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Pay Attention – Grad Speech

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I didn’t read it all word for word, and I ad libbed an ending to coincide with a couple references by student speeches and a video shared before I got up to speak… but here is my last grad speech, titled ‘Pay Attention’ as it was written.

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Yesterday was Father’s Day… and yes, I’m keenly aware that starting my speech with that suggests I wrote this speech as last minute as many of our grads completed their assignments over the last 4 years… but I digress. 

Yesterday was Father’s Day and I was out for lunch with my family. Two tables next to us showed me a stark contrast in how families connect or disconnect. Both of these tables had someone my age at them. One of them, a woman, was alone with her elderly father, the other, a man, was with both of his senior parents. 

The woman was leaning forward and listening intently to her dad. Juxtaposed to this, the man had his phone in his left hand for the entire meal, and barely ever looked away from it. 

He scrolled, and typed, scrolled and typed, and even when his parents spoke to him, he didn’t look up when he responded. His parents had to wait for him to finish his meal to order dessert, but he didn’t speed up his eating, he focussed far more on his phone. Two tables, two totally different dynamics. 

We live in an era of distractions. When our attention is elsewhere, it’s not where it should be. 

And with that I’ll address our grads directly: Pay attention to what matters.

You’ve had a rich high school experience with teachers who didn’t just teach you the curriculum, they taught you how to think, how to formulate your ideas, and how to come to your own conclusions about the things that matter in this world.

Don’t pay attention to people who talk about their own truths. Don’t pay attention to AI slop designed to steal your time and attention. Don’t pay attention to extreme political views that are more interested in exciting anger than encouraging understanding. And don’t pay attention to those who profit from division, outrage, or fear.

Instead, pay attention to evidence. Pay attention to people who ask good questions. Pay attention to those who listen before they speak. Pay attention to the people in your life who challenge you to become wiser, kinder, and more courageous.

You’ve had a head start. You’ve been going to school in a community that fosters your individuality; a community that is accepting of different opinions, different perspectives, and let’s face it, different levels of quirkiness. All the while, allowing you to express your true self within a kind and accepting community. Take this with you wherever you go. Be the one who others appreciate, who others admire, and who understands when to speak up and to speak out. 

The reality is that no other school makes you present and voice your views and opinions with authentic discourse more than iHub. And so, you are uniquely skilled to filter the BS that comes your way, to see through insincerity, and to be the one who speaks up and speaks out when no one else will. 

However, it all starts with your attention. 

A few of our former grads came back to talk to you a couple months ago. One of them who is on a sports team training for 20 hours a week and working part time on top of a full-time university course load said that Inquiry Hub prepared her to use her time well, and she’s shocked at how students feel overwhelmed with just their course loads. Another student said her professor complimented her on how good her essay was and she replied, “Really, I think my high school Humanities teacher would have given this a high ‘B’.”

I bring this up because you are headed into new learning opportunities where you can choose to be like other students, or you can design your learning journey like you did here at iHub. And the experience you have can be one driven by your attention, or by distractions. 

Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess. Where you choose to invest it will, in many ways, determine the person you become when you get to my or your parent’s age… You’ve already gotten off to a good start. 

Now I’d like to address the family and friends of our graduates.  The Inquiry Hub staff: our teachers, secretaries, and custodians, have watched these young folks blossom over the past four years. They came to us with unique talents and gifts, and while some of them needed a lot of help to figure out how to thrive at school, some needed no help at all. But no matter their starting point, they have all grown tremendously in ways that are hard to measure. 

You have a lot to be proud of in this group. They have not only thrived at school, they have also thrived in their activities in the community and thrived at work. They have made us so proud of them, and you should be proud too. Think back to what they were like four years ago. 

Pay attention to the things they value and share with you. Watch the way they interact and engage with the world around them. They are wonderful human beings, and while parents can take pride and pat themselves on the back, remember that these young grads are also young adults who deserve to be appreciated for the fine people that they have become. 

