Graduation 2013 - What to Build

Graduation 2013

Welcome parents, faculty, staff, Board of Trustees, friends, and students. Congratulations to you, the class of 2013.

As a class, you are thoughtful, kind, helpful, cohesive, bright, wise beyond your years, and excellent role models. You've already accomplished much, and you stand at the precipice of incredible things to come.

Graduation ceremonies are opportunities to reflect, assess, and for me to have just one last chance to point you as a group in the right direction, or at least for you to hear me as a cohesive whole, where you have to pay attention.

Graduation speeches are meant to inspire and guide, to chastise and advise, to speak in platitudes and to describe that which can't be described.

As you prepare for life outside of your family homes, and since I can't promise to deliver on each of those aims, I'll keep my message simple: build something solid, practical, and portable.

As a class, you are incredible consumers and sharers of information  - books, music, photographs, ideas, hopes, fears, and so on. In some sense, your entire universe. You most likely have at least one or two devices or tools to do that that:  iphone, ipad, twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. From cats playing pattycake to inspiring causes to do real good in the world, some of what you've shared or seen has ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime, but it all contribute to you, your identity and how you construct your lives.

I could spend a great deal of time discussing the relative merits and drawbacks to our interconnectedness through social media, but instead, I think I’ll bring this back to what I believe to be a more essential point about our lives together, here.

You’ve built social networks, certainly, but what are they based on? Which of those networks promote truth and ethics, and, portability? In short, once those networks pass into obscurity due to advances in technology or the whims of trendiness and the latest newest thing, what persists and what is it that you take with you?

That which is essential to your identity can be carried with you and will be with you wherever you are. If it's built right, it can’t be modified and warped and mutated by forces that aren’t concerned with your undeniable singularity and value as a person in the world, and a force of change for the right things in life.

So build something strong and real.

A chair, for example.

A chair has a particular purpose. You sit in in. In its essential form, its purpose dictates its final shape – the correlation of both purpose and shape are essential in the construction of the most useful and portable items you will own and use. That being said, I would guess that each of you, were you to imagine a chair right now, would imagine an incredible variety of chairs, each of which shares an essential 'chair-ness' that gives it its purpose.

Your identity is no different. What you say about yourselves and how you present yourselves to others is, in its purest meaning, is a direct expression of your values and your lives as you want to live them. Not just for the next ten minutes, or for the next faddish cause, but in the core of what you are and what is important. How you build your own 'chair' depends directly on your ability to seek out and find the materials necessary to build something that you can take with you - something that is sturdy and whose form is a direct expression of its function.

As you begin your lives outside of your parents' homes, you'll need supplies beyond the simple chair. You'll need shelves, tables, blankets, plates, cutlery, glasses, a can opener maybe, and a laundry basket. You could, in fact, build each of these things, but you've got other things to do, so you'll probably want to buy some of them, pre-made or partially pre-made. You'll also need other things that can't be bought or sold, but that can only be created with practice, passion, and dedication. Those things are built over time and among those who care for and love you, but you can't see or hold those things, they are only there to be used and they are the things that bring goodness into the world.

In the next few weeks, months and years, some of you may find yourselves in a place like IKEA to prepare you for your first months and years of post-familial home life. For those of you who don't know what IKEA is, it's an enormous box store in which you are supposed to be able to buy all you need to live a modest, practical albeit bland life. In addition to chairs, at IKEA you can also purchase beds, bedding, shelves, plants, plates, candles, and even Swedish meatballs. Most of these items come in a flat-packed box with various dimensions of particle board, cheap wood, screws, fasteners, casters, handles, and laminate. Everything there, including the meatballs, is built to typically austere and eminently practical Northern European aesthetics.

And, each box includes picture-only instructions designed to be understood by anyone, no matter what language you speak - Esperanto for the pragmatic, I suppose.

The instructions might confuse you, as there are no words, only pictograms showing how to, in the end, make your life more efficient, organized, and responsible. But with patience and fortitude, even if you're all by yourself, you can eventually build the thing you've purchased and, hey presto, you've got yourself a furnished apartment!

If you follow the instructions.

If you're like me, following instructions isn't always the first impulse. But if I don't, i guarantee that I'll have a few screws loose at the end and the thing I tried to put together won't be sturdy, practical, or really very useful at all.

The thing about IKEA is that, even if you follow all the instructions, picture by picture, page by page, with your single hex key in hand, you still end up with a mediocre product, one that is fine as long as you don't plan to move it - its value is short-lived and site-specific. Not you-specific. IKEA promotes the idea that all you need is one tool, some time, and you can build anything you need all by yourself. And therein lies the problem.

