It is truly an honor to be speaking before you all today. For you underclassmen out there wondering how you can get chosen as a graduation speaker, it is really pretty simple. One, don’t go to any parties in high school. Two, you have to look slightly, but not overly, nerdy. And three, you need to play ultimate frisbee. The so called glamour sports, such as football, basketball, and baseball really don’t have any traction with the voting public. And as an aside, in case you hadn’t heard, the Fieldston ultimate team won the city championship yesterday, defeating Poly 13-3. Well anyway, graduation is such a joyous, festive occasion. Today, our parents overlook all of our mistakes and the hard times we’ve given them the past 18 years because they are exceedingly and blindly proud of us. So now would probably be a good time to ask them for money, before we become broke college students. There are also a lot of grandparents here, in case your parents say no. Grandparents can never say no – isn’t that right Mr. Jordan? While today is certainly a day to celebrate, it is also a day filled with confusion. This ceremony is inherently confusing: it is called both a graduation and, as it says on your programs, a commencement. We are stuck between the end of a long journey and the beginning of an even longer one.
We are told to look forward and think about all of the great things the future holds. But for today, for right now, let’s not celebrate a commencement but rather reflect upon a conclusion, a conclusion to our wonderful, rewarding years at Fieldston.
In many ways, a good school is like a good pizza. Think about it. The campus is the crust, the students are the cheese, and the teachers are the sauce. At Fieldston, we make a mighty fine pie. The crust is the backbone of the pizza, the foundation of a good pie. It should be crispy and thin, but sturdy enough to serve as a good meeting place for the featured ingredients: the cheese and the sauce. The grand, timeless fieldstone buildings are iconic and the natural beauty, the grassy banks and wooded ways, enrich the learning atmosphere. We take for granted the fact that we can have classes outside under the tree in front of the library and in Howie Waldman’s outdoor classroom behind the library. A good crust enhances the overall pizza-eating experience, allowing the splendid taste of cheese and sauce, student and teacher, to work together seamlessly. The cheese and sauce, as a unit, make the pizza. The students, a savory mozzarella, filled with promise. The teachers, already-ripened tomatoes seeking to season those in their charge. What sets Fieldston apart, above all else, is this cheese-sauce combination, the unique student-teacher relationships that are cultivated on a daily basis. We are not Dominoes, we are not Papa John’s, and we are not Pizza Hut. We are Patsy’s, Keste, and Lombardi’s. We are pizza at its finest.
At Fieldston, we get to know our teachers on so many different levels, in and out of the classroom. What I have found over the past four years is that knowing the teachers as individuals, as people first, heightens the learning experience. Fortunately, at Fieldston, there are so many opportunities to build strong, lasting relationships with teachers. The teachers here wear so many different hats and perform so many different functions that it is easy to see them as ordinary people, and not just as the folks who give you grades that determine your future. In my time at Fieldston, I have spent hours talking to Ms. Yun about tennis and college basketball with Mr. Rosenholtz and Coach Bluth. The three coaches of the ultimate frisbee team, Darren Meyers, Vinni Drybala, and Ben Wearn, are all teachers. I have been fortunate enough to have Mr. Drybala and Mr. Wearn as teachers. Andy Meyers has been my history teacher twice and he was also my college counselor. The list goes on and on. The point is that teachers know us as more than just students and we know them as more than just teachers. They care about us and want us to succeed.
As an example, on a Wednesday night in mid-May, as I was doing my homework, I received a call from Mr. Drybala. He said that he was going to be at my house in a minute and that I should meet him outside because he had to give me something. Needless to say, I was surprised and a little bit worried. What could he possibly be bringing me? I assumed it had something to do with ultimate frisbee. Mr. Drybala is one of the coaches on the team and I am one of the captains. I called one of my co-captains, Eli Rosenthal, to see if he knew what Mr. Drybala was delivering. He had not a clue. So, unsure of what was about to happen, I stepped outside my front door when Mr. Drybala pulled up. In his hands was not a frisbee or a stack of papers. He was holding a pizza. But not just any pizza – it was a Frank Pepe’s pizza. For those of you who do not know, Frank Pepe’s is widely regarded as the best pizza in New Haven, Connecticut. Recently, they opened up a restaurant in Yonkers, which is where Mr. Drybala got it. He was in Yonkers buying pet supplies when he got a craving for pizza. At Frank Pepe’s, you can only order pies, not slices. So Mr. Drybala bought a whole pie and needed a fellow Riverdalian to eat it with, thus explaining why he was outside my house with a pizza. Anyway, we devoured the exquisite pie, talking about frisbee and school in between bites. I can’t imagine that teachers anywhere else would do this. At Fieldston, teachers don’t just nourish the mind. They actually nourish. And yes Mayor Bloomberg, pizza is nutritious.
But Fieldston is more than just food. On Community Day in April, my session was about the New York State Association of Independent Schools self-study with Dean of Faculty Kate Reynolds. Every 10 years, the school must evaluate itself in order to be re-accredited as a New York State independent school. We talked about the school’s mission statement, a quote from founder Felix Adler, which reads, “The ideal of the school is to develop individuals who will be competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.” While I wholeheartedly agree that a school should develop leaders who will make the world a more ethical place, I believe a school, our school, should and could do more. This past semester, I participated in City Semester, a new interdisciplinary program for juniors and seniors that uses New York City, the Bronx in particular, as its classroom. City Semester took fieldtrips to Hunts Point, the Grand Concourse, West Farms, and other neighborhoods in the South Bronx that are geographically very close to Fieldston, but, in so many ways, worlds apart. As a result of participating in this program, I came to the conclusion that the mission statement was missing something: in order to change our environment, we first need to be cognizant of our environment, to appreciate it, understand its nuances, and how it shapes us. We have to care about it as passionately as Mr. Meyers and the other members of the City Semester faculty do. To change the environment, we have to experience it.
And so, Class of 2012, as our high school careers come to a close, I am confident we have been given the tools to change and improve our environment. But as we move forward in life, let us not forget that as Fieldston graduates, we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Indeed, we are part of the Fieldston pizza pie, and no matter how you slice it, it’s a pie with just the right spice, just the right toppings. It leaves a great taste in one’s mouth, one we will never forget. One we will cherish wherever life takes us. Thank you.
