to the new graduates, the new teachers

A week ago, I had the chance to go to the graduation ceremony for Illinois State University's College of Education. I've been a part of this program for the past few years, so the arena floor was filled with my professors, classmates, friends, and future colleagues. I wasn't graduating, but I was home.

Groups gathered outside to laugh and take pictures, and I wanted to find every person I knew and give them a hug and a pep talk. But my time was too short and my words too few. I laughed and posed with those I could, sharing their celebration.

A week later, I finally have enough words and enough time.

This is to the new grads, the new teachers.

You made it.

Well, not quite.

You reached a step, a significant step, a landmark in your walk as a teacher. It's cliche but important to remind you that "commencement" means "beginning," not the end. You commenced, as you have countless times before and as you will countless times again. But this one's different, because now you're a graduate. An alumnus.

A teacher.

Some of you walked off the stage and into a job. Some of you don't know where you will be teaching in the fall. Some of you don't know if you even want to teach. Remember that the ceremony was a ceremony, not a deadline. You'll be figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life. Don't worry about having everything set now.

If you do teach, when you teach, teach well. But you already knew that. You're graduating from Illinois State University, of course you know how to teach well. You've taken classes on theory, pedagogy, policy, practice, content. You've already taught in student teaching and PDS and field base and practicum and clinical blocks. Of course you know how to teach well.

But you also know there are standards, and tests, and frustrating staff, and long commutes, and early mornings, and hard-to-love students with harder-to-love families. The command to teach well can get lost in everything else. But you'll still do it. You're a teacher.

You'll create classroom communities, little laboratories of learning and thinking and living. You'll give students spaces to share, to question, to dream, to plan, to fail, to plan again, to plan together, to fail together, to learn more, plan more, love more, achieve more.

You'll point students to their thoughts, to their feelings, to their voices. Of course you won't give them these things, because they already have them. What you will give them is an environment to practice being a thinking and feeling person, how to use their voices to explore and navigate the internal and external world. You'll listen to them, showing them that their thoughts and feelings and voices are to be valued.

You'll point students to their strengths. Of course you'll point to them, because the strengths are there, right under the piles of voices who have said there are no strengths to be found. They might have to be uncovered and dusted off a bit, but you'll find them. You'll give students chances to use their strengths, stretch their muscles, to show you and their classmates and themselves what they are capable of. And they'll find out what they're less capable of. And you'll teach them to grow.

You'll show them their power, and that some have more and some have less. You'll teach them that life has everything to do with power and yet nothing to do with it at all. You'll teach them about the mountains of our world and its valleys, show them that the terrain we walk on isn't as smooth as they've been told. You'll walk on that terrain with them. Sometimes you'll give advice, and it'll be wrong. Sometimes they'll give advice, and it'll be wrong. No one has it all figured out. But sometimes, you'll find something together. Your students and you may even soften part of the ground, making the walk easier for someone else.

And of course, you might not do all of this. It's not just your job to do.

Look around your students, look at the world they inhabit outside of your classroom. Education is larger than a building. See their friends, their families, their community. They are there. They may not be connected. If so, work to connect. But don't ever let anyone tell you that you are a student's only hope. Jesus is a savior. You are a teacher.

Go back and look at your graduation pictures. Look at all of the teachers sitting around you. You may feel like sheep walking into a pack of wolves, but know you are not alone. Maybe the teachers who crowded into Redbird Arena with you last Saturday won't be with you next year, but you'll be crowding into a school with other teachers and administrators and therapists and professionals who all have something to give and something to learn. Reach out, connect, teach, learn.

Know that there won't ever really be a time when you can say "I made it," not in a final way. You'll be making what teachers make as long as you teach, then you will find something else to make.

Always reach out. Always connect. Always teach. Always learn.

Always commence.

You never know when you (or your students) will find another beginning.