Honoring the Class of 2020

Hello Everyone,

 

I hope you are having a wonderful start to the summer.  We are still wrapping up the year here at school, but soon things will settle down a bit, allowing us to do some big picture thinking, which I always love.

 

Last week was a busy time with ceremonies in both the middle and lower schools, as well as the senior honoring and, of course, graduation.  Through it all, I saw multiple examples of how much students have grown and also of how connected they are to the faculty and to one another.

 

Having a child graduating from middle school made it a particularly meaningful time of year for me because I got to see up close what a transformational effect the middle school teachers have had on my son and how important it is for our kids to feel valued by their teachers.  As I spoke to the eighth graders, I worked hard to keep it together, and I made it through!  I’m including my remarks below in case you were not able to make the Moving Up Day ceremony.  Hopefully, these words were meaningful to our eighth graders as they embark on new adventures in the upper school and beyond.  I know they will do amazing things!

 

I hope you all have a wonderful summer.  I’ll be posting blogs periodically, so please be sure to check in.

 

Thank you!

 

Take care,

Heather

 

I’d like to thank all of you for being here today: parents, faculty, and, students.  Most importantly, I want to honor the students sitting in front of me: the Class of 2020.

 

I have a feeling that it may be difficult for me to get through this speech, but I’ll try my best. As I stand here and look at all of you, I can say with certainty that you, in your time in Middle School, have touched all of our hearts, through your energy, through your gregariousness, and through your pure, uncontained joy.

 

I remember my first meeting of many of you, the Class of 2020.  Think back to a pool party in August 2011.  Those of you who were here then may remember this event that kicked off your fourth grade year.  I met you first not as your Middle School Director but as a parent in your class.  As I watched you play together, sliding down the slide, jumping off the diving board, and splashing in the pool, I was immediately struck by how much fun you were having together.

 

And so I was excited a year later when you came to the Middle School in the fall of 2012.  I knew that over the next four years, I would have the chance to witness incredible growth.  And you have not disappointed.  Because I see you every day, I forget how much you’ve grown, but when I look back at pictures of you from that first day of fifth grade, I realize you have gone through quite a transformation.

 

Since you began Middle School, you have been through a lot.  In fifth grade, you braved cold and snowy weather at Keystone Science School and learned about tectonic plates using fruit roll-ups and frosting.  In sixth grade, you learned survival skills (and played a mean game of Predator and Prey) at Cal-wood, adopted New York accents for your production of Guys and Dolls, and learned about the importance of trying, failing, and trying again through building Rube Goldberg machines. Seventh grade brought new opportunities, including Winterim trips and Camp Cheley.  This year, you have led the Town Council with aplomb, guided younger students as peer leaders, led your sports teams to multiple victories, and grown stronger as students and friends.

 

And through it all, you have maintained this sense of joy I spoke of earlier.  The positive energy of this group is palpable, and it makes you so fun to be around.  I have a feeling that this sense of jubilation comes from an uncontainable curiosity about life.  Rarely do you sit idly by, assuming that information you’re taking in is accurate.  Instead, you ask questions, you clarify, you dig deeper.  And this insatiable thirst for understanding propels you to discover things about the world around you and also about yourselves.

 

When you arrived in the Middle School back in the fall of 2012, you had an assignment on one of the first days of school to write a letter to yourselves in eighth grade.  How many of you remember doing this?  Believe it or not, the time has come to get those letters back.  Four years have passed, and you have each grown and changed a great deal.  Still, upon reading these letters, I discovered that same zest for life that I still see in you.

 

One of your letters in composed almost entirely of questions: “Do you like asparagus?”  “Do you still live in Colorado?” “Do you still play the piano?”  Another of you chose instead to use the letter as an opportunity to inform your future self about what your life was currently like.  Yet another expressed apprehension about starting a new school but also expressed positivity at the possibilities ahead.

 

Some of you chose to set goals for yourself in middle school.  One goal was to “be friends with everyone instead of just a couple people.”  Another was to get better at math and reading.  A third was to “try my best and have nice friends.”  When you get your letters back, reflect on the last four years and see if you met your goals.  Likely, you’ve exceeded them ten times over and set new goals multiple times.

 

Going back to that curiosity you have, many of you tried to wrap your brains around the time-travel-ish component of the assignment.  One of you wrote, “I was slightly curious about this project, but now I see how cool it will be when you read this (you are reading it right now, but to me it will be in the future).”  Someone else wrote, “Even though if you write back to me I won’t get your reply, please, please, please write back.”  Another of you similarly entreated your future self to write back so that you could “see the difference between us.”

 

What an interesting idea.  What would you write if you could indeed write to your past self?  I hope that you would look back proudly over the last four years, reflecting on how you have changed.  You are not adults yet, but you are well on your way to developing the skills and habits that will launch you into whatever new areas you choose to explore.

 

So let’s now look forward.  Think about a day four years from now, when you will be graduating from upper school.  If you could get a letter now from your future self, what do you think it would say?  What advice would your future self give you?  Based on conversations with upper school students, combined with my knowledge of all of you, here’s my guess:

 

First, your future self would tell you to grab every opportunity presented to you.  Very rarely, if ever, do we look back on our lives and say, “I wish I had just sat around and done nothing interesting”; but we do often regret the chances we didn’t take.  So, I bet your future self would want to make sure that you never turned your back on an opportunity but instead jumped in to every new experience with relish.

 

Second, your future self would remind you to appreciate the people around you, especially your family.  Again, I’ve never heard of anyone looking back and saying, “I wish I had spent less time with those who loved me.”  The connections we make with others and the support and energy we draw from those connections are what make our lives meaningful.  So, your future self would tell you to make sure you go and give your family a big hug as soon as you can.

 

Finally, your future self would remind you that you have much more control than you think about how you experience the world.  You can choose to find the negatives in any situation, and if you do this, you’ll probably find yourself unhappy much of the time.  But if instead, you seek solutions to problems and seek the positive in all situations, you will discover a richer experience and will likely influence those around you as well. 

 

This future self of yours sounds remarkably wise, and I hope you will listen.  As you leave Middle School today, please look back on your time with pride and with a smile.  And as you look forward, take the advice of your future self and live your life, love your family and friends, and be happy!  Thank you.