Culmination Address for the Class of 2018

Each year I write an original oratory in the style of a graduation speech for my students. Here is this year's version. 

What Will You Do Now? 

Now: a family car ride. 

Yesterday, I was stuck in traffic. You know what that’s like. I was trying to get my kids home from swim lessons after a long day. We were tired and traffic was West LA-horrific. I was seeking out some magic path to get us home a little faster while Gabe screamed from the back seat, “Go, cars, go!” and Kiara complained about “Too many people.” I was anxious to get us home, but took a deep breath, knowing we would have to wait it out. I could’ve complained along with them, honked the horn, or continued to find another way. Or we could sing along to “Un Poco Loco” with the windows down. We could do our best to enjoy the drive.

Time is a strange thing. I remember when you all were in the sixth grade. You were smaller then, and your eyes hadn’t yet seen many of the things they’ve seen now. The world seemed different, then: a little bit simpler, a little less divided, a little less complicated.

Now, three years later, I have had the chance to teach and coach many of you, to read your stories, essays, novels and poetry, and you have three years of learning from teachers, time with friends on field trips and in classrooms. But what will you remember most?

Author Ruth Ozeki in her novel, A Tale for the Time Being writes, “I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.”

That is what I’m thinking about today.  How we can cherish memories of middle school, or moments stuck in traffic with my young children, knowing their beauty will quickly fade away? How can we find peace in the moment and still hold our memories close?

Ozeki also writes, “In the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then.” Now. Now. Now. Three moments just passed from now to then, and with each breath, each now, our lives are transformed into memories.

In all of these nows, how can we make the most of our lives? Do we procrastinate by playing video games or scrolling through an endless Instagram feed? Do we go for a run, shoot a few extra shots, rehearse that speech a couple more times? Do we put finishing touches on a project before it is due or buckle down to study for a test?

The answer: I don’t know. That is up to you. Your nows, all of the moments of your life, are yours. Hopefully you used a few of those nows to think about who you are, what you believe and love, and what truly makes you happy. Not what pleases your parents or teachers or friends, but what will you give you joy in the end.

Steve Jobs says, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

I hope that is something you spend your nows doing, because that is something I have learned from all of you. I love the Class of 2018 because you come from so many different perspectives, so many different experiences and there is no way I could tell any of you how to live your lives. The only life I can live is my own.

Charles Bukowski says, “Your life is your life/know it while you have it./You are marvelous/the gods wait to delight in you.”

Culmination Address for the Class of 2015

"Make each day your masterpiece."
Coach Wooden and the Class of 2015

Over the past couple of years, a dedicated teacher at my school has founded and grown an award-winning speech and debate team. This year, she and I worked together to select speakers for our eighth grade graduation using the speech and debate guidelines for writing an Original Oratory. I have been awed whenever I hear these students speak and prepare for competition, and after seeing the expectations for this particular speech competition, I decided to try to write one as well. I haven't made an attempt at a graduation speech since I was in eighth grade, so it was an interesting exercise. I read it to my students this past week because they all helped me through a difficult time in my life. They have, and so have you, so I thought I'd share it here as well.

Today

Just over a year ago my mom underwent surgery. It was eighth grade field day and I received text updates from my sister as I watched my students soaking in the sun and pools. I stood with my feet in the grass enjoying a few final hours with these students, but my mind often drifted to my mom, hoping for the best.

Over the next few days, Mom’s condition worsened so I flew up to Oregon to be with her and for the first time in fifteen years, I missed Emerson’s graduation. I sat in a cold hospital room while my students crossed the stage, making their way out of my classroom and into the world.

That is when I began months of missing, missing the students I never said goodbye to, and missing my mom who never recovered and crossed over a few days later. In these months of missing, I lived in the memories of the past. I remembered many moments with my students from the school year, and I remembered a lifetime of moments with my mom.

I was still remembering and missing when this school year began. My drive home was always the hardest part of my day. I used to call my mom each day as I drove home and as I navigated the busy LA streets, those streets bore witness to many tender moments of grief. At school, I missed the familiarity of my former students and thought of them as they started at high schools all over the city, hoping only for the absolute best for all of them.

But as the days and weeks passed, as summer gave way to fall, I started to move into the present. Instead of grieving for my mom as I drove home from work I began to think about what she might say to me today. As I got to know my new students, they brought with them joy, curiosity, and new stories to share.

Great American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”

I needed these words to remind me to let go of all my yesterdays and begin again to live: today. I needed these words to help me remember my mom and my former students, to allow them to continue to teach me, but I needed to stay grounded in the present, to be here: today.

