To all our special guests, faculty, staff, administration, parents, friends, and family members, whether here or online watching live – I offer you my thanks for your pride and presence as we come toward the close of this, our 32^nd commencement exercises for the class of 2025.  Thank you, Mr. Taylor, for the introduction and your capable shepherding at this event.  Thank you also to Mr. MacBride, our acting principal, for all of his efforts to weave student voice and bring us to a graduation ceremony filled with joy and accomplishment.

Our additional gratitude to our past, current, and future board members who are present here or watching online today, led by Board Chair Jim Simmons.  Thank you for your continued courage and leadership in guiding the important strategic work of the school and for your partnership is guiding our achievements.

Mr. Shousky, even though our fear of advance physics is profound, you brought us a clear message of the care and thoughtful regard for these students to which we all aspire.  Thank you!

And, Ms. Bechdoldt, the music inspires us again as always – emanating from your guiding hand and delivered with heart through the skill and talent of the student you nurture.  Thank you! 

Whether here in this auditorium or watching from home, we thank the entire staff of ASW, for your continued and unwavering dedication.  This graduation is the product of many hands from departments across the school. Faculty, counselors, administration, and a wide range of support staff are true Warriors in all that they do to protect and nurture our students each day.  I thank you all for your continued and unwavering dedication to the core values we all hold in such high regard.

We know as an international community that many of our graduates have had other schooling experiences before joining us here in Warsaw. Some even stay with us for a time, leave for a bit, and then return. It is part of being an international school that we embrace this regular flux of change and transition. Over twenty nationalities sit on this stage tonight.  But, as has been our tradition, I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize some Warriors, nurtured at ASW from the beginning of their schooling experience continuously to this graduation. As I call your names, would you please rise and remain standing so that we can recognize all of you as a group:

Please recognize these students and their families as this year’s Warriors of longest standing.

**Resilience – Dr. Tom Wagner – [interactions with students on stage]

Close your eyes – Picture someone who is very deer to you that you remember as being very warm, from your heart, when you think of them and their resilience – personally connected – someone in your life, either deceased or still alive – grandma, grandpa, mother, father, friend, a teacher, …when you think resilience, you think of that person.

Why they are resilient? Maybe just loving, unflappable, maybe something else.  Let’s do some research.

Picture your person – see them in a little movie that you remember – doing that thing that makes them so close and so resilient.

Right now… close your eyes and think about your story, roll the film in your mind – I’m going to ask you to tell me – you person and the word you would choose to describe that resilient quality.

Thank you for doing that memory exercise with me.

You see, I played a bit of a trick on you—not to fool you, but to show you something essential. When I asked you to think about that special person—the one who shaped you, believed in you, loved you—you weren’t just describing them. You were also revealing something profound about yourself.

You tend to become what you love.

Think about it: when a baby is fed in the arms of someone who loves them, they’re taking in far more than food. They’re absorbing security, care, connection. They’re building something we might call spiritual infrastructure—the foundation of resilience. And that foundation is shaped by love.

Maybe you said, “My grandfather is so wise,” or “My friend never gives up.” And now, look at you. You’re carrying some of that same wisdom, that same persistence. Because what you love has begun to shape who you are.

You might say, but I’m not that good.  I’m sorry – Even if you only have a mustard seed of what they had, you can grow it. That quality—that spirit—is now yours to cultivate. Own it. Strengthen it.

And here’s a bit of advice as you step into the next chapter: choose your internal audience wisely. Don’t carry around imagined critics in your head. Instead, let your inner audience be those who truly love and believe in you—the ones whose voices lift you up. Because when you do, you’ll find yourself speaking like them, acting like them, and yes… becoming what you love.

Resilience isn’t something you’re born with, it’s not genetic — it’s something you build. Like a muscle, it strengthens through use. And stories, when they are told to explain your resilience —especially the ones of hardship overcome — are the shortest distance between the human heart and truth. These stories matter and your school experience will remain central. Stories remind us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it, as Helen Keller once said.

So be defiantly positive—yes—but also fiercely realistic. Because optimism without honesty is dangerous, and realism without hope can turn the idealist into a cynic.

Grow that resilient, loving, hopeful part of you.

You already have the seed of it inside.

Congratulations, Class of 2025.  The world is yours for the changing.

At this time, I would ask Acting Principal Luke MacBride and this year’s representative of the ASW Board of Trustees, our longest standing trustee and someone you know well, Mr. Peter Chudy, to please join me on stage for the conferring of diplomas.

What was particularly powerful was the interaction across subject area boundaries in the morning. As one teacher pointed out, it was powerful to have others outside their discipline reflect on their understanding of learning targets. That objectivity helps us to uncover things we often take for granted. The CASL materials are well adopted in many schools around the world and help us to focus on the clarity we bring to students and the details of how our assessments align with our unpacking of the standards into learning targets.

Stiggins, Chappius, Chappius, and Arter teamed up to provide the definitive guide to bridging between curriculum and classroom practice.  Understanding the formative side of assessment is critical to our work in personalized learning and leads us done the path of achieving our mission and vision.

Teachers dedicated themselves at all levels to weaving these practices into their classrooms in the coming days.  Our facilitator, Natalie Bolton, led us on this journey and guided teachers in critical conversations about our practices.  Natalie comes to us from the University of Missouri – St. Louis (UMSL) and brings a strong instructional background to her interest in large-scale assessments, formative assessment, and standards-based education reform.

She continues with us this year as a key consultant on establishing practice and will return throughout the year on the following schedule:

Monday, September 30 – Thursday, October 3 (All Faculty PD on Thursday)

Monday, January 27 – Friday, January 31, 2014

Monday, March 3 – Thursday, March 6 (All Faculty PD on Thursday)

Monday, April 28 – Friday, May 2

We are thankful for Natalie and the many staff members that contribute to our work in all divisions in providing leadership on this critical goal. The work continues in earnest to assure that students receive both a guaranteed and viable curriculum and a personalized approach that is rich in formative feedback.

So the question that emerges is what do we do about preparing students for a future like this? If they only used today’s computers, will they be ready to demonstrate proficiency in a world of this level of interactive demand?

Leadership requires that we move education closer to the leading edge of this kind of development. I have to prepare students for this in school, so that they can go on to dream the next level of accomplishment. The people that are crafting these new ideas were enabled at some point in their education to see beyond the limitations. Can we create another generation of unimagined innovation?

At the AAIE conference, this was apparent as I looked across a “wise” crowd of international school leaders.  The focus of the weekend was technology and the overall content of the conference fell short of accessing the robust technology available today.  That doesn’t mean it was a bad conference – just bereft of the tools we were discussing.  I would suggest that it drove home the point of the separation between digital natives, digital immigrants, and digital dinosaurs.  While Jay is talking mostly about learning (and learners), I’m suggesting that his insights also provide a unique focus on leaders who are desperate to remain open to innovation, but are challenged by their own fear of failure when addressing a complex and constantly changing context.

Marc Prensky helped us to understand through his keynote that our issue is about the difference between nouns and verbs.  We need to be less focused on the nouns which constitute the latest fads of technology tools (e.g. – Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.) and focus instead on the skills (verbs) of the 21st century.  While we need to embrace the nouns as they emerge and are adopted, the process skills of problem solving, collaboration, and communication remain static and highly adaptive to the new context.  A powerful connection when considering Jay’s insight into how we address our fear of failure.  As Jay notes:

• Don’t give in to negative self-talk
• Don’t let an initial failure keep you from trying again
• Be strategic – practice, details, visualize success

Surfing at 60 is possible for even our most experienced leaders.  And I’m not talking about the ocean kind of surfing.