Graduation, 2026
My favorite day of the school year: graduation. An experience that embodies the essence of defiant humanism. It is often experienced from the outside, and lived from the inside.
First, congratulations to the Class of 2026!
Congratulations to those who saw their “destination as a deadline.” (Noah Kahan)
Congratulations to those who started “the race until after it had begun, and only started this race because [you] thought it would be fun. Keep singing your heart, it don’t matter what they say…Go ahead and make it mean something.” (Proxima Parada)
Congratulations to those who have taken a resilient stance out of necessity.
Congratulations to those principled dissenters of the educational industrial complex.
Graduation remains the quintessence of community at its best. I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that if you look for it, you will find the day mirrors what schooling and education can be.
Graduation unfolds as a shared ritual of belonging and becoming, where affirmation lingers, and a hopeful vision of humanity takes shape. Nervousness, a lot of smiles, laughter, tears, swelling pride, and deep gratitude are woven throughout the day.
Collective stories are told and retold. In this space, wisdom is reciprocal, moving in both directions: Experienced voices (teachers' and administrators’ speeches) offer reflections shaped by time and practice, while graduates, in their speeches, respond with insight and wisdom shaped by their lived experiences and aspirations.
After almost 29 years and counting in education, graduation continues to remind me to center our humanness. Actually feeling our life as it happens.
The joy of feeling alive is not about “am I happy all the time?” but “do I feel awake and connected to my own life?” Graduation is an invitation to find our way back to life and schooling.
Life has gradually moved online, and education has become AI-adjacent, sort of but not entirely, leading to what has been described as the "enshittification" and the erosion of other things good and beautiful. We don't have to automate ourselves. We have the right and responsibility to preserve the human scale and human-centric behaviors.
As the singer-songwriter Billy Bragg wrote, "Just because you’re going forward doesn’t mean I’m going backward.”
The good news is we can find our way back to life and schooling wherever we are. What we practice becomes who we are. What we embody spreads to others. The character of our actions shapes the systems we aim to create. I hope and trust we continue being interested in being a person and human.