Emerson also says, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

Today this might be easier to do than every other day because today is your graduation. Today we celebrate all you have accomplished; all of your hard work and perseverance but isn’t that what every day is? Hasn’t every today been built on all of the hard work of every day that came before?

Yes. I am the sum of all of my days, as are you, but I will try to let go of yesterday and live in today, in the present, in the moment, with you, the people who with me share these days, these experiences, these moments.

While I was with my mom in her final days, I read Ruth Ozeki’s novel, A Tale for the Time Being. In it one of the narrators states: “A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

My mom was a time being and because she continues to be with me, she is forever one of my time beings. You, every one of you, is a time being, as are all of my students from last year and the year before that. You are all my time beings as are all of my students yet to come.

So as you cross this stage and graduate into a new chapter in your life, I urge you to live each day. Let go of yesterday, be done with it, and make space in today for all of your time beings. Stay present in your life. Remember the past, learn from it, and then let it go. Coach John Wooden says, “Make each day your masterpiece.” I cannot wait to see what you create in your lifetime of todays.

Books! Books! Books! Ten more titles for 2014

I'm still behind in my reading, but here are the next ten titles I've finished this year. I sought out more writers of color and allowed myself time to read longer, denser works like Invisible Man, Americanah and A Tale for the Time Being. If you missed my first ten titles you can read about them here.

11. Girl Coming in for a Landing by April Halpern Wayland 

This novel in verse about a young girl coming of age verse is a little slight for me. Isn’t as inspiring as I find some novels in verse to be (Sonya Sones).

12. Educating Esme by Esme Codell 

This memoir of a woman’s first year teaching brought some inspiration, but like most education memoirs, they establish the teacher as an educational savior, the only shining light in a dark system, which is such a simplistic way of looking at this practice. Kind of inspiring, but mostly annoying.

13. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 

An exhausting, devastating account of a young Black man finding his place in a shifting post civil war, pre-civil rights America. From the battle royal at the opening, through college and the mental hospital, to the northern city where labor and political organizing provide opportunities and devastation, the narrator plods on until we no longer see him.

14. Divergent by Veronica Roth 

I saw the preview for movie based on this book when I went to see The Book Thief and was intrigued. Then all of my students started reading it and insisted I join them. Dystopian YA is fun and it made me wish I’d finished my NaNoWriMo project from a few years back.  

15. Marbles by Ellen Forney 

A friend lent this to me to help me along my 50 book mission and I read it as the Trail Blazers were getting worked in the playoffs. It allowed me to trace through my sister’s journey to a bi-polar diagonsis. The connections between creativity, artistry, and mood disorders hit home with me as did the graphic novel-ness of it which captures in visuals a complex and inexplicable experience. 

16. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

This one took me a while, not because it wasn’t engaging, but Adichie’s other book took me about six months to finish, so taking a month for this one isn’t all that bad. I loved the conversations about race and the contemporary feel including the blogs and the way Obama’s candidacy and election did something unique for communities of color. Her modern Nigeria feels so distant from the one I read about in Half of a Yellow Sun and Adichie captures the feeling of belonging and not belonging that immigrants and Americans of color experience. 

17. My Ideal Bookshelf edited by Thessaly La Force, art by Jane Mount Really 

This is more of a coffee table book, a conversation piece, and it’s beautiful but it also has its limits. I kind of hate the pretention of lists like this and James Franco’s list exhibits this perfectly: these are the books that are acceptable as my favorites. So, I found connection with some of the lists and annoyance with others and plan to put together a list of my own every year to show how my tastes and pov change over time. 

18. The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward 

I read this on board my flight to Portland as the complications with Mom’s surgery piled up. These stories of young men in Mississippi who find death too young brought me comfort during a time of intense uncertainty. Ward’s ability to capture place and character leave me in awe. She does fiction (Salvage the Bones) and nonfiction equally well.

19. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki 

Loved this book which alternated povs between the diary of a Japanese girl who spent a good deal of time in the US, and a third person close of Ruth. She masterfully unfolds the journeys of both characters and works in all kinds of science and philosophy. It actually made me want to meditate, and study Japanese again. 

20. The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu 

I enjoyed the first two essays in these Notes from a Native Speaker, and maybe if I was Nissei, second generation, I would have related more, or if I was a guy. His perspective is definitely one of male power (as a speech writer for Clinton he definitely occupies influential spaces) but by his last few essays on New Jews and Blood Ties I’d grown weary of his perspective and found fault in some of his strategies.

I'm almost halfway to 50 and hope to have my next ten titles up at the start of September.