{"id":685,"date":"2012-06-11T23:40:30","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T23:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=685"},"modified":"2012-10-29T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T19:34:31","slug":"class-of-2012-graduation-danny-siegels-inspiring-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2012\/06\/class-of-2012-graduation-danny-siegels-inspiring-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Class of 2012 Graduation: Danny Siegel’s Inspiring Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is truly an honor to be speaking before you all today.\u00a0 For you underclassmen out there wondering how you can get chosen as a graduation speaker, it is really pretty simple.\u00a0 One, don\u2019t go to any parties in high school.\u00a0 Two, you have to look slightly, but not overly, nerdy.\u00a0 And three, you need to play ultimate frisbee.\u00a0 The so called glamour sports, such as football, basketball, and baseball really don\u2019t have any traction with the voting public.\u00a0 And as an aside, in case you hadn\u2019t heard, the Fieldston ultimate team won the city championship yesterday, defeating Poly 13-3.\u00a0 Well anyway, graduation is such a joyous, festive occasion.\u00a0 Today, our parents overlook all of our mistakes and the hard times we\u2019ve given them the past 18 years because they are exceedingly and blindly proud of us.\u00a0 So now would probably be a good time to ask them for money, before we become broke college students.\u00a0 There are also a lot of grandparents here, in case your parents say no.\u00a0 Grandparents can never say no \u2013 isn\u2019t that right Mr. Jordan?\u00a0 While today is certainly a day to celebrate, it is also a day filled with confusion.\u00a0 This ceremony is inherently confusing: it is called both a graduation and, as it says on your programs, a commencement.\u00a0We are stuck between the end of a long journey and the beginning of an even longer one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Danny Siegel delivering his graduation speech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We are told to look forward and think about all of the great things the future holds.\u00a0 But for today, for right now, let\u2019s not celebrate a commencement but rather reflect upon a conclusion, a conclusion to our wonderful, rewarding years at Fieldston.<\/p>\n

In many ways, a good school is like a good pizza.\u00a0 Think about it.\u00a0 The campus is the crust, the students are the cheese, and the teachers are the sauce.\u00a0 At Fieldston, we make a mighty fine pie.\u00a0 The crust is the backbone of the pizza, the foundation of a good pie.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The grand, timeless fieldstone buildings are iconic and the natural beauty, the grassy banks and wooded ways, enrich the learning atmosphere.\u00a0 We take for granted the fact that we can have classes outside under the tree in front of the library and in Howie Waldman\u2019s outdoor classroom behind the library.\u00a0 A good crust enhances the overall pizza-eating experience, allowing the splendid taste of cheese and sauce, student and teacher, to work together seamlessly.\u00a0 The cheese and sauce, as a unit, make the pizza.\u00a0 The students, a savory mozzarella, filled with promise.\u00a0 The teachers, already-ripened tomatoes seeking to season those in their charge.\u00a0 What sets Fieldston apart, above all else, is this cheese-sauce combination, the unique student-teacher relationships that are cultivated on a daily basis.\u00a0 We are not Dominoes, we are not Papa John\u2019s, and we are not Pizza Hut.\u00a0 We are Patsy\u2019s, Keste, and Lombardi\u2019s.\u00a0 We are pizza at its finest.<\/p>\n

At Fieldston, we get to know our teachers on so many different levels, in and out of the classroom.\u00a0 What I have found over the past four years is that knowing the teachers as individuals, as people first, heightens the learning experience.\u00a0 Fortunately, at Fieldston, there are so many opportunities to build strong, lasting relationships with teachers.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In my time at Fieldston, I have spent hours talking to Ms. Yun about tennis and college basketball with Mr. Rosenholtz and Coach Bluth.\u00a0 The three coaches of the ultimate frisbee team, Darren Meyers, Vinni Drybala, and Ben Wearn, are all teachers.\u00a0 I have been fortunate enough to have Mr. Drybala and Mr. Wearn as teachers.\u00a0 Andy Meyers has been my history teacher twice and he was also my college counselor.\u00a0 The list goes on and on.\u00a0 The point is that teachers know us as more than just students and we know them as more than just teachers.\u00a0 They care about us and want us to succeed.<\/p>\n

As an example, on a Wednesday night in mid-May, as I was doing my homework, I received a call from Mr. Drybala.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Needless to say, I was surprised and a little bit worried.\u00a0 What could he possibly be bringing me?\u00a0 I assumed it had something to do with ultimate frisbee.\u00a0 Mr. Drybala is one of the coaches on the team and I am one of the captains.\u00a0 I called one of my co-captains, Eli Rosenthal, to see if he knew what Mr. Drybala was delivering.\u00a0 He had not a clue.\u00a0 So, unsure of what was about to happen, I stepped outside my front door when Mr. Drybala pulled up.\u00a0 In his hands was not a frisbee or a stack of papers.\u00a0 He was holding a pizza.\u00a0 But not just any pizza \u2013 it was a Frank Pepe\u2019s pizza.\u00a0 For those of you who do not know, Frank Pepe\u2019s is widely regarded as the best pizza in New Haven, Connecticut.\u00a0 Recently, they opened up a restaurant in Yonkers, which is where Mr. Drybala got it.\u00a0 He was in Yonkers buying pet supplies when he got a craving for pizza.\u00a0 At Frank Pepe\u2019s, you can only order pies, not slices.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Anyway, we devoured the exquisite pie, talking about frisbee and school in between bites.\u00a0 I can\u2019t imagine that teachers anywhere else would do this.\u00a0 At Fieldston, teachers don\u2019t just nourish the mind.\u00a0 They actually nourish.\u00a0 And yes Mayor Bloomberg, pizza is nutritious.<\/p>\n

But Fieldston is more than just food.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Every 10 years, the school must evaluate itself in order to be re-accredited as a New York State independent school.\u00a0 We talked about the school\u2019s mission statement, a quote from founder Felix Adler, which reads, \u201cThe ideal of the school is to develop individuals who will be competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We have to care about it as passionately as Mr. Meyers and the other members of the City Semester faculty do.\u00a0 To change the environment, we have to experience it.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 But as we move forward in life, let us not forget that as Fieldston graduates, we are part of something bigger than ourselves.\u00a0 Indeed, we are part of the Fieldston pizza pie, and no matter how you slice it, it\u2019s a pie with just the right spice, just the right toppings.\u00a0 It leaves a great taste in one\u2019s mouth, one we will never forget.\u00a0 One we will cherish wherever life takes us.\u00a0 Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is truly an honor to be speaking before you all today.\u00a0 For you underclassmen out there wondering how you can get chosen as a graduation speaker, it is really pretty simple.\u00a0 One, don\u2019t go to any parties in high school.\u00a0 Two, you have to look slightly, but not overly, nerdy.\u00a0 And three, you need to play ultimate frisbee.\u00a0 The so called glamour sports, such as football, basketball, and baseball really don\u2019t have any traction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[33,285],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/DSC01739.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":695,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions\/695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}