Commencement Address 2023

Graduation 2023

Commencement Address

Welcome parents and students, faculty and staff, neighbors, congregants and parishioners, and all others who are joining us tonight to celebrate the achievements of these students. 

Before I begin my official address, I would like to take a moment to recognize our Board President, Dr. Teresa Schuemann. She has been with the school since 2013, has graduated two beautiful, intelligent, talented, and athletic daughters, and given our school at least nine years of official service. I genuinely hope that her husband and daughters esteem her more highly for this service because she has been, frankly, incredible. 

She has been a stalwart defender of the school and its mission during some of its darkest hours, and has never been too good to get her hands dirty doing the hard work involved in developing our students. When we needed someone to teach anatomy, she stepped up; when students had a hole in their tent, she gave hers up; when their sleeping bags were left at home or soaked in a torrential rain, she slept in her car with a blanket. When any of the teachers pulled a muscle or had some miscellaneous, but hard-to-diagnose pain, she was Ridgeview’s unofficial PT. She came on trips to provide first aid, read with students in the elementary hallway when we were short of volunteers, sat through dozens and dozens of mock teaches, interviews, and candidate dinners—always smiling, and never resentful that she had been asked. And, never being compensated for any of it. She never acted as though any job was beneath her, even when Mrs. Carvalho and I knew it almost certainly was. I watched her struggle with certain decisions on the Board, and I have been impressed by how she repeatedly put ethics first each time. She was unafraid to take a breath, reassess, deliberate on an issue, and take the inevitable heat she knew would come, and all of our students are better for her having been our board president the last six years. It has been an enormous privilege to work for her, with her, and to become her friend. She will be deeply missed. I hope that her family is as proud of her as I am appreciative. Thank you Dr. Schuemann.

Onward…

One might expect that with each of these commencement addresses, and this is the tenth one I have delivered for Ridgeview, that they would become easier, or more staid and less genuine. In truth, as Ridgeview has grown the number of things we do with students, the more difficult it has become to sort through all that I have experienced with them and condense and distill it into something articulate. 

In culinary school, we learned that some herbs are torn rather than chopped. Basil is an example, and the reason is that tearing creates more cell exposures and the flavor is, as a consequence, more intense. Or, so they told us. This is, however, analogous to what happens to our experience with students by the time they are seniors if our focus is on that of the whole student. We see them through their awkward, coltish middle-school years, we work on their manners, on the use of their inside voices, on their stage voices; we watch them participate in athletic competitions, we laugh uproariously with them around campfires, we slog up and down mountains, through all sorts of weather; we watch them tear around the building late at night, look incredible at dances, and deliver speeches in the PAC; we nurse them through their injuries, play guide and medic, we watch them fall flat at something, cry or shrug it off, and try again. We see them inside, outside—we see what they want us to see, and what they hoped we’d never know, and sometimes, what we’d wished they’d never shown us. Some, I know, lament the small number of graduates, but the capacity to know them is everything. It is like fine wine: the quality lies in the details, the nuance, the complexities. You have to know something of people in general in order to appreciate anything about anyone in particular. And, all of these students, or at least all of them who are open to the experience, are like this. They are worthy of being known, of our taking the time with them to be brought into a joy for whatever it is that they find joyful, and most of all, of being loved. 

It is to know this: that Gabi is braver than I am in a cave and to delight in the fact that she is, according to no less an afficionado than Aiden, an excellent pianist; that Tristan will unroll an insanely long pen case every time he needs me to sign something, that Brady’s intensity and enthusiasm at a robotics competition will be contagious, even for me who barely comprehends what is happening or how it is being scored. It is to know that Ryan will come alive when you ask him for a running shoe recommendation, that Lidia has a depth and maturity to her that made me feel like I was teaching college, but usually only after class had ended, that Destry’s mouthiness will get her into trouble, but that she’s also softhearted enough to put the awkward middle schooler back together when the chaos, uncertainty, and drama of the middle years have become too much. It’s to be humbled by Jack’s perseverance and stamina, which I’d be better were I to have had even a fraction of at his age, and to be humbled by Gavin’s humility: in class, on ice, climbing rock, presenting a thesis, running, virtually anything. To envy Aiden’s prowess with the violin, his patience with elementary chess players, and his defensiveness of his friends. To smile at Haley’s femineity and intelligence, her sense of humor, and the stunning array of colors in every margin of every book. To speak of smiles, Journey has an incredible one. It is, in fact, a transformative one, and her writing was cautious and deliberate, her comments in class thoughtful and judicious. Paige may have perfected self-deprecation, and a great sense of humor, but she was fiery and emboldened when the issue was close to her heart. And, of heart, she had a great one, and I am proud of her for returning to finish the senior ruck with her class. Felipe—what an enigma! I cannot think of a time when he was ever rude in my presence, and yet somehow this quality was married to a level of self-confidence the likes of which Ridgeview has not seen in a very long time. Andrew who I could talk to about food for hours (and have) despite his pestering me about my hair; Giulia, who, could I do it, I would capture her personality and joyful spirit and bottle it, and offer it to each incoming senior for decades to come as a benediction. Henriette who wanted to defy Aristotle’s admonition about only asking each science to do what is appropriate to it and laid out every question and statement with perhaps more precision than its subject matter would allow. Kamila who was able to relate everything I talked with her about to roller derby, and infinitely patient with me as I questioned her about Hawaii at every turn. 

