This I Believe
Emily Klein
Pacific Collegiate School graduation, June 5, 2009

Thanks so much for inviting me here to speak. I am really, really honored and I really miss you guys! And congratulations.

This graduating class is really important to me because they are the last class I taught at PCS since leaving two years ago. And I can’t think of a better bunch of folks to end — at least for now — my four years at PCS.

What I am going to read to you tonight had its genesis in our sophomore English class. It is called “This I Believe.” “This I Believe” is a series on NPR started by Edward R. Murrow in the 1950s. The program consists of short essays about core values sent in by listeners and read by the authors. Anyone can submit an essay to the program and tons of famous and ordinary people have. Two years ago, our entire class spent about eight weeks reading the published essays, critiquing them in groups and individually, and then writing their own essays. With candor and circumspection, they shared their beliefs in family, abandoned animals, the restorative power of swimming, gravity, uncertainty, identity, favorite colors, poetry, creative thinking, performing music and… Chuck Norris. Without a doubt, this unit was the single most powerful, moving (I cried at least once every class) and memorable assignment I have ever taught.

Ironically, the only reason I even conceived of this assignment is because, well… I could not get them to stop talking! Or dancing, or reciting poetry, or having impromptu Zoolander walk-offs. So, at a loss as to how to get them to stop talking, I just started to listen. And what I heard was compelling. My main goal with the “This I Believe” assignment was to teach them first and foremost the value of listening — really listening — as well as how to articulate and refine their ideas.

I promised I’d contribute my own essay to our class two years ago but never quite finished it. So in gratitude and appreciation, finally, here is my “This I Believe” essay for you:

THIS I BELIEVE

My husband and I were on our way to the movies a few years ago when we ran into two of his clients, a couple in their early 30s. While David was chatting with the wife, the husband politely asked me where I worked. When I told him I taught highschool, he said: “How can you possibly handle teenagers!” A grimace lingered on his face as he walked away from the Nickelodeon.

This response to my chosen profession has not been unusual. Some variants include (with a sucking of breath) “Wow. You must be pretty brave” and (with a clucking of the tongue) “Man, that is just the worst age. Good for you for dealing with them.” And, most frequently, I hear from people of all ages: “It must be so hard working with teenagers in this day and age.”

To them, I say this:

I believe in teenagers. I believe in their integrity and uncorrupted sense of justice. I believe in their breathtaking loyalty and commitment to friendship. I believe in their unsullied imagination and sometimes transcendent creativity. I believe in their earnest attempts at navigating the fraught terrain of the adult world. I believe in their magnificent, albeit often inappropriate, sense of humor.

And most importantly, I believe in how much we could and should learn from teenagers.

What have I learned from them? Well, for starters I’ve learned — contrary to so many representations in popular culture — that teenagers are honest. I mean spot-on, no-holds-barred, cut-to-the-chase honest — and forcefully opinionated. Try it: ask a teenager his or her opinion about topics ranging from post-apartheid South Africa to diversity in public schools and you will receive pure, unadulterated truth. A new haircut you’re not sure about? If you want the honest truth — I mean the really, really, really honest honest truth — trust me: ask a teenager. I have had the pleasure of being the recipient of this form of truth-telling on a daily basis. When a student who was late every day for months finally came to class early, I confidently assumed she was turning over a new leaf due to a serious conversation we had had the week before: “No, Miss Klein” she said, “I’m only on time today because my parents had to be here at 7:30!” Or, when I read a paper that ended literally mid-sentence, I asked the author if a page with the conclusion was missing. “Uh, no. I Just stopped when I hit page 5. That was the requirement, wasn’t it?” (Needless to say, I later made explicit the necessity of a formal conclusion.) For me, it is not that I don’t appreciate the social conventions that govern the adult world, but I do so admire my students for their lack of self-consciousness about truth, and their eagerness to be understood.

I know it is customary — and useful — to send off graduating seniors with sage advice and warnings. The premise behind this is that with age and experience come wisdom and knowledge. But what if we refocus our approach and attitude toward growing up so that we no longer think of it as a vertical progression? What if we told a different kind of story about growing up, an alternative to a narrative which propels itself forever forward, adding layers upon layers of events, all culminating in some mythic notion of “complete” adulthood. What if, instead, we thought of growing up in a sort of backwards way, like the film Memento, outside of a conventional, linear trajectory? What we’d get, or what I get, is a belief in teenagers… just as they are. Not as not-quite-adults, or really mature kids — or even overgrown toddlers — but as extraordinary people who if they do nothing else, go nowhere else, gain not a single other grain of knowledge, are complete.

My experience working with teenagers is inextricably linked to my experience as a brand new parent. When my oldest son was still a baby, I kept a fairly strict separation between my role as a mother and my role as a teacher. But when my baby morphed into this little person — with passions and preferences and quirks and irritants and fears — suddenly my private and professional roles started to overlap. In class that year, I would catch myself thinking, “I hope my son will be as adventurous as Erin and Anna and Emily and Ali and the Zoes; be as kind as Parker and CeeCee and Arianna and Hilary. How can I make him as loyal as Clayton and Brynne and Kelsey, as generous as Alec? As preternaturally good-natured as Adam and Donnie and John? And as eminently quotable as Jake Saltz?” Or, something in the reverse: “Agh! What if my kid becomes an Angels fan like Eli? Or never, ever, ever, ever makes it on time to their first period English class like four of you who shall remain nameless?” The day I could no longer quell this inner voice I remember quite vividly: I told my students the only sport I could handle my kid playing would be synchronized swimming. Sadly, I was only half-kidding. With great patience, good humor and a sensitivity to my anxieties that belied their youth, my students offered advice about all things children. They also gently rebuked my basic misconception: that a child’s personality and direction can be entirely controlled by a parent.

Of course I want my kids to grow up and eventually turn into kick-ass adults, but on the way I want them to be teenagers, just like you. This I believe.