Stop and pay attention, and we can see what a community can build when people choose to invest their time, their energy, and their care in one another.

Graduates, in a world where everyone and every deviceis competing for your attention, remember that your attention is your life. Every hour you give away is an hour you never get back. Spend it on people. Spend it on ideas worth wrestling with. Spend it building things that matter.

And to your families: Thank you for giving these graduates your attention long before they ever earned a diploma. They are sitting here today because of countless rides, conversations, encouragements, reminders, sacrifices, and moments that probably seemed ordinary at the time. They weren’t ordinary. They mattered.

So today, celebrate this milestone. Put the phones away and look around this room. Pay attention to these graduates, to your families, and to this moment.

Because years from now, you won’t remember what was on your screen. You’ll remember who was sitting with you, who leant you an ear when you needed someone to listen to you, and who disagreed with you in class, but did so in a way that was respectful. And even if you never do another fishbowl discussion, you’ll remember that Inquiry Hub was the school you chose, you attended, and you gave your full attention to. 

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

The last grad

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I wrote my last Principal’s grad address last night and I’m delivering it tonight. I’m proud to say that since we started our first grad ceremony in 2026, every speech I’ve given has been uniquely written. Nothing is rinsed and recycled. This one is about where we put our attention, and while it’s a bit more preachy than in the past, it is also very much about praising our grads and our school community.

I’m looking forward to my final grad, and I’m happy to say that nothing in this speech is about me. I’ve had my retirement parties and celebrations, and they have been wonderful. Tonight is about our grads at our tiny, unique school, and they deserve all the attention to be on them.

I’ll miss this. I think of all the nostalgic feeling I may have about retiring, the grad is the thing I’ll miss the most. Seeing the culminating event of awkward, young grade 9’s blossoming into amazing young adults is something I cherish every year, and it’s going to be sad seeing the last one end. I honestly haven’t said that about anything else related to retirement. I feel ready to retire and to close this chapter, but I’m really, really going to miss grad.

Fortunately, I know that I’ll be invited back to watch, and I’d love to do so for at least 3 more years (when the current Grade 9’s graduate). Knowing that I’ll have a chance to be in the audience at future grads makes this transition a lot easier.

Writing speeches

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Last Friday my buddy Dave and I delivered speeches that we combined together. At our Principal and Vice Principals association retirement dinner, the tradition is that someone speaks for the retiree, then the retiree speaks. Since we were going to speak for each other, we just went up and took turns.

We came up with a theme: Gratitude, Attitude, and Magnitude. And we took turns talking about each other and ourselves, after thanking people we appreciated the support of, (many of whom were in the room). It was a really fun way to mix it up a bit and I hope we made it entertaining, not just self indulgent.

Now I’ve got one more speech to do before I retire, and that’s to the graduating class at our graduation ceremony. I write a unique speech each year, and try to embed relevance to the current class. What I’m really cautious about is to downplay my retirement. This night is not about me, and should not be about me. So, in a way it’s a bit easier to write than the one last week.

Still, every year I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’ll say to the graduates, and this year seems quite challenging. It’s our smallest grad class in years and if I had to describe them as a group, the thing they have in common is that they are all so different. They get along great, but they really don’t have personalities or interests that are alike in any way.

I’m literally thinking as I write this that the differences are what the speech will focus on: Individuality Within Community. That said, I’ll probably change the topic 5 times before I give the speech in two weeks. I enjoy this process because I enjoy writing. A speech is an opportunity to story-tell. It’s a chance to acknowledge and appreciate others. It’s a way to share values within your community.

Writing speeches is also something I’m going to miss in retirement. Not because I like the limelight, but rather because when I write a speech I find that I am able to consolidate my thoughts and ideas into words in a way that I simply wouldn’t if I didn’t have to write the speech. Speeches to me aren’t just about the external sharing of ideas, they are also about the internal synthesis of my thoughts while I write them.