Students and parents often say that teachers make the school what it is, and I will say something for the teachers momentarily, but I will also assert this: it is the students. A good day is made good by the students, the job worthwhile, by the students, the trips successful, by the students. What I have wanted to tell all of these students many times over is this: thank you. Thank you for making this project worth fighting for, this endeavor worthwhile. You had made me laugh, think, tear up my best laid plans and finest intentions, and recommit. 

Now, to say something about the teachers and about life more generally. To feel all of this, more deeply, acutely, unashamedly, unembarrassingly, unreservedly requires real courage. That students can be known and cared for, even when they are disagreed with and sometimes disagreeable, is a testament to those who last in this profession. Not many do. Years of service as often result in complacency as expertness. Careers that begin with great fervor and feeling oftentimes end in bitterness and callousness. The challenge lies in the fact that many individuals take up teaching because they cannot sort out what else to do with their lives, or they want to rejoice and triumph in the differences they can affect in youth, but they severely underestimate and misunderstand the difficulty of their undertaking. Some think it is sufficient to be well-meaning, others that it’s enough to be well-read. The especially misguided think it’s a totem to be purchased from self-identifying authorities. It is not. Instead, you have to be fully human, fully alive, and fully aligned. 

I used to believe that it would be impossible to succinctly describe what is required of a great teacher, but after fifteen years, I have come to believe that it is easy enough to describe, but impossible to know about a person in advance of their having become a great teacher. There are just three simple, albeit profound, requirements. 

First, you have to love someone. Love demands vulnerability. Few adults elect to be vulnerable. They spend the majority of their lives doing precisely the opposite: seeking their personal security and comfort. A Bonhoeffer is impressive because there are so many people unlike Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Second, you have to love something and accept at the outset that few who you endeavor to share this love with, will love it at all from the outset. This again means being vulnerable and knowing that your success will depend on your charisma and persuasiveness. This is not a light burden: teaching is equal parts knowledge and craft. Both require lifelong development, and the second is harder than the first. 

Third, you must accept both the unconditionality and unreciprocated circumstances of the energy you give. “You have to give it all away,” as a former teacher told me, “and hope to get it all back in spades.” That’s close, but hope often betrays you and you cannot live on hope. Instead, you have to be able to give away your gift to strangers today knowing that you will not see the results tomorrow. The love you give will not be reciprocated tomorrow—perhaps never. The delayed gratification is, in some cases, permanently delayed. Instead, you must bank on the possibility that you may change someone’s life. Not many people have that opportunity as part of their vocation—they change people’s property, not their bodies, hearts, minds, and souls. 

This message is important not only for would-be teachers, but for the seniors seated behind me. Something to consider is that when you are young, your desires and your objectives are not far apart. For instance, if you choose to run a race, you will shortly know the results of your efforts. You may, and should, work to improve, and this will require real discipline and effort. Still, you will run a race and know your results. As you age, if what you choose to undertake is genuinely momentous, has lasting meaning, and some measure of nobility, you will find that your desires and your objectives are much further apart. In teaching, this often means decades apart, and it matters what you do on virtually every one of those days between. Ridgeview, if it is more rewarding than teaching elsewhere, defies this only in the sense that we often produce the sorts of students who leave classes saying, “thank you,” or inviting their teachers to graduation parties, or returning in subsequent years to tell us something about what it all meant to them. That said, the profession still requires a patience and a devotion that other professions do not. 

