A Taste of Graduation, Spring 2011

An excerpt from my graduation speech....(kind of last minute style, so forgive the grammar!)

I deeply believe that the education that we are providing at Woolman is exactly what the world needs right now.

It is utilizing the wisdom of years of education models while addressing the failings of our current systems. It’s a school that teaches as much out of the classroom as it does within it. It is an education that is both local and global, personal and universal.

Here at Woolman, kids strengthen research skills, learn time management lessons (usually the hard way), and about the sacred interconnectedness of all living things, problems and solutions.

We strengthen hearts, minds and biceps, too.

As students, faculty, interns, and directors we are also all teachers, all students sharing our own unique lesson with each other in and out of the classroom.

We acknowledge symptoms, but work at the roots.

We sing in the kitchen, in the classroom, and sometimes at staff meetings and occasionally cry in all those places, too.

We seek out our own answers, but are satisfied with more questions.

We invite rebellion and encourage discomfort.

We respect each other’s inherent dignity and whatever it was that brought each of us to this place.

Every semester has such a distinct flavor and at the same time follows a similar pattern of ups and downs, upheavals, revelations, heartaches, connection, disconnection and reconnection—always utterly unique according to the mish mash of peoples and personalities, but almost always full of ongoing struggle, ongoing growth, ongoing beauty in life lessons learned. Then, at the end of it all, we come to this day, to graduation. And no matter what went down in those four crazy months leading up to this day, the students stand up on this podium and speak their hearts like it’s the first time that they could truly see them.

For some, their minds have been cracked open, their assumptions broken down and their life paths forever altered.

For some, they speak about the relief of being truly loved for exactly who they are and the process of discovering their own unique beauty.

For others, the effects are less tangible and aren’t revealed on stage, but maybe months or years later Woolman will creep up from their subconscious. But on this day more than any other, this crazy day, full of cooking, last minute speech writing, cleaning, crying, and goodbye-ing--we see the power of what we are creating here. And so it is in this tone that I introduce to you the 4 young peacebuilders that I have had the pleasure of supporting as advisor in this incredible, confusing, precious, wild, and lovely journey.