Going to miss them

We had our grad event last night. Seven performances, mostly from Grade 12’s, and student speeches that left me teary eyed. This one hit me harder than most. These grads feel more like family than students.

I’m realizing that I’ve got some work to do to connect with the other grades next year because it seemed that any time I was out of my office, this was the cohort I gravitated to. Every year seems to offer something a little different. Many students in this group would visit the office almost daily. Grade 12’s need to sign in when they don’t have a first block class, and my secretaries would have full 5 minute conversations with these students. Inevitably I’d get pulled in too.

I get a little nostalgic every year around this time, but I have to say that this grad class was really something special and I’m going to miss them!

Writing a grad speech

It would be easy to repeat a previous speech, but I can’t. It would be easy to get AI to do it for me, but I can’t. I enjoy writing. I like to personalize what I say to a group of grads. I want the message to be uniquely from me.

This year I mixed an unrelated story and a quote together. This made it a lot tougher to do. I think I’ve got something that will work and be appreciated. But in the end our grad is about the kids performing and that’s what students will remember.

A grad speech is a tribute not a lecture. It’s a small part of the celebration… but it’s still something I like to make unique every year, and this year is no exception.

Now and the Future – iHub Grad Address 2024

I can’t describe the joy of participating in grad at Inquiry Hub. These students are amazing. Our student focused show, with performances and videos that highlight the whole school are such a community building and community honouring event. The night warmed my heart, and I teared up more than once.

Here is my grad address. I really don’t have more to say, other than it was an evening that recharged my battery. It reminded me of why I love my job.

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Now and the Future – iHub Grad Address 2024

Greetings Honoured Guests, Parents, Family Members, Teachers, and Students including our very special Grads of 2024.

In your yearbooks, I wrote this as part of my message to you:

Asking questions is key to learning and I think at Inquiry Hub we do a pretty good job of getting students to ask good questions… and then answer them. There is a lot of conversations, dialogue, and debate that happen inside our school walls, and from that students learn not just about things, but they also learn the skills to discuss and negotiate and support their ideas in meaningful ways… and sometimes even to change their minds. A growth mindset is so much better to navigate life with, compared to a fixed mindset.

In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now, outside the walls of our schools, there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary. We need to be resilient when hearing opposing views, and understand that, we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference. When we can’t have conversations with people that have different views, we don’t grow as a culture or as a society.

That was a message for right now. There is so much conflict and strife in the world, and it can sometimes feel a little bleak.

But here’s the thing, I’m really excited about the future our grads have before them. It’s a future that is beyond my ability to predict, but I’m going to try anyway.

Our grads understand how to see the world from multiple perspectives.

You understand the challenges but you are also solution oriented. And you are going to have tools and strategies that no other generation has had. 

Here are four predictions:

  1. You will have better AI than we can imagine. What we think is amazing now will look like child’s play in the future. I didn’t have Google growing up, I had paper encyclopedias. In a few short years the Artificial Intelligence available will look to us now like what an iPhone would be to someone living in the 1920’s. (Oh, and by the way, I did not use AI to write this.)
  2. You will not live in a world that has an energy crisis, or one that harvests natural resources to create energy. Energy will be almost free if not completely free.
  3. You will live longer. Longevity research is reaching a point where more and more healthy years will be added to your life faster than you age.
  4. You will retire sooner. More of your life will be filled by doing want you want to do, rather than what you need to do to work and make an income.

All this to say that while it seems like us old folks have left you a pretty messed up world, we are less than a decade away from some key turning points where you have more freedom and choice, more access to cheap energy, and more free time than we could ever have imagined as recently as when you were in Grade 9.

It’s an exciting time to think about what the future holds, and when I think about you all as creators, artists, thinkers, dreamers, and leaders, I’m excited about your generation building the future I get to grow old in. 

Inquiry Hub isn’t perfect, but it is a very special school. It is a place where our students feel they belong. A place where you get to be courageous learners and leaders, and a place that I hope you carry fond memories from. 