God, in his infinite wisdom, has a plan and nothing happens by accident. Believing that and resigning ourselves to follow the right directions and to understand that we don't have all the answers is a sign of courage and a sign of faith. Our motto. Fideliter et Fortiter, Faithfully and Bravely, is our core belief and one which guides us to become part of the great and infinitely complex movement of our world to which we are charged with building to the best of our ability.

So, back to IKEA: the underlying assumption at IKEA is that it's possible to get everything we need in one place; that convenience and an all-things-to-all-people mentality is a desirable end; that we can do everything ourselves alone. They've  designed nearly everything to be constructed with only one small, multi-use tool. It performs every function one might need, and because the lowest common denominator is the aim within the design and functionality of these products, the inspired wisdom of the individual is eliminated and their products are inferior.

And, by the way, in case you haven't had them, the meatballs aren't all that great, either.

I strongly disagree with their underlying assumptions about the value of things and the value of work and creativity. The world is so much richer and more beautiful when the spirit of each individual can express and create and live and feel, in very particular, unique, non-standard ways, to the meaning we are here to create and the love we're here to build and share.

So, on what or whom can we rely?

The answer seems simple: we can and should be able to rely on each other.

In the wreckage of the storms recently, many will be rebuilding. They’ll need a multitude of tools, resources, and most important, they’ll need the willingness and generosity of others willing to help and to rebuild.

I read that the wreckage from the Moore tornadoes, if stacked on a basketball court, would reach more than a mile high. That’s a lot of wreckage. Looking at you and all those who have supported you up until this moment, I see its contrast: a shining tower of inspiration, enlightenment, and wonder, built over years and with a passion to make things better.

The destruction we cause and discover around us will dissipate and become subsumed only by tear-stained toil, the passage of time and the drive to build again something beautiful and right. The thing I hope you’ll carry with you on your journeys will be the light that has grown within you and within all of us here. That's what is lasting and powerful and essentially yours, wherever you decide to go.

The Rise of Academic Dishonesty and Why it Matters.

With all the news surrounding academic dishonesty in high schools and colleges recently, I thought it timely to address the issue to our community.

Below is my chapel talk delivered on 9/17/2012. 

In my 23 plus years of teaching,  I have consistently explored the essential question posed by Socrates over 2000 years ago: How should one live?

This question rests at the heart of why we do the things we do and why we don’t do other things. It points us toward not what we, or I should do in life, but rather what our responsibility to our community must be as we live our lives.

In answering, it requires us to name those ethical and moral standards that must be in place for each of us in order that each of us has the same chances to live a happy and fulfilling life.

We have freedom to become what we want to become, yet that freedom is only possible when we are free from obstacles that unfairly limit our ability to pursue our lives.

In The Social Contract, Rousseau, the French political philosopher, wrote: “Man is free, but everywhere is in chains.” His argument that political states tend to repress freedom and equality and that a new social contract should be created by which we aim to achieve the common good through enabling each individual to pursue lives of meaning while understanding and necessarily limiting certain activities that are bad for the community as a whole. 

So, let’s talk about freedom.

We're able to live meaningful lives when we are free from obstacles that unfairly limit our ability to act and do what is desirable and purposeful. That said, however, a life without challenges in and of itself is not desirable. So, we need the right kinds of challenges obstacles to strengthen us and to help us understand who we are and what we’re good at and what we need to work on so that we can flourish and be happy.

The right kinds of challenges provide the necessary skills and resources that allow us to pursue our lives. These things are things developed when we learn and accomplish the tasks our teachers assign to us. School, or more broadly, Education, is the thing that gives us the freedom to do those things we should do.

Now, in a free society, not everything is allowed. We aren’t allowed to kill one another, cheat on our taxes, or run red lights. Why not? Because those acts interfere with the lives of others and as such are generally discouraged.

Teachers teach the things they teach because it’s been agreed that those courses and experiences within the school are good for individuals, but also good for the community. We learn math and science, art and music, English and foreign languages, athletics and health, and we learn about the life of the spirit and how that can help us all understand ourselves and others in the context of doing good and making thoughtful decisions. We ask you to learn these things because we believe they matter not only for you as individuals, but for the community you’ll help to shape.

Which brings me to the topic of cheating.

