ISW Science Teacher Rebecca Lloyd delivered these remarks at 8th Grade Celebration on Friday, May 30, 2014.
A few weeks back, the stars aligned and I got to drive into Martinsburg with three lovely young ladies. And, because we buck social convention and thumb our noses at rules of polite conversation, we talked about religion, and then moved briefly onto politics. And I said to those lovely ladies then that I am not a student of politics, I am a student of science because I see politics as the study of people, and sometimes I find it hard to see the miraculous in people. I can see the miracle in a seed. In the movement of our solar system. In the perfect geometric pattern of a forming mineral. But people – I can struggle with.
But you guys, with your foibles and your eccentricities and your compassion and your unbridled enthusiasm for everything from kitty pictures to classic rock to catching simulated circuits on fire make it relatively easy for someone like me to see your “miraculous”.
You, especially, my soon-to-be-non-middle-schoolers, project your “miraculousness” in such a way that anyone who cares to look can see it in so much of what you do. It is a kind of unquantifiable quality that only someone who has a pretty strong sense of themselves can possess. Because every one of you has been able to see the miraculous in yourself. You may not even realize it yet, but once you’ve found it there (somewhere in your belly…) you can’t help but show it off a bit. And y’all do…you positively shine.
What excites me about you five is that you have found your way through middle school and are now emerging on the other side with the knowledge that you are a miraculous being. Even if you have never actually said to yourself, “Self, you are a miracle,” your actions and your attitude and your commitment to realizing everything you can be reveals that you know that you have something worth sharing with the world. And to be in that position as you enter high school is a very cool. You are in a position to take advantage of the amazing opportunities you are going to be offered, and to explore all that makes you miraculous, and to start to channel those qualities into deeper endeavors that will shape the world in which you live.
But. Even more than all of that, what settles into my heart and warms up my tummy is the knowledge that you not only see the miraculous in yourselves, but you see it in the world around you. Again, you may not even be aware of it, but your interactions with other people (usually…) reveal that you understand that they, too, are miraculous beings. And your desire to learn and to explore and to laugh with delight reveals that you understand something about this universe that some adults don’t even get yet; that it is…miraculous. You revel in the workings of this world.
I have seen y’all with your heads huddled together around wires trying to unravel the same mysteries that Einstein grappled with, and I’ve seen you giggle yourselves breathless being a colon and an esophagus and a rectum passing newspaper through a digestive tract, and I’ve seen you chase a big black plastic bag around the school yard as it rose above your heads, and I’ve heard you quietly speak to one another with kindness and understanding. You know that this world is (to borrow from Dr. Who) so much stranger, so much darker, so much madder and so much better than what you can see right now. That is what’s really exciting about your position right now. You are a miraculous being, taking another giant step out into this miraculous world, and you know it. And I could not be any more proud and excited for you.