Unconventional Commencement Speeches: Inspiration for Teachers, Students and Parents

Are you a stressed-out teacher looking for inspiration? 🌟 This episode of the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast takes an unexpected turn, diving into graduation speeches that will make you laugh, think, and maybe even roll your eyes. But most importantly, it'll remind you why you became an educator in the first place.

🎙️ Episode Highlights:

• The viral "Bill Gates" graduation speech that wasn't 🤯
• 11 brutally honest rules for life that every student (and teacher) should hear 📝
• The truth behind the viral list and its actual author 🕵️‍♀️
• Jim Carrey's surprisingly profound commencement address 🎭
• The five words that could change your students' lives (and yours too!) 💖

🧠 Key Takeaways for Educators:

1. Fact-checking is crucial, even for inspiring content 🔍
2. Validation for the struggles of teaching and parenting teens 🤝
3. The most valuable currency in life: how you make others feel ❤️
4. Choosing love over fear in your classroom and life 🌈
5. The importance of mindful connections: "Mind who you hang with" 👥

💡 Quotable Moments:

"Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans." - Grace Stevens

"You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world." - Jim Carrey

🚀 Action Step for Teachers:

Reflect on the people you surround yourself with. Are they lifting you up or bringing you down? Remember, minding who you hang with is crucial for maintaining your energy and passion as an educator.

🎧 Listen Now:

Don't miss this empowering episode that will remind you of your worth as an educator and inspire you to create positive change in your classroom and life. Click play and let's balance your teacher life together! 💪🏻📚

➡️ To get your FREE 🎁 PDF Guide The Professional Teacher's Guide to Saying "No" visit: www.gracestevens.com/sayno

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life?   
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Transcript

 All right, teachers. So I was just about to hit record and I decided to fact check something. Now, I know, crazy notion, right? In a world full of misinformation, some of us still take the time to fact check. And it kind of derailed everything that I had planned for this  podcast. It was going to be about, and you know what?

I think I've decided right now as I'm talking, it's still going to be about. A high school graduation speech. I felt it was charming. I felt it was everything that we needed to hear if we work in high school or if we've ever raised children. Like, it is so validating and I wanted to segue that into the best a graduation speech.

I had never heard a few quotes from that. And then to indulge me in just five words that had I ever been invited to speak at a graduation, what I would tell students. So anyway, I'm going to get into it inside the episode. What was the speech? Why was I wrong about who it came from? Oh my gosh, it might open a whole controversy here.

Cause it is a rather controversial person, but. I still feel that the lessons are valid. So hold on to your hats. It'll be a pretty short episode. We're going to do it. Nothing else. It might make you think it might make you smile, might make you roll your eyes.  Who cares? It will make you feel something.

Sometimes that's all we need. All right. See you on the inside.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance.  If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.

I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. 

Okay, so  If you've ever heard me be interviewed on another podcast, which I do quite frequently, I do enjoy when people invite me onto their podcast. Of course, they're always about teaching and teachers and different things. And at the end, there's this awkward moment when they ask me, where can people find you?

What are your socials? And I have to like, try not to bite my tongue and say, actually, I'm anti social. Because if you know me in person, I'm really open and friendly and all those things  But good Lord I do not care for social media. If there was any way I could try and build a business and an audience and reach people without it, I would do it.

I think it's harmful for so many reasons. It's harmful for our mental health, but I really think it is starting to chip away at the foundations of society. And certainly for younger people who never knew how to exist beyond it, they no longer have critical thinking skills. You know, they find stuff, they see a meme, they don't understand, the algorithms are just really full of bots.

And the only thing that you're gonna see is things that confirm what you already think. Okay, so I'm not gonna get off on that tangent because  Anyway, let's just say this. So I, so this is how it started. It started as most, a lot of bad things do, with me scrolling on Facebook. And the reason I was scrolling on Facebook, I was looking for an ad that somebody was running for me.

And because I didn't want to get involved with that myself. Anyway, and I found This quote, and it was attributed, it was a list of 11 things. And it said that it was a high school graduation speech that Bill Gates had given. And I found it charming. The notion that he would have, and they gave so many details, like they give details to make it sound true, right?

Oh, he flew in in his helicopter. And first of all, I was thinking, well, how much security would that have involved? And where on earth, I suppose you could land a helicopter on a playground. But anyway. That he flew in on his helicopter. We all know that that playground would have been full of cars if it was graduation, right?

There's nowhere to park. Just saying.  That should have been my first clue, right? Like, think about that for a minute. Anyway, it said that he flew in, he walked in, he unfolded a piece of paper, he read these 11 rules for life for high school students, and then he just walked out and flew away. And the reason I found it charming was, you know, he's never been a teacher, Right?

