Jordan-Matthews 2010 Commencement Speaker Rose Pate's Text

Distinguished guests, fellow faculty, family and friends: thank you for being here to join in honoring the class of 2010. Seniors, you are minutes away from becoming graduates, so I'll be mercifully brief.

You probably think the last four years have been about tests and projects, rules and attendance, counting the days until you're free. Many of you, in your more frustrated moments, have wailed, "When am I ever going to need to know this? Why do I have to learn Beowulf, the quadratic formula, the periodic table or the major programs of the New Deal?"

I'll confess something: some of you will never have to name the noble gases in order of their atomic numbers. So what have we been doing since August of 2006? Has there been a vast conspiracy to ruin your teenage years, holding you captive at pencil-point till all the bubbles are filled in correctly?

It's time to reveal the mystery: Behold, the hidden curriculum! Yes, we the staff of Jordan-Matthews have a secret plan for you, one that we've kept concealed because, until the brink of adulthood, you haven't been ready to understand. But since I have the privilege of giving the Last Lesson you'll have here, I'm going to spill the beans.

For lots of you, this community will be your long-term home, even if you go off to college—or off to war—first. And when that happens, our relationship with you will change. We won't be grading your tests, or writing you up for skipping, any more. We will all be living and working together. Some of you will be fixing our cars. Others will be taking care of us when we get sick. A few special ones, dear to our hearts, will teach our children. But whether you're filling our orders at a local restaurant or filling our prescriptions, our lives will be connected.

We want those lives, yours and ours, to be good. For that to happen, you have to have good people. So how do we help you become not just smarter students who know more stuff, but better human beings? Here is the heart of the "hidden curriculum."

In math, you've learned there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that practice really can make perfect. In science, you've learned you are connected to all living things, and that your actions affect the world around you in ways that are not obvious in the moment. In social studies, you've learned that everything has a cost, especially freedom, and that some ideas are worth dying for. In literature, you've learned courage and compassion from characters no less real because they are imagined, as you've floated on a raft down the Mississippi, stood up in a courtroom balcony in Maycomb, Alabama , and heard your dying father call your name in a bunk in Auschwitz. And in career classes, and the arts, and even in PE, you've learned that you can achieve more working together as a team than you can on your own.

But the class of 2010 has had another lesson, one no other class before you had the chance to learn. So what did you take away from the graduation project, aside from new skills and new knowledge? Yes, there have been the obvious time-management lessons preparing you for college and work, but this experience has fundamentally been a crucible that has shown you and those around you what you are really made of. How did you respond when we asked you to step outside the boundaries of your experience and do extra work, something new, something challenging?

For some of you, it's been pretty uncomfortable. You kicked and balked, whined and sulked. Looked for loopholes and shortcuts. Acted, in short, like teenagers. You got through it, but it was, in coaching terminology, an ugly win. Still, if the only thing you take away from the graduation project is a deep certainty that when a teacher says you have to paraphrase, she's not kidding, it's been time well spent.

But for most of you, there was a moment in the process when, like a swimmer or runner, you broke through the wall of pain and began to have fun. I could see it happen when I asked how your project was going, and I saw what I came to call "the smile." The smile that meant you had passed the uncertainty and fear and had begun to enjoy what you were doing. The smile that meant your mentor was no longer just another grownup trying to control you, but was a friend whose company you enjoyed. The smile that meant you were proud of what you had done, and couldn't wait to tell others about it.

One of the things we know about how the brain works is that we learn the most when we are on the edge, on the border between what we know, and what we don't. The graduation project is designed to put you on the edge, to maximize learning. "So what?" you say. So I learned to take pictures, or make a wedding cake, or plan a party at the retirement home? How is this going to help me get a job? How is this going to make me a better person?

Fast forward a few years. The preacher comes to you and says, "We really need a Sunday School teacher for the third grade class—how about you?" The PTA president says, "Could you be the chair of the fall festival to raise money for the playground?" Your boss says, "I need someone to go to a training seminar on our new software, and then come back and teach the rest of the staff—are you ready to take that step?"

What will you say? Will you say, "I can't. I'm scared. I'm too afraid of something new, of something that will stretch me past where I'm comfortable." Or will you say, "Yes, I'm willing to take a risk. Yes, I'm ready to take on something new. Yes, I want to make my church, my workplace, my community better."

I'm supposed to end with a challenge, to inspire you to go forth and do great things, making your mark on the world. But I'm not going to ask you to live a great life—just a good one. And when things get tough (and they will) and you have to step back up on that edge and deal with whatever crisis comes your way, whether it's that the plant is moving to China and taking your job with it, or your mother has breast cancer, and needs you to help her get through chemotherapy, remember there was a moment in time when you thought you couldn't do it, and then you did.

Want to know what a good life looked like? Just ask someone about my friend and colleague Christy Dowd. Many of you didn't know her well, but I've never had the privilege to work with anyone who cared more about children. She did her job and lived her too-short life according to the principle best expressed in a major work of world literature: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

"Now it's time to say goodbye, To all our company." You are way too young to remember the original Mickey Mouse Club, but that song closed the end of every show, and I sang it along with the Mousekateers. I kind of think that another five-year-old, who was growing up here in Siler City, while I was watching that TV in Alabama, sang that song, too. I've kidded her for years that we were separated at birth, and threatened to make a bulletin board of our 1975 graduation pictures, I in my Farrah Fawcett shag, and she with her "natural." But I guess I've waited too long, because she's leaving us. So when you shake Ms. Boone's hand as you leave the platform, remember that she never gave up on you, never lost patience with you, never stopped believing that each of you has the power to lead a good life. And remember, Jets, as Johnny said to Ponyboy, "Stay gold." Thank you.