Class of 2019: Take Care!

My remarks to the amazing Class of '19 on the occasion of their graduation from Needham High School on June 3rd:

Let me take you back to the early morning of September 7^th 2006, the first day of Kindergarten for the Class of 2019.  Let me tell you about this guy…

He stood there uncertain about what to do.  Tentatively, he walked into school with a sense of fear, wonder, and excitement about this new place of learning.  He had a lot of questions!  He wore neatly pressed clothes and fresh new shoes.  He had packed a lunch but worried about with whom he would eat.  He fretted about making friends because he was new to Needham and nobody knew him, probably nobody even cared!  “Wait!  If no one will like me,” he asked himself. “And I’ll get lost on the way to the bathroom (and I have to go real bad!!) and the teachers will probably hate me, and the kids will make fun of me! And… and…” He panicked.

On that first and beautiful autumn day back in 2006, beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he peered down the long school corridor.  “What am I doing here?” he asked himself.

Suddenly, a small boy, a Kindergartener, someone in the class of '19, jostled him at the entrance, reached up, grabbed his hand and excitedly announced: “Time for school!”  And as soon as he looked down into that smiling and joyful boy’s face… the Superintendent realized that it was going to be OK. 

And so, your first day of Kindergarten, which also happened to be my first day as Needham’s new superintendent, turned out be OK!

Since the Class of ’19 and I began together in the Needham Public Schools in the fall of 2006, well, we’ve grown up. We’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes, enjoyed new friends, gone on field trips together, made some more mistakes, had fun at Lego League and Robotics—you even let me drive the robot at a tournament this year! In 6^th grade we cheered like crazy people during the Pig Races at High Rock (For the record: Mrs. Liner’s Cluster 4 advisory dominated!).

At Pollard we took action together during STA Day; we’ve participated in the musical and we’ve celebrated athletic championships. We’ve puzzled over math problems—for you it was calculus, for me it was the school budget.  We called out injustice, homophobia, and racism.  We laughed a lot…and we mourned together. 

We’ve grown up in these schools, you and I.  You have become strong, smart, actively engaged young women and men who will take on this world like nobody’s business! It’s time for you to move on and get going. You’re ready.

But I’ll hang back.  We came to the Needham Public Schools together, but we part ways this evening.  It’s been a lot of fun and you, well you have been superb classmates and students. Over these 13 years I’ve learned a lot from you, and I am grateful for your examples and lessons of teamwork, creativity, sportsmanship, decency, scholarship, and civility. Thank you for being some of the best teachers I have had; thank you for being a friend.

And when friends say goodbye, they wish each other well, they offer words of comfort and support for the journey ahead.  My farewell to the Class of 2019 is pretty straightforward:

Take care.

Take care, Class of 2019.  Now this farewell has a double meaning.  First and foremost, it’s a simple goodbye, it’s a way to say I will miss you and want you to be careful.  It’s a way to urge caution and prudence and a way to encourage good judgment and good sense.  My mom uttered it to me a million times whenever I headed off to school, got onto my bike, drove the car, headed off to college, and finally when I moved away to California a long time ago.

Take care.  Buckle up, pack a toothbrush, charge your phone, and bring extra underwear!  Be sensible, be safe, know that there is family, there are friends who worry about you and want you to be OK.  We can’t go with you to remove obstacles from your path or solve every problem; we won’t be able to smooth over the inevitable failure or heartbreak.  But before you go, we can look you straight in the eye, wrap an arm around your shoulder and with love say, “Take care.”

This farewell has a second purpose I want you to remember:  You see, take care also means to accept responsibility; to assume a role in your community, in this world, that requires you to be involved and to act with conviction, virtue, and courage.  It is an acknowledgement that you have an obligation to serve others. Take care is a call to action; a requirement to look beyond your own comfort, speak out against inequality and bigotry; discover new ways to solve intractable and stubborn problems; expand your relationships and dialogue with those who vote, pray, love, or look differently than you. Push yourself to ask difficult questions and demand honesty and integrity from others. Look out for those who are differently abled and those who are impoverished or lonely.   Take care of this fragile and wonderful world.  Take care of those whose lives and voices are often marginalized because, as members of this class reminded us in a recent Greater Boston Project presentation, their voices most certainly matter. 

“Take care” is both an expression of comfort and a charge to serve. In the end, it is a hope-filled farewell:  Take care of yourself.  Take care of others.  Graduates, as you face a new morning in your lives, I want you to know how terribly proud I am of you.  I will miss you. 

And thanks for grabbing my hand and welcoming me into your Kindergarten class all those years ago as we began our journey of learning and leading in the Needham Schools.  Class of 2019, I wish you well.

Take Care.