On Thursday and Friday, I was given a chance to provide some parting words to Culver City Unified School District's graduates. Please find them below.
Culver City Adult School
I am often asked why I choose to be a teacher. I am told that the pay is no good, I have to
deal with difficult students, overcrowded classes, apathetic bureaucrats, and
ungrateful parents. And it is no secret
that this is one of the most difficult times to be involved in public education
given the historic budget cuts that have put our school systems throughout
California in a precarious position from which we will not fully recover for
some time. It is tough, no question.
However, my answer has for the entirety of my now 11 year
career been the same: My parents taught me that a job is not just a job, it is
a responsibility to give back to our society, an opportunity to play our small
part in the struggle for social justice.
I choose to teach because I believe strongly that our education system
is the front lines for the American Dream in our society today. Regardless of how rich or poor a student is,
no matter the education level of their parents, every kid in California is
guaranteed a free education, an opportunity to better their stature in life,
and a chance to be successful. Don’t get
me wrong, our system is not perfect, our schools are not all equal, and our
funding levels provide for harsh inequities between rich and poor
communities. But at least students are
given that incredible opportunity.
One of my favorite parts of each year is in June when I
get to, in my capacity as a teacher and as a school board member, go to half a
dozen graduation ceremonies and watch the fruits of our collective efforts as
students take advantage of the education they are offered and move forward to
the next important step in their attempts to better their lives and contribute
to society. However, it is well known
among board members and administrators here in Culver City that the most moving
graduation ceremony of them all, the one that really reminds us all of why we
choose to be educators, is the Adult School graduation, the ceremony in which
we participate tonight. The reason is
simple: not only have each of you done an incredible amount of work to get to
this place in your education, not only have each of you participated in the
American Dream by moving forward in your ability to get a good job and
contribute to our economy, but most of you have done this while simultaneously
holding a job (or 2 or 3) and taking care of a family. That is an amazing accomplishment and makes
me so proud of each and every one of you.
You have sacrificed, your families have sacrificed, and all of that for
the betterment of our entire community.
As some of you may know, many of our neighboring school
districts have decided to cut back drastically on their adult school programs,
some nearly getting rid of it altogether in an attempt to save money. This is the most short sighted and
reprehensible way of budgeting and shows that our neighbors have a lack of
knowledge of the proper role of a school district. Our job is not to educate students 18 years
and under, but instead to do all we can to provide those who want to learn with
every chance to better themselves, to accomplish those tenets of the American
Dream. As former Adult School teacher
John McCormick eloquently put it, “The repercussions
of cutting or losing adult education would extend far beyond the staffs and
students at the schools. Many local businesses, such as pharmacies, hire
students who have been certified by adult school skill centers. High school
dropouts return to adult school to get their diplomas. Eliminating adult
schools would diminish the workforce. And people who make less money pay less
in taxes, they spend less, and they often have to depend more on government to
meet their basic needs.”
I’m proud to say that in
Culver City we understand the value of adult education and our board has done
all we can to maintain a full complement of quality adult school programs
available to those, like yourselves, who value self-improvement. We know that we have an obligation to each of
you and I’m proud to say that this board has made good on that obligation.
In return, I am asking
each of you to do something very important for us, something that will make
this financial sacrifice well worth the cost: Do not let today’s diploma
signify the end point in your learning.
Use the degree that you have attained over the past years in Culver City
to serve as a springboard towards work that you can do to improve the lives of
your family, your neighbors, and the entire Culver City community. Most importantly, instill in your kids and
other kids who you meet the values that you have shown: intelligence,
perseverance, and a love of learning, so that they may permeate our culture and
improve our community. If each of you
did that, then the investment that we have made in you will come back to Culver
City multiplied many times over. And the
next time that someone asks me why I choose to be a teacher, I will have a new
list of names to add to my answer.
Congratulations to all.
Culver City Middle School
Good morning.
Go back with me to June 21st,
1996. It was a Friday morning, just like
today. It was 10:30 out here at the
football field and Culver City Middle School was about to begin their 8th
grade promotion on a steaming hot day.
Mr. Nazz and the band played pomp and circumstance while all of the
students filed onto the field. A few
students spoke and a few adults spoke, but none of the students were really
listening to what any of them had to say.
They then started calling names and just over 400 students crossed this
stage to varying amounts of applause. It
was just like all the ceremonies that had taken place before it and all of
those that have taken place since except for one important thing.
One of the students
walking across this stage on that day was me.
I was a pretty self-assured kid, I knew that I wanted to be a
teacher. I knew that I loved music and
wanted to study it more in high school and beyond. I knew that doing well in school and going
off to college, ideally far, far away from my parents, was important to
me. But what I didn’t know, couldn’t
have known on that Friday morning was that just 16 years later I would be up
here on the stage as the Culver City School Board President speaking to all of
you. It is only 50 feet from your chairs
to my chair over there, but it is a significant 50 feet.
Graduation speeches have
to have 2 components or they are really not graduation speeches. First they must include a quote from some
well-respected academic leader. I have
chosen today to quote from that revered theologian, Michael Jordan, arguably
the best basketball player and one of the best athletes of all time. When asked about why he was such a successful
athlete, Michael said, “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've
lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning
shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that
is why I succeed.” Wow, he’s smarter
than those old nike commercials made him seem.
