Graduation 2010
Ms. Geryk
Dr. Hajir
Other members of the Regional School Committee, which we are honored to have with us for the first time at our graduation ceremony;
ARHS Faculty/Staff
Parents/Guardians
Family and Friends
Graduates of the Class of 2010
It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the 146th graduation of Amherst Regional High School.
Tonight’s ceremony is intended to celebrate our graduates and their accomplishments....
...and, at the same time, acknowledge the contributions of all Amherst Regional Public School faculty and staff for their work on behalf of the graduates across the last 12 years...
...and, to that end, we have invited representatives from all our sending elementary schools and middle school to be with us on the stage this evening...
...their presence, along with the HS faculty, hopefully reminds you that....
...for your entire school career...
...from the first day in kindergarten where a teacher took you gently by the hand and showed you which cubby was yours...
...to last week when other teachers coaxed you to the finish line of your last papers and exams...
...you have been enveloped by adults with a deep investment in your success....
...But, before I introduce our invited guests, a word about the ARHS faculty and staff...
....these are the adults who, for the last four years, have shepherded you through the intricacies of the Krebs Cycle, the Constitution, quadratic equations, and the right way to hit both a note and a home run...
...and, more importantly, they modeled for you what it is that maturity requires...
....So, at this time, I would ask the ARHS faculty and staff stand and that we acknowledge them with a round of applause...
...now, to our middle and elementary school guests....
...I will read their names, the schools in which they work, their subject area and their years of service to the district.
I would like to start with....
Crocker Farm
Barbara Rothenberg, 1st grade, 36 years
Fort River
Tim Sheehan 11 yrs 2nd grade
Roger Wallace 37 yrs 6th grade
Leverett
Mike DeRosa, After School Director, 14 years
Marks Meadow
Bev Sevier, Special Education, 16 years
Pelham
Rena Moore, Principal, 31 years
Shutesbury
Heather Lobenstine, 3rd/4th Grade, 14 years
Wildwood
Elizabeth Elder, 5th grade, 11 years
Middle School
Esther Haskell, Librarian, 32 years - retiring
Terry Ominsky, Cathy Stangroom, Michaela Tarr, Judy Brick, Andrea Dustin, Cathy Tracey and Connie Cappelli
Leah Haake should have received the United States Army Reserve National Scholar Athlete Award
Margaret Holladay was a National Merit Scholarship Recipient
I’ve done a little calculating and you are my 31st graduating class.
And, by now, after all these years, I know what emotions to anticipate at this time of the year.
...And it is a mixed bag....
On the one hand, amid all the joy and cheers, I am no longer surprised that there is an undercurrent of sadness.
And the sadness comes from the hard reality that, almost overnight, our paths will go from crossing daily to rarely, if ever again.
You will head out and those of us left back at the homestead will, in your rear view mirrors, become smaller and ever smaller.
This is the design...life unfolding as it should...
But it doesn’t make it any easier.
And on the other hand, there is also the joy...
....and much of it is personal.
...your own sense of accomplishment,
....your excitement and anticipation about the next chapter of your life...
... your families’ pride,
But, beyond the personal, there is also the joy that society as a whole starts to feel around this time of year.
If this seems like an odd notion, let me use a baseball image to try and explain.
While, personally, I root for those in Pinstripes and will never - ever carry a passport from The Nation, ’spring training’ hopefully works as a metaphor for all of us...
Like in February and March for fans everywhere, around graduation time, there is a palpable sense of renewal.
Help has arrived. Hope is renewed. The team is replenished.
With the influx of newly-minted adults...smart, energetic, committed to social justice...
....society exhales a bit. Its shoulders relax. And a warm smile starts to crease its weary face...
So, when I look out at you tonight, my personal feelings aside, I’m on to thinking about the collective mark you will make.
...about the ways in which the world will be better for having you in it.
And, I don’t have to speculate.
Your work over the last four years offers some reliable clues...
So, I’d like to take three passes on what I think I know about you and what the world can expect.