But he's obviously been a parent, right? And so I was thinking, wow, even he struggled with these things. And I'm thinking that's pretty relatable, right? That no matter how much money you have, no matter how much influence, no matter how powerful you are, when it comes down to raising a teenager,  that is hard.

Okay, so I was thinking it would be good for a podcast episode, right? Because it, I found it very validating as somebody who has raised teenagers. My children are amazing adults making positive contributions in the world. I like to think I know, but you know.  Those years were rough. And of course, if you teach high school, you know this so much.

So anyway, so I am going to read you the eleven rules because I don't want you to miss out on them. Because when I tell you who they were actually written by, you might be like, I'm not listening to this lady anymore. Okay. So that lesson one is Check your source, consider the source, make sure it's true, quick little, you know, check on scopes or anything else, but teachers, oh my god, even when I taught third and fourth grade, I had to teach children, I remember one lesson, they were like, no, it's true, I saw it on a website. 

I own a website, I own multiple websites, real time in front of them, I showed them my website, I went behind the scenes, made the changes and, and, and let them Google it again. Okay, now go to my website. Oh, it's changed. Yeah, you just saw me write down some rubbish, right? It was a powerful lesson for them.

But anyway, alright, so here are the 11 rules that kids won't learn in school. Right, but are the rules for life. So let's get on with them. So rule number one, life is not fair, get used to it.  We've probably said that to our children and our high school students. Rule number two, the world won't care about your self esteem.

The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.  All right.  Rule three, you will not make 40, 000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both. Okay. Now, when I had read it, it said 20, 000 a month. Inflation, right?

At number four, if you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.  Number five, flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.  Number six, if you mess up, it's not your parents fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them. 

Rule seven.  Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you are.  Oh, that rings true. Yeah. Rule number, gosh, what is that quote? It's a shame we can't rule the world when we're 14 and have all the answers.

Yeah.  All right, rule number eight. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not.  Rule number nine, life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employees are interested in helping you find yourself.  Okay. Very true. And number 10, television is not real life.

In real life, people actually have to leave the copy shop and go to jobs.  Okay. And rule 11, be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. All right. So the list. So that list, which has been circling around the internet was, like I said, when I came across it. And I found it kind of charming.

Just, I could feel the frustration of a parent in there. And a parent who I was like, Hmm, wow, that sounds like some jabs at public school. That's curious to me that Bill Gates would have sent his kids to public school. You know, he seems like a pretty humble man. Hopefully he did. But anyway, there was kind of this kind of like, Huh, about it that made me want to check it out.

But anyway, even moving beyond that The fake story of him flying in in a helicopter and delivering it. I found that the list is often cited as coming from his book, Bill Gates book, Business at the Speed of Thought. Right, and then another another reference said it was a commitment speech at Mount Whitney High School in Visalia, California.

But the administrators at the school say that isn't true, according to Snopes. com. So anyway, where did it come from? Now, first off, I'm going to say, I always say consider the source, right? But at the same time, if the rules were valid,  so I'm going to tell you where it came from, but don't like, don't get annoyed and then leave.

Cause I was kind of annoyed. At myself, but because I really want to tell you about the best graduation speech I ever heard. And it was beautiful. And I'm only going to quote a little bit for you. And it also came from a very different source. And I can verify that source is true because I've seen it with my own eyes.

But anyway, so apparently this book came down from  Charles J. Sykes, right? I'm sure you know him, political commentator, no matter what you feel about his  What kind of politics? Okay, we're going to be neutral on that point. But in 1996, he wrote a book, which I'm sure you've heard of, Dumbing Down Our Kids, Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves, But Can't Read, Write, or Add.

Okay, so that was obviously a condemnation of public schooling, which we're going to try not to take personally, because we have a lot of the same gripes ourselves. However, you know, obviously I'm a public school educator, and I believe Passionately, passionately in public school, that every child has a right to a free and equitable education, and so I am not big on, you know, being a proponent of, you know, unschooling, homeschooling, private schools, because we've dumbed down America, all those things, that's not me at all, so anyway, so, move beyond that, alright, so, but I liked his rules, like I said, I, I feel from my heart that they came through from a parent who had lived through that, and I did find it kind of validating.

Okay, because sometimes we feel guilt, right, as teachers, like, oh my gosh, we spend all day with kids. Why do we struggle with our own? Wait, shouldn't we know better? Shouldn't we have these epic skills? I can get a room full of kids to mind me and do what I ask, but you know at home, maybe not always that way.