Like every one of you, like
the best basketball player of his era, I have seen challenges throughout my
life. In elementary school at El Rincon,
I was found to have a speech impediment and given sessions with a speech
therapist in an attempt to correct it. Given
that I have a few more sentences here, hopefully it worked. When I was in 7th grade I almost
failed Algebra. I was always a really
good math student, but once my teacher, Mr. Tobias, started using letters to
represent numbers, I was completely lost and failed my first test. And as I was sitting here for my 8th
grade promotion, all I could think about was the fact that my close-knit group
of friends, who had all been together since kindergarten, was getting split up
as we were all going to different high schools.
We all have challenges,
failures, things that could derail the trajectory of our lives. But what Michael Jordan tells us, is that it
is only through the attempt that we can chance success. The person who struggles in algebra, but
takes the test anyway is the only one who has a chance of passing it. The person who misses over 9000 shots is the
only one who can score over 32,000 points.
And the person with a speech impediment can be given an opportunity,
only 16 years after he himself was a graduate, to speak at graduation.
That brings us to the
second requirement for all graduation speeches, they must include a message,
some piece of advice that I pass on to you.
Mine is simple: Be like Mike.
Don’t allow your fears to stop the attempt at something great. Be willing to fail, and fail big, in order to
get equally big successes. And begin
contemplating your best graduation speech now, because no one knows which of
you will be up here 16 years from now.
Congratulations to all the
graduates and best of luck in high school.
Culver City High School
Good evening.
Last month I went to Washington DC to visit my sister, Tania
(Culver City High School Class of 2004), and celebrate with her and my family
as she graduated from graduate school. On
the second day of my whirlwind trip through our capitol, we visited the new
Martin Luther King memorial, complete with a massive recreation of King’s
likeness emerging from an ivory white mountain and dozens of quotes (both
famous and more obscure) from his many writings and speeches. I was especially
drawn to one written in Alabama in 1963 that said, “Injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly.”
I am of the strong belief that our society has for a very long
time been broken. Each of us looks out
for ourselves, for our family, and for our friends, but we collectively have
not yet learned the importance of looking out for those who we do not know,
taking action against injustices which don’t affect us. King’s quote about mutuality and indirect
connection, therefore, truly spoke to me.
However, there was another reason why I was drawn at that time to this
particular lesson. The day I arrived,
President Obama made one of the most historic statements of his presidency when
he declared with little prompting and great political risk during an election
year that he supported marriage equality for members of the gay and lesbian
community. His decision and the impact that it will have on our country and our
politics was weighing on my mind throughout the weekend.
Every single person comes to the table with biases and prejudices
that cause us to simultaneously fight for our rights and deny them to others.
Imagine a person who has had to deal with a lifetime of religious intolerance
and then, when finally gaining acceptance, dares to judge the religious
practices of others. Or the member of a racial minority group who after years
of struggling for basic civil rights looks down upon the immigrants who are
fighting for the same thing. This is natural and widespread. But the smart
leaders, those who really understand the long-term impact of their actions,
know that the words of the Industrial Workers of the World (the “wobblies”)
ring true: “an injury to one is an injury to all.” If those around you are
suffering from unjust treatment, then you are suffering too from living in a
world that treats people unjustly. The highest form of social activism, in my
opinion, is that which occurs when the activist has nothing personally to gain
but a better community to pass on to the next generation.
Today, all of you will take an important official step into
adulthood. Today is a joyous occasion,
one that should be celebrated. So why
did I decide to leave my happy, inspirational, funny speech at home and instead
decide to use my few moments with the microphone to preach a nearly 50 year old
message? Simple. Our society is broken. We have 43 million people in this country
living in poverty, the most in at least 50 years, but the other 268 million of
us don’t fix it because we’re not living in poverty. In 9 days, student loan interest rates are
set to double, causing the average college student to owe $1000 in additional
payments and affecting nearly every one of you.
But the congress has not acted to keep college semi-affordable because
none of them are themselves a student right now. As I said, our society is broken.
We as a society have not lived up to the expectations of King’s
definition of justice. But there is
hope. The president’s action last month
and again last week in allowing hard-working undocumented students to continue
to live in this country has set a model for how the rest of us must live our
lives. Neither of these decisions
personally impacted the President or his family, but they were done to
alleviate an injury to us all. We must,
all of us, follow in that example if we are to fix the world before us. Looking out only for ourselves, supporting
only what has a direct impact on us, and making decisions primarily based on
the personal potential gain has to be a thing of the past. We, and I’m going to include myself in your
generation even though I’m 12 years older than you really just to make myself
feel better, have a world to save and this is the only way we’re going to do
it. Remember that our reach is beyond
the personal, that our responsibility is beyond the comfortable, that our work
is to help those facing injustice, and that our time starts right now.
Congratulations to the class of 2012 and good luck in all your
endeavors next year.
Karlo Silbiger is the Co-Editory of the Culver City Progress Blog, the President of the Culver City School Board, and the former President of the Culver City Democratic Club.
No comments:
Post a Comment