Here’s the first...
The other day I was scanning the NPR web site and found a link to an underwater, remotely-operated camera that is trained on BP’s broken oil well.
In real-time, any of us can watch the chilling, underwater reality of oil spewing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico.
And accompanying this link are a variety of estimates of the total amount of oil spilled.
The US Geologic Survey was the most conservative: they put the rate of the spill at 504,000 gallons per day, which -- and I just checked again this morning -- has the total gallons spilled to date at over 21 million.
And, if this isn’t sobering enough, here is a line from a local fisherman who was attending an information session with BP officials. He reminded everyone that:
’....hurricane season begins Tuesday...’
Where, you may ask, is the Class of 2010 in this story?
Well, my thought was that I wanted to write to the British Petroleum CEO and tell him about our nationally-ranked JETS team. And they included...
Surya Anshul Hannah Chloe
Charlie Jeremy Shiyuan
Laura Lauda Spencer
Sonia Eliza Isaac
All ably assisted by Ms. Blauner.
What do I imagine you could do here?
Granted, you might need a few more years of training, but from what I know about the skills you exhibited in the JETS competition...
...which included the ability to collaborate, to think laterally and imaginatively...
...you might just be the ones to anticipate catastrophe and shape technological solutions to prevent them.
...and, more importantly, these are not intellectual habits and dispositions limited to the scientists among us...
...this capacity to challenge complacent thinking and use knowledge imaginatively...
...I’m confident this generalizes well across the class.
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From the bottom of the ocean, I’d like to turn next to life beyond the borders of the United States....
There is ample evidence that you are anything but parochial in your outlook...
... that you are aware of the conflicts and challenges that beset the planet...
Maddie went to Kenya in December...
.....Any number of you were members of a foreign exchange....traveling either to Russia, Germany, France or Spain.
There are active student groups supporting Darfur
You were involved in efforts to build schools in Afghanistan and, in the wake of the earthquake, you supported Haitian relief efforts.
But this year, there was a distinctive addition in this realm.
In the early spring, displayed in our library was Mai Pham’s exhibit which she entitled ’Children of Peace’.
The inspiration for the exhibit was the 2008 work of ARHS’s Darfur advocacy group that collected drawings by Ethiopian children depicting the harsh reality of their daily lives.
Mai, assisted early on by Shirin and later by Shiyuan, widened the scope of this work.
In a two year period, she contacted over 100 non-governmental organizations and was able to secure children’s art work from China, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Palestine, Iran, and Mongolia.
Mai was quoted in the Bulletin as saying that many of these children are voiceless...
...that their stories remain hidden behind the headlines...
...And this project -- of providing voice to the voiceless...
... reflects an enormous empathy, one with the capacity to neutralize boundaries and divisions both near and far...
...At a time in our nation’s history, where war is still seen as part of the answer...
....I can think of no more important capacity to bring to bear on the world.
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And, lastly, I’d like to finish with a comment about you as a class.
I don’t have individuals to single out here. But I do have a generalization that I think holds up.
And it has nothing to do with grades, awards, GPA’s, scholarships, college admissions and any of the other familiar trappings of the moment.
And, in fact, it is useful to put all of this, for the moment, aside.
And, here it is, as simply as I can put it: when someone is in distress, you come forward and let someone know.
I know this because the guidance counselors, those members of the HS’s faculty who provide the first line of support to distressed students, tell me so.
Routinely, they describe for me how their effectiveness is enhanced because some student had the courage to come forward.
I don’t need to list the challenges that people your age face.
But I do want to note something equally obvious: silence and avoidance are alluring....
...and, yet, in difficult moments, you’ve demonstrated that your commitments are authentic and you don’t succumb.
So, if I can go back to society for a second and its weary face, I think of all I know about you, this is the ultimate source of the smile starting to crease it...
...your capacity for courage.
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So, in closing, you are, in many ways and by many measures, an impressive group.
I consider myself fortunate for our paths having crossed.
I wish you all the best.
Thank you.