So, there it is: love one another, love something, forget your ego, and have a gigantic vision that there is no guarantee you will ever realize. It’s that simple. It is, as I can imagine Dr. McMahon saying, “counter-human.” It is all of the things we do not do well or easily. 

Despite the fact that it might break your heart or that the troubles of others might tear you up at night, or that you will question the financial prudence of the entire undertaking when your friends are buying new cars, outfitting their third home in an effort to keep up with the Whoevers, or texting you preening travel photos from Kathmandu or wherever, I would still recommend this to students. Dream big, save the world, feed the orphans, teach the illiterate to read, invent something, stick up for somebody, heal the sick, be excellent—all the usual stuff. Go big! But, be brave enough to sacrifice for it. Look at everyone as though they were a book you could steal a page from and be closer to the version of you that you want to be. You do not need to have some genius-level epiphany and reinvent the wheel—you just need to put together all of the existing pieces in a novel way. In fact, you will do this anyway, the only difference being whether you choose how the pieces will be assembled or whether you allow happenstance to assemble them for you. 

To give an example, and I hope that I am the only principal or headmaster quoting from this book this year, I was recently reading a book by Nick Lavery entitled Objective Secure. It cannot be found in the bookshop next to Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, Marcus Aurelius, Polybius, or my favorite despite the fact that Mr. Ayers will not offer an elective on just him after my pleading for a decade, Tacitus. No, instead, Lavery is a Green Beret who lost most of his leg in combat, spent a grueling amount of time being operated on and fiddled with only to…return to his special forces detachment and continue conducting combat operations with a prosthetic limb. Crazy. Here is what Lavery writes on the second page of his book about people who want to be great at something: 

“Everybody wants to be great at something. Great at a job. Great at a skill. Great as a parent, spouse, coach, or friend. The unfortunate reality, however, is that, for most, this greatness will remain nothing more than a dream because desire alone produces nothing. Fear not. Average gradually becomes easier to accept. The rationalizations, the justifications, the lies we tell ourselves, the excuses, our lifestyle, our “needs,” our parents, our children—these become options (among others) to enable our acceptance of average, our “reasons” we “can’t” do more. Over time, we condition ourselves to the point where mediocre becomes our ceiling.”

Eighty-four percent of Americans will graduate from high school in 2023. While a small percentage of that eighty-four percent will graduate from a school like Ridgeview, an enormous percentage will do precisely what Lavery warns his readers of—mediocre will become their ceiling. They will want greatness, but they will not sacrifice for it. And, here is the brilliant part: Lavery is not telling you that you need to be a combat veteran or serve meritoriously in Anderson’s Army—you get to choose what constitutes greatness for you, and if you are disciplined enough, and come at the question as to what will make you happiest with enough honesty and intelligence, you won’t have to live with the only liar you can never escape…yourself. This is genuine liberty.

I do not know whether even our students comprehend the significance of this as of yet, and I do not wish to scare them off by what may be perceived as unintended cynicism. The world at large, however, is unlikely to know them as we have come to know them—or, frankly, to care much about them apart from them being somewhat naïve, if svelte, consumers. We have cared deeply about their grades, about their mental health, about their physical health, about their social development and wellbeing. It has been the closest thing to a paternal love that one can offer to someone unrelated to them and remain professional. 

Whether it is us teachers or our students, each of us is going to come up against challenges, obstacles, slanders, and frustrations that complicate our plan to achieve whatever it is we set out to achieve. Take stock in this: you have a choice in what you inherit and in what you pass on. You have been gifted thirteen years of intellectual Dim Sum and been offered a choice between Melville and Hawthorne, Seneca and Cicero, Socrates and Aristotle, Huxley and Mill, Shakespeare and Dante, and all the other names that could be dropped—importantly, we’ve not told you what to learn from them, but told you that you could learn to think from them. We have taken you up and down the mountains, and sometimes through them. We have hiked in fair weather and freezing weather, and many of us have shared our stories—triumphs and tragedies. It is now time for you to choose what you will do with all of this, not hypothetically in a paper or on the stage, with less assistance than you’ve henceforth been rendered, and likely within a less caring community, but I have seen the world and I have seen you, and you are capable of all of this. You should be neither brash nor scared. You have done more than many already, and what you’ve not done, you’ve not done by virtue of opportunity rather than capability. I wish you well, and hope that you will choose to return here and share your own stories.

Congratulations to the Class 2023!

D. Anderson

Headmaster