dolor hic tibi proderit olim*

*someday this pain will be useful to you

Graduation Speech
By Margeaux Temeltas


To the AUSL Class of 2008

As residents, we have been teachers and students at once. Individually, we have been models of the kinds of independent, critical, inquisitive thinkers we want our students to become. Collectively, we have built our achievements upon the strength of our community; and it is a community which I hope will not only serve as a model for those we build with our future students, but which will endure in its own right as a continued dialogue among teachers, colleagues, and friends.

We sometimes call each other comrades, but most often, family. Surviving this year has required the loyalty and unconditional love of both soldiers and siblings, and a more generous, compassionate, and fiercely independent family I could not hope to belong to.

From at least five states and two countries we came, idealistic pilgrims of social justice, each bearing our own unique stories, but with a shared faith in the transformative power of education.

Some of us came here after witnessing the senseless abandonment of our cities in the face of natural catastrophe; others, the slow devastation of our neighborhoods in the face of social neglect.

All of us are husbands, children, mothers, lovers, and citizens.

Some of us turned from illustrious careers in law, business, or marketing to join the side of the underpaid good guys; others sprang fresh from college with the certainty of purpose.

Each of us came with hope, passion, and a commitment to justice for all children. We came because we understand that freedom—true freedom, intellectual, political, and economic—means nothing if it is not possessed by all; that a change in the distribution of power is not only possible but necessary; and that the key to this change is the transformation of public education.

But life does not stand still, even for revolution. In the past year, the residents we celebrate today have welcomed two new babies and many more of life’s joyful distractions; we have survived divorce, death, and other shades of loss; and all while planning lessons, grading homework, writing papers, preparing presentations, and a thousand other things of which none, I assure you, is sleeping. Without one another’s support, managing this delicate balance might not have been possible. What brought us here was hope, but what kept us here was a belief in each other.

It’s never easy to see yourself becoming. And in the hustle and intensity of the residency year, it can be hard to find the time to notice all that you have learned and how much you have changed. This is one among the many ways I am grateful to you, my fellow residents. Through you, I have marked my own growth as a teacher…And standing before you now, looking proudly into this mirror of passionate, dedicated, and confident new teachers, I see how much we have all grown, and the incredible change that we have become capable of.

Saturday, June 7th, 2008
Chicago Academy High School
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Photos by Fred Bialy