Dear Seniors,

You didn’t have any way of knowing it, but you were my playlist at a huge time in my life. Before our time together, I lived in a sinking city. I jumped around in grade levels and in content, working lots of side gigs trying to figure out what was the best fit for me in this whole “adulthood” thing.

In our class, we departed from fanciful standards-based instruction and data-driven assessment and we explored deeper life. You became academics at the peak of the awful beauty of adolescence. 
I depended on you. I needed your humor, your triumphs, and your struggles. I hope I brought something different to the table. I tried. Each day we were together, I felt alive. Inspired. It’s not something that happens often as the decades pass.
I knew you were a special class, but I confess I underestimated your impact. Something was missing when you went to the next grade. Our merry little band of dreamers broke up, and life wasn’t the same. 
You taught me more than I taught you. 
Working with your creativity and your brilliance made regular public education an unreliable narrator. Grades were rendered irrelevant, in the larger scheme.

For our time together, one was either “there” or not. There wasn’t anything else.
I don’t teach in a classroom anymore. I know that you were irreplaceable. So, now that you are graduating, this is the birth of Possibility. Once you cross that stage, you have officially traversed the first void. You are now free to fill your worlds as you see fit. Make sure you try everything. Never tell yourself that what people planned for you is enough. 
Thank you for the gift of walking a little way with me.
Dream a little dream for me, Class of 2017.