Graduation Speech June 2011: Shaping Identity and the Future

     As School director, I welcome you to the 9^th graduation ceremony for the Compass School. As Founding Director, I had the privilege of presiding over the first 2 graduations, and I am honored to be back at Compass to help celebrate this wonderful group of graduates.

     Often graduation ceremonies highlight all the successes of the graduating class, but I want to start by praising this group for their struggles. I think each of you has faced various difficulties in your HS years—getting work completed, wrestling with the purpose of school, and the purpose of life, looking for meaning, managing your time. To watch you rise above these challenges over the last month, in Senior Projects, Portfolio Roundtables, and then this last week contributing the school in so many ways, has been impressive and truly inspiring.

     Of course, to get to this point you have been blessed to have the support of this community. Before we proceed with your day, let us acknowledge everyone here who has help you get to this point. How about Parents, please stand up? Relatives? Fellow Students and friends? Alums? Teachers? Other friends of Compass?

     Since our spring trips in May, I have been pondering the concept of identity. How is identity formed? What leads some people to be such positive members of society? And what is each of our roles in helping shape the identity for youth as they grow up?

      On our Spring trip to Boston, we did a workshop with former Compass teacher Jeremy Nesoff who works at Facing History as Ourselves, an organization dedicated to learning from the history of genocide and the Holocaust so we don’t repeat these atrocities. The foundational piece of their work is to look at our own identity—what influences who we are and the decisions we make.

     Jeremy pointed out the many factors that influence one’s identity are out of our personal control: parents, religion, ethnic heritage, media, and where you live. And thus, many individuals are confined to the limits of their experiences.

      My social justice instincts tell me it is not enough to just accept identity formation as a product of the unique circumstances any person finds themselves. In fact, this is the premise of Facing History—that each of us must take responsibility for our own identity, that choosing to participate, to stand up to injustice, to do the right thing, is not something we can leave to chance, but can actively influence through education and intent.

      At Compass, we talk about creating “good students and good people. What this means for me is that we educate students in the academic areas of Science, math, Humanities and Foreign Language, but we also hold ambitious goals to:

• develop graduates who are responsible for themselves and the world around them,
• can solve problems,
• contribute to the larger community,
• think deeply and creatively,
• are open to possibility,
• embracing of diversity,
• adaptable to change,
• are active democratic citizens and leaders,
• and have the self awareness and confidence to address the challenges of a dynamic world.

Our Spring trips reminded me of how we actively work to shape identity for our students.

• By going out into diverse communities, whether Boston or New York or Ecuador or the DR, our students come to see the diversity of the world beyond our little corner of Vermont.
• By addressing complex community needs in Winter Term, our students learn the power of working in a team to solve real world problems.
• By undertaking projects they design on their own, such as through project week or Senior Project, students become more capable of independent work.
• By participating in school democracy, through student judiciary, student council, town meeting, and advisory, students become part of a living democracy preparing them to be involved citizens.
• Community rituals such as the Winter Olympics, Mountain Day, and today’s Graduation ceremony, remind us we are more than mere individuals and part of a greater whole.
• The graduation portfolio process asks our students to reflect deeply on their challenges, strengths, shortcomings, and, most importantly, growth throughout their high school years. 
• This knowledge of oneself, developed through reflection on the wealth of experiences at Compass, is maybe the greatest gift our graduates take going forward.

     While these structures are designed to offer students new opportunities, it still is the unique experiences for each child that come together to shape identity. Opportunity is not destiny. And for adolescents, pre determined experiences rarely have the power of exploration, serendipity, and. self discovery. We can put the students in situations that we hope can be identity forming, but ultimately, it is the student’s unique experiences that impact their lives.

     A catalog of these formative experiences at Compass is immense: Some that jump into my mind from just the past year include:

• The chance meeting in the Park in Santo Domingo with Leo or Ali or any of countless strangers who become friends that touch our lives.
• Running school meeting and finding you have the power and skill and charisma to entertain, educate, and lead.
• Traveling for Senior Project to Haiti for a medical mission and discovering strength and spirit, in yourself and others.
• Producing a brilliant film, overcoming challenges with actors and locations and equipment and editing.
• Visiting a mosque and finding gender segregated grouping opens up possibilities as much as limits them.
• Joining the ultimate Frisbee team and playing with vigor in the best spirit of the game.
• Flying off to Ecuador, where you find yourself closer to the land and the people than you could have imagined before you left.
• Using your artistic skills to create a comic book on string theory, capturing really complex ideas in a format accessible to regular folk.
• Helping organize a group for winterm that addresses the very real problem of teen suicide and realizing these challenges will take you far beyond our immediate area.
• Serving on Judiciary and learning how to listen closely, to develop understanding and compassion, and to help others learn to help themselves.
• Laughing at the improv theater in Boston and recognizing how much we all create on the fly, sometimes with great results and other times with a bit less success.
• Jumping off waterfalls in the DR, a lesson in not overthinking life, and recognizing that our challenges are often best overcome by just jumping in with both feet first.

      I don’t believe it is our place to impart particular values, but it is important that a school provides the opportunities for every child, regardless of background or family circumstances, to expand their horizons and broaden their experiences  in order to shape their own identity.

      Having sat in the roundtables for this graduating class and looking out at this extraordinary group ready for the next stage of their lives, I am confident that their experiences in their high school years have helped shape their identities and, ultimately, will help shape the future of our world. In you, I believe our future is in good hands.