Last year, after working with Lily, our school's speech and debate coach, I wrote a culmination speech for the class of 2015. We were using speech and debate guidelines and I like to model what I ask my students to do, so when we introduced the speaker competition this year, I started writing another sample. But I kept getting stuck. But when our eighth grade field day lined up with a shooting at UCLA landing my students and I in lockdown for hours, I sat down to write again.I shared this with our speakers, and Lily paved the way for me to deliver this speech at our graduation. I wrote a graduation speech in 1988, when I graduated from eighth grade, but my speech wasn't chosen. This was my first opportunity to speak at a culmination and it was an honor to share the stage with our graduates.
To our students
in the class of 2016,
I have been
trying to write this letter to you for the last couple of months. I’ve started
drafts, finished some, and even shared one with some of you, but here I am, once again,
thinking about how to put our year into words.
What is the
story of our year together?
At first I
thought about writing about feminism, because this year more than any other, we
have fierce young women who speak truth to power, and I have some
young men who have learned about misogyny, privilege, and prejudice, and hopefully have thought
about how to be advocates for justice. I thought about
our study of refugees from World War II and the Vietnam War and the current
refugee crisis. I thought about
Black History Month and what you taught me about what it means to be an ally. And I thought
about Harper Lee’s death and how with her passing we lost a mockingbird who
used her voice to give us the story of Scout, Jem, Dill, Atticus, Boo Radley,
and Tom Robinson. I thought about all
of the poetry you penned where so many of you found your voice leaving me in
awe.
I am writing
about all of this, but I’m also writing a new story because now we had field day together.
This year’s
field day is a day I will always remember. It was a day when all the work we’ve
done together diminished in the face of a crisis.
As we sat
together in silence, I called each of
your names, or I skimmed
over your name
if you weren’t
on the trip with us, and in the quiet
of that room, where the
tension was still thick with not knowing, I wanted to say
your names over and over again. I wanted to see
each and every one of you. I wanted to hold
each of you close and tell you that you were safe, and that I loved you, and
your family loved you. And even though I couldn’t say it with 100% certainty, I wanted to tell
you everything would be okay.
Instead, I
simply called your names and hoped.
But that night,
after field day, from the safety of my home, I realized we have shared
something: we have shared the space of fear and it reminded me
of Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien who wrote about truth
and storytelling in The Things They
Carried. He wrote, “By telling stories, you objectify your own experience.
You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others.”
And I think that
is why it has been so hard to tell the story of this year because there is so much
we have carried together. It is many stories and many truths. We have mourned
Johnny and Dally in The Outsiders,
and Ha’s Papaya Tree in Inside Out and
Back Again. In To Kill A Mockingbird, we grieved for Tom
Robinson and for Scout’s innocence as she stood on the Radley porch on
Halloween night.
But more than
just reading stories, we shared our own, in essays about poverty and taking a
stand and in novels about friendship, family, immigration, and struggle. You
have been funny, sentimental, ironic, and profound, and all of these stories
have been ours.
Now we have a
new story to tell. A shared story. And as each of
you leaves for high school, college, and ... life, so many more stories will
unfold for you: stories of perseverance and triumph, love and growth, and
sometimes fear and death.
Nigerian author
Chimamanda Adichie says, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem
with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.
They make one story, the only story. Stories matter. Many stories matter.”
So, as I send
you off, as we read your names again, this time in a space of celebration, I
hope you will tell your story. I hope you will
share your truth. I hope you will share your many stories because your
story matters. All of your
stories matter.
I hope you will use
the voice you found this year and that you will sing because the world needs to
hear from you. You are our
mockingbirds and the world
needs your stories.
Tim O’Brien also
says, “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, and hope
that others might then dream it along with you.” Keep dreaming
and your story will follow.
