Taken from Tom Gibian's remarks at the Sandy Spring Friends School End of Year All-School Assembly
This year has gone amazingly fast. This is the fifth time I've been lucky enough to speak at the end-of-year assembly. Our fifth-graders, the masters of the lower school universe, were in first grade, and our seniors--our amazing seniors who are off to college soon--were in middle school the first time I attended this assembly.
So each year I feel like I know you better and each year I feel like I love you more. Looking back, I have talked to you about never giving up, about finding your great natural talent, about recognizing that of God within each other and about pursuing your dreams. (I hope you get a chance to read Lindsay Johnson’s book about that.)
Today I want to talk about how amazing the teachers are at Sandy Spring Friends School.
I have a question for you. Who owns this school? Whose school is it? The families’? The students’? The board’s? The Head of School’s? I’ll tell you whose school it is. It belongs to the teachers. They care about you, they care about this place, they care about scholarship, and they care about each of you finding a path to deeper understanding.
We are a Friends school, and that means something. It means that we value learning and that we value unlearning. What do I mean by unlearning? Think about what Quakers have unlearned. When everyone else said that the King was infallible and appointed by God, Quakers said, no, there is that of God in equal measure in each of us. When Darwin said that species evolve and that the world is older than 6,000 years, that, too, challenged the prevailing understanding of the world. Quakers said “let’s challenge it some more.”
This is exactly what our teachers are doing today with devices, and smart boards and eBooks, occasionally by provoking and always by creating spaces where each voice is heard—the loud ones and the soft ones with equal measure. That is why this is their school, and it is why I respect and admire them so much.
Our way of learning—the Friend’s school way, the Sandy Spring way—doesn’t stop in June and start up again in September. It doesn’t take weekends off. We know that striving, stretching, challenging and questioning are how we change the world. Of course we do more than question. We mix in reflection and we value action, which is also how we express happiness and love. Have a fantastic summer. Be safe. And remember to thank your teachers.