Remarks from Dean Elizabeth Moje
We need you so, so desperately in this new world. I'm really proud that we could have been part of your lives, whether it was for one year or four years, or eight years, we're so happy that we had the chance to learn with you, from you, and to contribute to your learning and to what you will take forward into a world. We're really, really proud, we're really, really honored. We've seen the ways that you have changed our Marsal Family School of Education and our campus. We've seen the ways that you have changed classrooms, and we have seen the ways that you will make a difference.
Remarks from student speaker Justin Villanueva
Whatever it is that you aspire to do, go for it. Go for whatever it is that's burning in your heart because we need you to do it. The world needs more than just for you to be gainfully employed. It needs you to follow your passions. But most importantly, we need you. But most importantly, we need your love for education. So class of 2020, I would like to say thank you to each and every one of you and advance. Thank you for the hope and inspiration that you have given. Thank you for the life-changing time that you will give to your students.
Remarks from student speaker Christina Morton
I have a home here too, at this University, on this campus in the Marsal Family School of Education. We had to build it though, over time and with great care. I say "we" because I didn't do it by myself. No, that would be impossible. It took all of us. See, we had to establish a firm foundation, break walls down, strip everything until all was exposed. We needed to recover what was lost, reinvent, and repurpose. Leave the door open to new possibilities while screening out the hate and doubt, fear, and insecurity. Then we furnished it with hope, drew murals of our collective history and sighed contentedly in the shelter of community. Yes, I have a home here too.
Remarks from invited speaker Christopher Paul Curtis
These are times that a grizzled old writer of fiction on his best, most creative day could never have imagined. In fact, there are few people alive who have experienced anything as globally memorable as the pandemic that is hulking over our earth and our lives at this moment.
And you have chosen this very time to graduate from the University of Michigan. Yikes!
Since 1995 when I autographed one of my books for a teacher for the first time I have written, “I am such a fan of educators.” That sentiment is just as strong and alive twenty-five years later. If I had been able to speak to you in person I would have pointed out there is no profession in the University of Michigan’s catalog that will impact as many human beings’ lives as powerfully and significantly as the one you have chosen. Certainly there will be nurses, doctors, scientists, mathematicians, lawyers, sociologists, and a plethora of students from other disciplines who are graduating at this same time who will make a difference in the world, but their contributions will pale in comparison to yours, for they do not literally have the future in their hands as you do. You will touch more lives than any of the rest of us. You will truly be the first responders in the lives of so many of your charges, and you’ve done this because some teacher in your past affected your life so positively that you looked at her or him and thought, “Wow, that’s what I want to do.”
And you dedicated yourself to accomplishing that desire.
And you have succeeded. At one of the top universities in this country.
You should be very, very proud of yourself.
But fear not, for you shall be amply rewarded for your choice. In addition to the six-figure salary, the light, carefree hours, the undying gratitude parents, administrators, and politicians will shower upon you daily, many of your students will eventually recognize how fortunate they have been. One of them you might or might not remember will come up to you and say, “You changed my life.”
And your heart will melt.
And you will know the struggles you have and will go through were well worthwhile.
As a couple of very insightful, wise women once said of a group of graduating education students, “Empowered by your degree as well as by the knowledge you have gained, you are prepared to go out and change the lives of children and families. As teachers and education leaders you will create the lessons and stories to guide others along their own paths of personal development, paying forward what has been imparted to you during your time at the U of M. just as this special place will remain in your heart as you stand alongside me and other lifelong Wolverines, you will become a special part of someone else’s story.”
As a grizzled old author of fiction once said, “Thank you Mr. Alums, Miss Henry, Miss Dimmock, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Greene, Mr. Abrams. Other than my parents you and many of my other teachers were the adults who meant the most to me. Without you I would not be the writer I am today. Thank you.”
Congratulations on your impressive accomplishment, now go take care of business,
Christopher Paul Curtis
“Kenny, things ain’t ever gonna be fair. But you just gotta understand that’s the way it is and keep on steppin’”
The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963