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IB History teacher Alex Loud delivered the 2023 Commencement Address on Saturday, June 3rd. It was Senior Class President Hunter ‘23 who approached Alex about delivering the speech earlier this spring, to which Alex replied - in true Alex fashion - by offering the suggestion that the class might find a better person. Entirely disregarding that suggestion (much to our benefit), the senior class presented a fait accompli at Housemeeting, at which point Alex wholeheartedly agreed. 

Alex shared, “It was most definitely 100 percent an honor to be asked because all one's energy goes into the students… and being asked to honor them with a speech shows that they respect that effort.” Alex took the responsibility to heart, noting that his speech would “...represent the fact that I'm also speaking on behalf of all the other SBS employees who equally commit their energy to the students.” 

In preparation, Alex reflected on Monet, listened to Death Cab For Cutie and The Head And The Heart, workshopped with SBS colleague Cat Wagner, ad libbed with himself, and shared drafts with his family for feedback. Read on for Alex’s remarkable address to the Class of 2023. 

During college, I tramped around Turkey with Andy and Steve in the spring of my junior year. I was captivated by the color and light of the Mediterranean Sea. Steve told me the story that, in the last decade or so of Monet’s life, the famous French Impressionist’s eyesight was deteriorating so much that he could hardly see color and shape. But, Steve said, when Monet put on a pair of glasses, he was so upset with the way the lenses changed his vision that he threw them off in disgust. Despite Monet’s blindness and before he died, he completed what’s considered by many a masterpiece, a series of canvases, Water Lilies, that he had been working on for over a decade.

Now, more than once over the past few years I’ve imagined that I would rather be almost anywhere than working in school -- I haven’t always been happy with my glasses. A mail carrier, perhaps. Not that a mail carrier -- or anyone -- has had it easy, but at times it’s seemed that dealing with a job that is linear and may follow the same pattern most days, unlike teaching which can be unpredictable, would be easier than working in school. 

Here, I would like to pause and explain a bit about what’s coming up. For a minute or so you’re going to experience a version of what these seniors experienced in my classroom. Most students would probably say that I can be elliptical. That I can be absurd and nonlinear. Those qualities and my nonsequiturs can make teaching History -- cause, effect, and chronology -- well… interesting. But I hope they also help us. What follows is a collage of my experience teaching and learning with them. I make references to them or to the way I experienced them. You may not get some of the references. 

They may not even get some of the references. 

I hope it communicates why I didn’t become a mail carrier. If you really get lost -- if I see water lilies and you see smudges -- we’ll regroup in a couple minutes.

You see, I finally found out that these students cope with school by playing squidgie. What is squidgie, you ask? It’s a full immersion labyrinthine experience developed by German and Chinese software engineers. Students immerse themselves in it in parking lots and non-academic spaces. I haven’t seen their version of the labyrinth. But I’ve seen its effects. And I’ve read Tik Tok. 

It incorporates ChatGPT in an inflatable guide that comes separately and looks like Karl Marx. The player taps the inflatable until they get the setting they want. Don’t tap too hard; it results in a glitch. A glitch. A glitch.

The experience seems to be an escape from some of the daily grind of school. Instead of the awkward silence arriving early in class, there’s the engaging AI voice when you boot up the experience: “Hello” it says. “How was your weekend?” The stress of attendance disappears because who can argue with Chat?: “It is 8:06. You are neither stylish, nor late. You are absent.” 

The experience seems to go like this. There’s an athlete, a scholar, and an artist who have to navigate a labyrinth in order to move to a more challenging labyrinth. At the first stage, they may have to complete challenges such as collecting as many horses as they can, or moving the inflatable Karl Marx around a dance stage. They eventually exit through the two ambiguously gendered and immortal sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and their flossing minions. (Read: not dental flossing.)

Another labyrinth, I hear, is fraught. You are virtually transported to another platform -- one similar in name only to the canvas on which Monet painted. You are given detailed instructions. So many words. If you can connect, learn, assess, and reflect by the end of a week or in less than 30 minutes, and make the Marx bellyflop down a slip and slide, you move on. (If you can’t, your screen becomes two green eyes above a masked face -- they may or may not represent a gatsby-esque decay of American society.)

Another labyrinth -- which no one has completed yet -- involves softball, no…tennis, no…softball. You have to have a conversation with Chat in order to set its algorithms so that it can differentiate between art that you would place in a living room, art that you would place in the bathroom, and art that you would place in the bedroom. A faerie flaps its wings off the coast of Brazil and everything changes. At times it seems that you are going nowhere. That you don’t matter.

Ok. Let’s regroup.

I went to a large public high school in Texas and did not have to work hard to find a way to disappear. But here you have to -- ultimately -- show up. You were constantly taking risks during talent shows and special events; singing arias or wistful songs with your guitar. Half the school acted and sang in and helped direct the musical. You gracefully carried teams -- your friends, other students -- on your shoulders; you almost learned to slide. The art you created, well, inspired some of my favorite conversations. Some pieces took us on journeys with a friend to oceans and mountains. Some pieces promised the aesthetics of form and function -- like art for the world while standing on one leg and brushing your teeth. This art could perhaps serve double duty, so to speak, like a tree installation that, instead of being covered in yarn, could dispense toilet paper. 

Some art is private. Like a shattered mirror that reflects all your choices or a deep pool in quiet woods that you dive into and dream of what might have been or still could be. For me, you dancers are the highest expression of courage. Some of you have performed on stage over a dozen times and choreographed your own pieces.

You placed yourself on stages where you could and did reveal what may be considered shortcomings in front of friends, family, and strangers. But you made things happen. Maybe you take in stride the creative risks of revealing your emotions, movements, and ideas in front of strangers and friends. But maybe taking it in stride is the most significant outcome. These students remind us that the bittersweet rewards of teaching and learning are unfathomable. But they are much more sweet than bitter.

I think Steve’s story about Monet’s glasses is fanciful, apocryphal, and mythical. But it’s stuck with me for years because of its ambiguity. On the one hand, a message is to see the world how you want to see it. Monet could choose an escape hatch to progress. On the other hand, the message is to create the world that you want to see. I don’t have the vision or talent or power of Monet. Unlike him, I’m more stuck in my time and place. My silly stories show that. If a History teacher measures their success on content learned, lesson plans successfully implemented, and the production of a masterpiece that will change the way we look at the world, then that person probably should consider being a mail carrier. Or an inflatable Karl Marx. Maybe one of you will be a great painter or dancer. But being a compassionate person is enough.

This masterpiece, this magnum opus, that we’re celebrating today is the Class of 2023. It’s not just the senior class and their accomplishments; it’s the dedication of the people in this school and the people in their lives. A masterpiece is not perfect, but it’s what I see, and I’m sticking with it.

The astute student will notice that I have echoed my hook. No need to say “in conclusion” -- never say in conclusion, this quote shows. 

I have a haiku for the Class of 2023 -- at least what my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Henderson, told me were haiku (she emphasized the syllables). By the way, did you know that the Beatles’ last recorded song ends in a haiku?

And in the end
The love you take is equal
To the love you give.

But no one should quote the Beatles in a Commencement speech.

I came up with this one. I titled it, “In conclusion”:

Hopeful, also sad
But we are here together
That’s a beginning