Principal
Message

Good afternoon again.

Graduates; you’re almost there. A few words from me and then it is diploma time.

At 7:25 am yesterday morning I still had not written my speech for today. I was in panic mode. For 10 days I was waiting for a speech theme to pop into my head, waiting for one of those “aha” moments. Each year, it seems I was prepared days in advance of the graduation. Not this time.

Earlier this week my wife had offered up a statement about using failure as the topic after she had read an inspirational story but I quickly dismissed it. I mean, who wants to talk about failure on graduation day?

Then it happened. I was driving to the high school early Saturday morning for the College Board SATs and a song came on the radio. It was the song Collide by pop artist Howie Day. I am sure many of you have no idea who I am talking about, but the kids know.

One of the chorus lyrics played over and over and remained in my head the rest of the morning; “Even the best fall down sometimes.” Wow. There it is. Failure is the theme.

My mind started to race and it all started to make sense. High School isn’t about success. It’s mostly about failing, about falling short, and getting to do it again starting each Monday morning for four years.

I started to peck away at the computer, struggling, my fingers trying to keep up with my heart and brain but now I was focused. I started to relive my own Malden High School experience, as I typed this. Class of 1977; I was cut from the junior varsity basketball team in 10th grade, asked to leave National Honor Society at the end of 11th grade, and I did not receive one single award, not one scholarship or acknowledgment at senior awards night. That’s a lot of failure right there.

Then I started to think about today and tomorrow, and our day to day lives at Malden High School. As educators, parents, coaches, and friends, we are really in the failure business, not the success business.

Our job is to teach, correct, admonish, discipline, love, and to inspire, but we usually do our best work when kids are down, when there has been failure, loss, and dejection, usually after a 48 on the test or a strikeout that cost your team the game. For every student here today with perfect attendance, perfect SAT scores, or a straight A average, there are hundreds of others who have fallen short. This graduating class of 2008 has failed many times, and will continue to fail, over and over again. But this is when it gets good, encouraging for them and inspirational for us.

This is why many of us love what we do, love the kids, and have hope for the future. Over the past 4 years this class of 2008 has shown resiliency. I am confident they will continue to get up, because that’s who they are.

Members of this class came to love after they had been hated and they helped each other get up after being knocked down. In defeat they looked forward, not back.

These students will continue to rely on their character and morals to get them through the difficult times that predictably will come.

This class, in particular, has shown the ability to learn from mistakes, to improve, to grow.

The Class of 2008 has succeeded, remarkably in many cases, and will continue to succeed, but only after failure. That is what sets them apart, what makes them special, individually and collectively. In the words of songwriter Howie Day;

“Even the best fall down sometimes”.

Congratulations and God bless you all.