freedom in North Africa and the Middle East. They were sixth graders during the historic election of Barack Obama, and they enter their high school years delightfully accustomed to a 21st Century reality of a multi-racial and multi-cultural president of the United States.
What must it be like to be an adolescent in 2011? How to make sense of these remarkable events of late, and to discern one's place in the world?
I offer that perhaps it is in many ways as similar to what it must have been like as an American adolescent in 1776, or 1861, or 1929, or 1941, or 1968. Of course, in other ways, it is very different--more perplexing, more unsettling, more dynamic and, yes, more exciting, simply because of the unprecedented ubiquity of information--through media outlets, satellite television, cellular communication, and the internet--and because of the mind-boggling pace of change, politically, socially, economically, and environmentally.
Amidst this domestic and global backdrop, for four years or for two years, Clara, Pierce, and Grayton attended St. Andrew's, sitting through hundreds of Morning Exercises, scores of Eucharist services, and thousands of lessons, discussions, experiments, performances, and athletic contests, all in the steady, nurturing, and loving environment of St. Andrew's.
Pat Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools and a prognosticator of 21st Century educational paradigms, acknowledges the drastic differences and challenges our children will face in their lifetimes, and he offers the following key characteristics for a successful school in 2011 and beyond. Mr. Bassett frames the essential 21st Century skills into what he calls "the Five Cs":
Number One: Character: Students must possess honor and integrity; empathy and care; respect, responsibility, reverence, resilience, and self-discipline. Young people in this century must possess a growth mindset, not a static one; they must be persistent and be persons of courage. Let's face it: The 21st Century is complicated, it's rich with data and with choices, and we must arm our young people with the tools, and the spines, I would argue, to make the right choices in their lives. They must act with character, even when no one is watching.
Number Two: Creativity. Mr. Basset, Daniel Pink, and many other analysts have argued that so-called "right-brained" individuals, those who intuitively think imaginatively, divergently, creatively, and with empathy--those with high Emotional Quotients, or EQs, will rule the 21st Century. So-called "Left-Brained" thinkers, those more naturally logical, linear, convergent, and analytical, our high Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, students, are so 20th Century, the thinking goes. Personally, I'm a bit skeptical of this, as I know the 21st Century will still require engineers, scientists, and, yes, some analytical lawyers, but it's an interesting concept, nonetheless.
Number Three: Critical thinking skills, via real-world problem-solving on a local, national, and global stage. The ability to analyze, filter, and synthesize complex and high-volume data; project-based, not text-based learning; to extract the concrete from the abstract; these are the types thinking skills that will be required in years to come.
Number Four: Communication skills, especially public speaking, and, I would add, written communication. Now, thanks to the ubiquity of e-mail and text messaging, individuals with poor writing skills are exposed in school and in the workplace more gravely than ever before. I would add to this section the ability to communicate orally in at least one foreign language--and with apologies to our Francophiles here in New Orleans, I would personally suggest either Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, or Arabic as a foreign language of choice.
Finally, Number Five: Collaboration: Teamwork, the ability to compromise, to relate to individuals different from you in geography, race, socioeconomic background, religion, or political persuasion. We know our world is shrinking and that with each passing generation, a larger percentage of young people will either live or work overseas, or at least be part of an organization with a global mission.
An interesting collection, these Five Cs. Provocative, forward-looking, yet reassuringly familiar to those of us who teach and learn here at St. Andrew's.
Clara, Pierce, and Grayton: Here is your last examination at St. Andrew's: Were you taught the importance of Character here at St. Andrew's? Were you encouraged to think and act Creatively? Did you develop Critical Thinking Skills? Did you Communicate, verbally, in writing, in English, Spanish, and Chinese? Finally, did you Collaborate, with each other, with younger students, students different from you, and with your teachers? I hope you would answer yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes, to these five essential questions.
But let us not get too high on ourselves. Today, after all, is a Commencement, a beginning, and you all still have a ways to go. I look forward to knowing you as high school, college, and perhaps as graduate students, and finally as adults in our 21st Century world. That world will be a better place for having you in it, and I like to think that St. Andrew's will have played some role in that contribution.
Well, in just one year I have exceeded my previous Graduation Remarks word count by 464 words, a 44% increase and a most disturbing development, especially for our students and families present from the Class of 2018.
Thank you to everyone who supports St. Andrew's--students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, and friends--have a wonderful summer and may God bless you all. Will you please stand and join me in singing the School's Alma Mater?