for the Class of 2025

 I don't know how the world conspires to do this, but this year's eighth grade class of 2025 was the exact group of students I needed. After a seventh grade year that was tough on all of us, this eighth grade group walked into my classroom, day after day, with a lightness and kindess I will always remember. Here is my speech for this year's special class of students. 

The ESA boys who, according to a classmate, cannot be trusted.

to the class of 2025, 

Congrats on your commencement, your new beginning. My question today is how do we start all over? For me at age 51, for you at 13/14, how do we wake up each morning and step into the world with all of its chaos and beauty? How do we say, okay, Day, okay. With each day, how do we make the decision to begin again? 

Kendrick Lamar says, “I can feel a new life. I always knew life could be dangerous.” Can we remember this each day, that despite the danger, we can begin again and say, Okay day. Okay. 

In those years during and after COVID, we kept going. We woke up and marched into days teeming with the unknown. We struggled to connect, survive, and eventually we re-learned how be in the world. It was brave then to reconnect, and it continues to be courageous now, to wake up, to step into each day. To begin again.  

With every beginning, with each choice we decide who we are and what we want from life. Will I eat breakfast? Do my homework? Go to school? Say good morning? Embrace gratitude? Breathe deeply? 

Each moment is a choice, a possibility, an opportunity. Poet Mary Oliver says in her poem “Moments” “there are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like telling someone you love them. Or giving away your money, all of it.” 

How will we fulfill our moments? How will we be brave enough to step into the big ones, to say, “I love you” and to love ourselves enough to choose the life we want. With each decision we piece together who we are, and at the end of each day, as we tuck ourselves in to bed, can we live with the decisions we made? Did we make the right choices? Did we step toward the version of ourselves we want to be?

Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran says, “March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.” 

So today, I urge you forward. Every step might not be glorious. Some steps will be painful. Others will lead to hardship or heartbre
ak, but I hope you, class of 2025, will say, “Okay, Day, okay,” and march into each moment knowing that you are making a more perfect version of yourself with every single day.