It’s very clear that more and more people are cheating in school. From Stuyvesant High School in New York City, to Harvard, and even to our very own Casady School, more students are involved in cutting corners, plagiarizing, and whatever else to get the ‘right grade’.  Technology makes it easier than ever to find answers, copy text, and send pictures of tests to friends.

Is it laziness, poor upbringing, over-pressured expectations, or simply an inability to understand why not cheating is so important?

It’s probably a combination of all those things, but I think we as a school need to do better to help you all understand why it’s really not ok to cheat on your tests, papers, assignments, or anything else. We sometimes make it easy for you to make poor decisions because we believe that you know better and because you’ve  signed the honor code. We make the mistake of believing that that is and should be enough.

Thing is, when you cheat, you cheat yourself. When you cheat, you’ve decided to miss the opportunity to gain the skills and knowledge you’ll need to make the best choices possible in your lives. Essentially, you’ve said to the School: “I don’t believe that what you’re trying to teach me is relevant, I don’t trust that you have my best interests in mind, and I don’t care about myself enough to do what’s necessary to live a meaningful life, at least in the short term.”

So, whether you believe the work to be relevant or not, the fact that you might not have approached it with a true honest effort handicaps you and it is disrespectful to those who have chosen to do their best and to act with honor. While this is only a small part of the answer to our Essential Question, at least in this, one should strive to live honestly and with integrity; simply put: don’t cheat.

On Walking - Commencement 2012

Commencement Address – 2012

Welcome students, families, faculty and staff and the Board of Trustees.

Each of you should be proud to have arrived here today. You’ve successfully navigated the challenges given to you at this highly rigorous and prestigious institution and you’ve done so with grace and with dignity. You have been and are surrounded by so many who love and care for you, all of whom are proud of you not because they have something to gain by your successes, but because we all do. By becoming the person you are, the world has become a better place to live.

And that, in the end, is the thing that matters beyond all else. Your paths will diverge but it is my hope that each of your walks through life is imbued with the intention to broaden understanding, develop a strong commitment to citizenship, and to bring people together toward a common good. As you saunter through life, embrace each success and failure -- learn from them – they make you who you are.

In his essay, “Walking”, Henry David Thoreau discusses the etymology of the word ‘saunter’. In the middle ages, he points out, pilgrims who were preparing to embark on a journey to the Holy Land (Sainte Terre) were called “Sainte Terrers”.

To saunter, then, is not to wander aimlessly, but to walk with a sense of purpose – to be a pilgrim on a journey of discovery and enlightenment. There were many pathways toward the Holy Land and many relics to encounter along the way, but no matter how the particular journeys varied, the central unifying motivation that these “Sainte Terrers” had was to become more holy and closer to God.

It took resources to make these journeys, so in order to prepare, communities provided support, monetarily and otherwise. Look around you. Countless individuals here and elsewhere have supported you in countless ways as you’ve prepared for this day. Be sure to thank them. And while you may not fully appreciate all that you’ve been given, I assure you, upon reflection in years hence, you’ll be overwhelmed with gratitude for their assistance.

Thoreau walked a great deal, mostly avoiding well-worn roads, rarely making the same journey twice. He believed that his own particular travels broadened and deepened his understanding of the world. Instead of only following roads created for practical purposes, his meanderings served a higher calling. He wrote:

"We saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn".

Take time to focus on where you put your feet and see what actually surrounds you; be present and awake in your journey. Moving through life in an illusion of someone else’s making makes you less of yourselves and less able to make the necessary choices to live full and complete lives.

So, become disillusioned. This is necessary in living a life of purpose and in truth. When you live your lives in pursuit of what is real rather than imagined you truly grow. When you act with faith and with courage that your own choices are good for you, your family, and your friends, you will indeed make a difference.

At Casady, the walk around the lake is a πmetaphor for your growth as human beings and since you’ve now completed that walk, you must continue it, although in brand new surroundings and with acquaintances unknown.

Walk with purpose, but be sure to take the opportunities to diverge and veer when they arise – with the right mindset, those divergences will reap great rewards for you. You have much to be proud of and I wish you well each and every day of your lives.

Congratulations!

Casady Celebrates 65 Years - My Remarks

Welcome to you all. I’m so proud to be here, with each of you, as we pause and celebrate the enduring influence our School has had on our lives.