To the class of 2024, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you… and for what you will do to help shape that future. Be brave, be strong, and help build a community where everyone feels they have a place, and a way to contribute. 

Thank you.

Grad Commencement Speech 2023

This was my speech at our Inquiry Hub Secondary Grad. As I mentioned a couple days ago, there were unexpected technical issue, and so I can’t share the video, and I’m just sharing text with slides below. The 4th and 5ht slides were gifs, but I’ve just included still photos. I enjoy writing a new speech each year, and this is my 8th one. While I didn’t share a title for it, it did have a title in my notes. Here is “Technology and Community”, shared Wednesday June 21, 2023 at Inlet Theatre in Port Moody, with the grads and families of Inquiry Hub Secondary School:

It was the summer of 1985.

I was 17, and I got to see a movie called Back to the Future when it was in the theatre, not streaming on Netflix. It’s a story about a boy named Marty who was the same age as me… and about the same age as our grads now. Marty went 30 years into the past and had all kinds of adventures and misadventures.

Then a few years later Back to the Future 2 came out, and this time Marty went 30 years into the future… all the way to October of 2015. That future he supposedly went to was almost 8 years ago now.

In Marty’s version of 2015 Nike had shoes with power laces that tightened themselves. There were 3D hologram advertisements, hoverboards, and of course, flying cars. While Nike has made a version of the power laces, we still have a way to go before any of these technologies are as accessible and pervasive as in Back to the Future 2’s version of 2015, and I’m not sure we’ll even get there by 2045?

It’s hard to imagine these things when personally, I’m still waiting for a phone battery that will last me a whole day.

I remember reading that we tend to overestimate the changes that will happen in the short term and underestimate the changes that will occur in the long term. That may be so, but what we define as short and long term now tends to be shrinking. I’m not sure we are going to see hovercrafts and flying cars circulating in our communities any time soon, but…

I do marvel at how fast technology is moving, and the world of Artificial Intelligence is quickly advancing from being good at playing board games and doing math, to doing some really interesting things.

We have AI tools that create amazing art,

write computer code,

and even write grad speeches… and while I wrote these words myself, ((really)), many of the visuals I’m sharing are the product of AI. My point though is that if I told you just 4 years ago, when our grads were in Grade 9, that we would have this technology before they graduated, you probably wouldn’t have believed me.

Our grads are headed into a world where, just in the last few months, job descriptions that have been the same for years are now being redefined. A world where they will probably get into automated cars that drive themselves. And a world where living to be 100 could be as common as living to 65 years old today.

I’ve worked for the same company for 25 years now… I am not sure many, if any, of our grads are headed on that same path. Times change. Technologies change. Jobs change. How we interact with the world changes.

But I hope one thing stays the same. I hope that our grads remain as kind, accepting, and caring as they are today. I hope that they find a community of people to grow old with that is as wonderful as they are… and remember, you are going to grow really, really old! One of the pleasures of working at a small school is getting to know students well, and getting to really see how students interact with each other in a quaint, caring environment. Our grads are fun, quirky, and unique. They want to do well in school and they are willing to work hard. For some of them this came easy. For others, they were initially dragged along by their peers and teachers, but they are ‘there’ now.

That’s the amazing thing about the journey through high school, it’s a hero’s journey. It’s not an easy path, it’s not supposed to be.

On an Inquiry Hub student’s journey through school, we ask them to do really challenging things… from Mr. Soiseth’s Philosophy classes, to cross-grade Shakespearian acting and filmmaking, to designing their own year-long courses. It’s not unusual for a student to spend significantly more time on an inquiry than they are expected to. And our students leave school doing more presentations in a year than most students do in their entire high school career. Even here we see the respect and kindness of our students, who make an excellent audience and provide considerate and thoughtful feedback to each other.

Technology can change us. It can change our careers. It can change our lifespan. It doesn’t have to change what kind of people we are, and how we treat one another. I’m proud of who our grads are today, and you should be too.

