Four Graduation Speeches

My favorite season is fall because it is a time of beginnings. Spring brings graduations and goodbyes. Yet, this year has been different. My spring has been framed by four graduation speeches.

The first of these was delivered by my own daughter at her college graduation at the beginning of May. Months before, she had been invited to submit a written speech and compete to be the student commencement speaker. She called her English and theatre teacher dad, and we brainstormed possible topics. She settled on the idea that, since she was a tour guide, her speech could be one final tour. She submitted her speech, auditioned, and was selected.

She wrote a speech that used her experiences as a college tour guide to explore where the class of 2015 had been and where they were going. It was a last tour on the way out of college.

The metaphor worked well. Her speech took her classmates from being tourists to becoming guides to transforming the world as agents of change. She reviewed the past as a means of bringing us into the future. It was the ideal way to look at both graduation and this season of transition.

Her speech captured what I was feeling as I watched her talk in a huge athletic arena filled with about 6000 people. How did I get here? How could I have a child graduating from college? What happens now? My children and students are growing up. I must be really old!

Meanwhile, back in Deerfield, a similar process was taking place. My Senior English students had written their own graduation speeches as a means of both practicing their speaking and listening skills and reflecting on their high school careers.

As they delivered their speeches to the class, they took listening notes on the various aspects of their speeches. Two students made a special note about one of their classmates; they said that they hoped he would be the real graduation speaker.

This student’s speech was moving and eloquent. He did not fit the mold of the traditional choice for our graduation speaker. He was a transfer student. He was not a native English speaker. His parents were still in Japan, and he spent much of his high school career having to figure things out for himself. He shared the lessons he had learned from his experience, and my students and I were moved.

Our high school’s process of choosing a student speaker is similar to my daughter’s college. I am delighted that our speaker is not automatically a student who has earned an academic honor or been elected to an office. Students submit their speeches and then some of those students are invited to deliver them in an audition. My student submitted his speech, auditioned, and, like my daughter, was selected.

He and I rehearsed together in one of the large lecture halls a day or two before graduation. Like my daughter, he was both confident and nervous. His message was one of going (and growing) beyond your limiting perceptions and of demonstrating gratitude for those who have helped you. His delivery was personal and powerful.

Like my response to my daughter’s speech, his speech captured my feelings at that ceremony. I was grateful for these wonderful kids and their families – and I didn’t want to let them go. But that isn’t the way it works in my business. Fortunately, the next two graduation speeches let me look to the promising future.

I delivered two graduation speeches in the past few weeks. I served as the high school representative at two local middle school graduations. For the first one, my message was the same one I delivered when my son left junior high: say “hi” in the halls. I talked about how relationships are the foundation of a positive high school experience.

Two nights ago, my colleague and dear friend Michelle and I spoke to the graduates of Shepard Middle School. We took the relationships idea one step further and asked our newly minted freshmen to choose kindness. Extending on the message we had delivered together a few years before (and that I had echoed at my earlier speech), we said to them, “While grades, activities, and all that stuff is important, what you will discover about Deerfield High School is that the quality of your time here will be measured by the depth and quality of your relationships. And relationships are built on kindness. It isn’t about your transcript, test scores, or preparing for college. That’s a trick and a trap. Those things are icing – not cake. The cake is the people. Grades, scores, and successes are meaningless without the folks who come together to make them happen. You join a family when you come to DHS. The DHS family is the ground on which all of our achievements are built.”

At the end of the speech, Michelle said to our future students (and her own daughter), “Acts of kindness should not be random. Make your acts of kindness deliberate and thoughtful.”

That statement capped my four speech graduation experience. I began with a review of the process: the past that brings us into the life changing future.  I moved into a speech that asked me to let go of my concepts and be grateful. Finally, I welcomed the future with kindness and the promise of a special family relationship.
I love our DHS graduation, but I hate saying goodbye. This year, my four graduation speeches reminded me of where we have been and got me ready to step into the future. What a wonderful way to end the school year!