In mid-February of 1947 (65 years ago yesterday), a group of laypersons and members of the Diocese of the Episcopal Church of Oklahoma established a school and cast a vision for a Diocesan Center that would occupy a section of land on the corner of Penn and Britton. Those people set in motion a collective effort to bring the finest schooling experience possible to a rapidly growing and vibrant community in the middle of the United States – a set of decisions that has had a lasting impact and an undeniable role in the formation of our city today and in communities far beyond Oklahoma City.

There are people in this room who first stepped foot on our campus 65 years ago as students, some as parents, and some whose children have just begun their journey around the lake. We, current and former trustees, current and former faculty and staff members, alumni, parents, grandparents and perhaps a great-grandparent or two, have gathered tonight to celebrate how Casady has shaped our lives individually and collectively, both here in Oklahoma City and far beyond.

Our facilities have changed and improved over time, but echoes of those individuals who filled the classrooms, dining halls, stages, and athletic fields resonate in the very fabric of Casady School today. Their voices and ours join together to continue building the vision that began the School and that has shaped the lives of so many since its inception.

While each of our lives is uniquely our own with our own very particular trajectory, there are points in time and in space where our life paths cross and we take the opportunity to pause and reflect with one another out of respect for a common, yet extraordinary, bond.

Tonight is one of those occasions.

During the past year, we have had many opportunities to reflect and remember what has made our school what it has become. We’ve welcomed new members to the Casady family and we’ve memorialized those who have passed on, ensuring that their legacy, large or small, is a valued part of who we are and of our spirit.

Of course, there is a select group of individuals who have chosen to devote their lives with a calling to ensure each of our students has an unparalleled education and, in turn, makes our world better every single day: our faculty and staff.

For the past 65 years, it has been those rare individuals who have been the heart and soul of our School. Many former teachers have departed, of course, but here tonight, their collective voices live on and are amplified by those today who, day in and day out, work with each of our students to prepare them, with faith and with courage to live lives of substance and meaning.

Words cannot express the gratitude generations of families have had for the thousands of hours of preparation, instruction and care you all have provided for each of our students.

Would the faculty and staff please stand and be recognized.

As the chapel bells ring out the "Casady Hymn" each morning, we are connected to one another through song and reminded: 

Give us grace that we may find, in each heart and mind,
 

Patience, truth and honor forever more.

A School of Fish

Chapel Talk – January 30, 2012

First of all, I’d like to welcome our visitors this morning. 30 Grade Ten students and six of their teachers have joined us today from the High School affiliated to Beijing Normal University to further our work together as sister schools. They’ve been in the states for 20 days, visiting colleges like Yale, Columbia, MIT, and Tulane and they return to Beijing tomorrow morning. I hope many of you will be able to visit with them today and to join us for an early dinner in Calvert at 5:30 this evening.

Secondly, I’d like to share an anecdote I read as told by my favorite author – the late David Foster Wallace, but it’s not original to him, and some of you may know it from some other source. Two young trout are swimming along and meet an older trout swimming in the other direction. He nods at them as they pass each other and says, affably, “Morning, kids! How’s the water?” After the two young trout swim on for a bit, one turns to the other and asks, “What the heck is water?” Wallace describes the point of the anecdote—that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about—as “a banal platitude with life and death importance.”

We’re all on a journey of some sort but it’s usually not very clear where we’re headed and how we’re actually making progress. Often times, here in chapel and elsewhere, we discuss ‘callings’ and being driven toward one thing or another in our lives. Teaching is a calling of sorts, as is being a social worker, a priest, or any number of pursuits. In fact, whatever it is that you have as your ‘calling’, it is of equal worth to others’ callings provided you pursue your work with honesty, dignity, and with real commitment.

I suppose one could argue that pursuing a life as an international criminal may provide less value than other, more noble pursuits, but let’s leave that for another discussion and assume that each of us in this space has at least some idea about the direction our lives are headed. Some of us may already have a clear notion about our actual calling while others are only beginning to think about this idea.

Think for a minute now about what your calling might be. How many of you have some idea about your plans in life? How many have a very clear idea and have already begun your work toward those aims? How many are just wanting to know what the math homework is tonight and for me to stop asking such annoying questions?

A good question to ask yourselves in your search for yourself, is what is the water in which I swim and how does it shape me as I move through life? The young trout were surprised by their elder’s question and probably hadn’t considered the idea that the fact that they were in water was an incredibly important and critical fact of their lives – it was the context in which they lived and defined them in very specific terms. Being aware of the context is the first and most important step toward deciding to act with courage and to shape our lives with meaning.