It doesn’t matter what job they end up with, if they will be driving flying cars, or buying their kids hoverboards in the future. What matters is that they will be a positive influence on their community. They will be thoughtful, kind, and considerate of others. They will be the kind of people you want to be around. And that, that is the highest compliment I can give them.

Honoured guests, parents, teachers, and students, I present to you Inquiry Hub’s esteemed and wonderful graduating class of 2023!

Grad speech

For our small school we invite the entire community to watch our grad. So since our first grad in 2016, I’ve written a completely different grad speech each year. I have a former student who has seen at least the last 5, and he is very honest about what he thinks of them… and I value his feedback.

This year I’m struggling with the topic. I usually have the frame of the speech completed by now, if not the whole thing written. I’m still deciding on my theme. So, tonight I write, tomorrow I rehearse, and Wednesday I am on stage sharing it. I don’t mind a tight timeline, but I do wish I was a little further along right now.

In the end, it’s not about me, it’s about the grads… I just want to share something not too long, and respectful to our grads and our community. And maybe, if I’m lucky, get a small chuckle or two. Wish me luck!

Grad Month

Today I went to my youngest daughter’s university graduation. Earlier this week I went to our Indigenous Grade 12 Honouring Ceremony, and in two weeks I have two more school grads to go to.

I am not big on pomp and ceremony, but I do like graduation celebrations. It’s a rite of passage, an honouring of the work a student has done, a recognition of accomplishment. It doesn’t matter if a student eked out a pass or graduated with honours and distinction, they did what they needed to do to cross the stage. They get to say, ‘This part of my journey is complete.” And family are there to join in the celebration. Their peers are there crossing the stage with them.

Speeches are often filled with cliches, even the good ones, but that ok. The event is not about the people who get to speak, it’s about honouring the people who completed a task they set out to do, and who are moving on to new adventures. But first they get to cross the stage, they get to shake some hands and be told ‘Congratulations’, and they get to be the center of positive attention.

If I could share one thing with grads, it’s to enjoy the moment. It’s just a single moment to celebrate a long journey, so enjoy it, and feel… actually feel the sense of accomplishment. You did it, and now you get to cross the stage. It doesn’t matter what’s next in that moment, it only matters that you set out to do something and you did it. You graduated!

Grad celebration

Tonight I’m off to Victoria for my daughter’s university convocation tomorrow. Then on Wednesday evening my high school graduation ceremony is combined with our school award ceremony in an event we call iHub Annual (named so by a former student). Being a small school, we started this tradition in order to create a bigger audience for our grads, but this year we are only inviting grads and their families and we are hosting a YouTube Live event for the rest of the students. This might become our new way of running the event from now on.

Graduation is a special event for students. However, I didn’t go to my first two graduations. I was undergoing nose surgery for my high school grad, straightening a break that happened in a water polo game. Then my first university graduation happened almost 3 years after it should have and I decided not to go because I literally would have known no one else in the grad class. I hadn’t even set foot on the campus for two years at that point. Oddly enough, this delay was also for water polo, I took my final courses at a different university so that I could play varsity water polo for a year, then I ended up not applying for graduation… not knowing that this was necessary.

The first time I crossed the stage was for my UBC education degree with my new wife in the audience. Then she was there again with me when I crossed the stage in Eugene Oregon for my Masters. When I got my first university degree I shared, “I’m done with school, never again.” When I finished my Education degree, I declared again to anyone who would listen, “I’m done with school, never again.” Since finishing my masters, I haven’t said it… because that phrase doesn’t seem to be something I follow through with as intended. 🤣

Despite missing my first two grads, I understand the significance of the celebration. I know that for students it’s an important day. The end of high school, the end of a hard earned degree, these are big transition moments in a students life, a time to both look forward and back. It’s a time of trepidation and of excitement. It’s as right of passage ceremony that signifies the end of one part of a student’s life and the start of a new adventure.