The anecdote has another meaning as well – the fact that the elder trout took time to point out to the youngsters that they were, in fact, in water, and to inquire as to how they were dealing with that is what your teachers and parents try to do each and every day.

The courses you take and the decisions you make, both creatively and analytically, literally describe the water around you in ever increasing detail and when your eyes and minds are open, you will find that your ability to swim will dramatically improve based on your understanding of your surroundings, and thereby the path you’re on.

To conclude, I challenge you to stop taking things for granted, to ask questions that not only help you understand your world, but most importantly, questions that help you to understand others in the world. We may swim in the same waters as others in this School, so we’d better make an effort to hear how our friends, acquaintances, and those we don’t know are experiencing their lives. We’re all at different points on our journeys toward our calling and I for one appreciate the opportunity to see my progress in ways I’ve not considered.

Thank you. Be a force for good. Enjoy the rest of your day.

You Can't Say You Can't Play

This phrase was a central feature in my children's primary and lower division classrooms. It's the title of an important book by Vivian Paley and is referenced by an important thinker on diversity in education: Randy Testa, former professor of education at Dartmouth.

In a recent communication by Testa about hazing in colleges and the shifts in the aims of schooling based on quantifiable outcomes and "return on investment", it's never been more important to promote values of inclusivity and acceptance in schools like ours.

Alfie Kohn writes in his article, Only for My Kid: “This bottom line is never far from the minds of parents, who weigh every decision about what their children do in school, or even after school, against the yardstick of what it might contribute to future success. They are not raising a child so much as a living resume.”


“Before long,” he continues, “the children internalize this quest and come to see their childhood as one long period of getting ready: they sign up for activities that might impress an admissions committee, ignoring (perhaps even losing sight of) what they personally find interesting in the here and now.”


I'm not sure I agree with Testa's assertion that entitlement and exclusion are directly responsible for misbehavior in fraternities and the like, but I do think we need to remember that community building and human flourishing are based on a philosophy of hopefulness and openness. 


Robert Coles' work in this arena is also very interesting and important - if you have time, pick up a copy of Privileged Ones: The Well-Off and the Rich in America.


Back to my own kids: they may or may not decide to join a fraternity or a sorority, but whatever they choose, I am happy to say that those early lessons about acceptance continue to be reinforced here at Casady and for that I am truly grateful.

Why the Pursuit of Excellence Matters

I just read an interesting article by Erik Reece from Orion Magazine on the current state of affairs in American schools. He points out, rightly, that our students are generally unprepared, bored, and uninspired because they haven't been pushed to pursue those things that really matter - citizenship, innovation, and critical thought. This is because they are taught in a system that necessitates teaching 'to the test' and a teacher education model that isn't cultivating the kinds of teachers who can work toward those habits of mind due to bureaucratic regulations and a lack of resources, both financial and intellectual, necessary to create excellent educational experience. 


I'm fortunate to lead a school which is able to do things the right way. Our teachers are inspiring, they care deeply about their subjects and their students and they have the freedom to pursue ethical dilemmas because they/we want to ensure that our graduates know how to think, have the courage to act, and have faith in their own development as human beings in the world that their work makes a difference. 


A couple of excerpts from the article:


"Deborah Meier, a senior scholar at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education and a founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, suggests that we replace the cover-the-material mode of teaching by cultivating a “habit of mind” that can be applied to all material. Such a habit nurtures the intellectual skills students need to make decisions on complex matters and is based on such things as: quality of evidence (how do we know it’s true?), consideration of various viewpoints (how would it look through someone else’s eyes?), the search for patterns and causes (what are the consequences?), and relevance (who cares?)."
...
"THE GOOD NEWS is we can begin revitalizing both education and democracy by implementing a curriculum that incubates what I will call the “citizen-self.” As teachers, I believe our purpose should be twofold: 1) to provide the opportunity for individual self-invention among students, and 2) to create a space where that individual takes on the role and the responsibility of the social citizen. The pedagogy I have in mind combines the Romantic idea of thebildung, the cultivation of one’s own intellectual and psychological nature, with the Pragmatist view that such individuality must be vigorously protected by acts of citizenship. That is to say, it encourages Deborah Meier’s “habit of mind” toward the goal of helping each student determine what she or he truly thinks and feels about an issue or an idea, and it encourages what psychologist and philosopher William James called a “habit of action,” a way of translating such thinking into citizenship. At the risk of oversimplifying, we might say that the first part cultivates the inner self, while the second shapes the outer self. But these two selves cannot be separated; each depends upon and strengthens the other."