Okay? Hey, I'm just putting it out there. That was my experience. Hopefully not yours, but I'm guessing these rule apply to a lot of people. All right, so let's talk about the best commencement speech.  Now, clearly I haven't heard all of them,  right, but the one that I go back to again and again and again on different variations of it, because he's delivered this speech more than one time, and the unlikely person that you're going to be like, huh, is Jim Carey.

Now we might just know Jim Carey for being, you know, all his crazy antics as an actor and spreading joy and making people laugh. We might know him and we might roll our eyes that at one point in the nineties, I think he was going around telling people how, oh yeah, he had used the law of attraction to manifest his career.

He'd written a check to himself for 10 million and put it in his wallet and carried it around for years. And then You know, he eventually, you know, had a movie role that offered him 10, 000,  excuse me, 10 million. Wow. What a difference a few zeros make, right? So anyway, so that you might think he's a little, you know, woo woo that way, but he's actually a deeply spiritual person and his advice that he gave at a couple of commencement speech were beautiful.

So let me tell you.  So this is from Jim Carey's commencement address to the 2014 Maharishi International University of Management. Okay. And it was a, it was, I don't know, maybe it was 10, 15 minutes long, whatever. But here's a couple of quotes that really struck. stuck out to me and I just, I think they're beautiful.

So I tend to speak really fast because I get excited and I'm passionate about a lot of things. I'm gonna try and slow down with his work.  Okay, so here's what he told the class. You are the vanguard of knowledge and consciousness, a new wave in a vast ocean of possibilities.  On the other side of that door, there's a world starving for new ideas, new leadership. 

I've been out there for 30 years. She's a wild cat. She'll rub up against your leg and purr until you pick her up and start petting her and then out of nowhere she'll swat you in the face. It can be rough out there, but it's okay because there's always soft serve ice cream with sprinkles.  I guess that's what I'm trying to say here today.

Sometimes it's okay to eat your feelings. Now fear is going to be a player in your life. But you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what's happening here, and the decisions that we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear. 

Okay. And then he shares some personal anecdotes about how his father was very funny, but always chose the safe path in life.  But here's the other beautiful part. As someone who's done what you're about to do, I can tell you from experience that the effect you have on others is the most valuable.

Currency there is because everything in you gain and everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart. And then he goes on to say that he wishes everybody in life could have the huge success he's had and chase the goals and, and met all the, you know, these, these huge accolades that he's received and then that.

They come back to this one point that they realize it doesn't matter. The only thing that's important is  the only currency is the effect you have on others, how you make others feel, right? And that makes me think so much of Maya Angelou's quote, which is, people will forget what you say, people will forget what you do, but people will never forget how you make them feel, right?

That's the whole concept behind your energy teaches more than your lesson plans. I'm just saying. I'm not putting myself up on the same, you know, high standard as Maya Angelou and Jim Carrey, but a lot of people saying the same things in different ways in different forums. But then he just, oh my gosh, his ending words are so beautiful.

He tells the students, you are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world. And after you walk through the doors today, you will only have two choices, love or fear. Choose love. And don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.  Oh my goodness. I must have listened to, you can go find it on YouTube.

The whole speech is 25 minutes long actually. But you can find like there's a. A 10 minute version. There's an eight minute version. Somebody's edited, but I encourage you to, to go look at it. Just go Google Jim Carrey  for goodness sakes. You know how to Google Jim Carrey commencement speech, 2014. You will find it.

It is beautiful. I'm going to say it again. Cause I love it so much and I listen to it so much. You are. ready and able to do beautiful things in this world. And after you walk through those doors today, you will only ever have two choices, love or fear. Choose love and don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart. 

OK, now part of me is is laughing, thinking at what our friend who is saying we've dumbed down America would say about that. I'm sure he would say I am. Part of the problem. He is entitled to his opinion. All right, so here we get to it. Now, what if I had ever been asked to make a commencement speech?  I don't think, I don't think that's really in my future here, but you never know.

Okay, I presided and, and participated in many eighth grade promotions and I would I always presented, well, not always, but a lot of times I presented an award to students, but the script was already written. So anyway, I here's what I would say. I'm not saying I had it, you know, like when I was a little girl and I dreamt of, you know, winning the Oscars you know, and I had my speech ready, you know, and I, I had my, I had my commencement speech ready and it, it all, basically, I can sum it up in five words.

I said it, I would have said it more beautifully. And it's the same advice, funnily enough, that I give your teachers  in a different way. Here's the five words. Mind who you hang with. All right, it's as complicated and as simple as that. Mind who you hang with. All right, that is it for this shorty episode.

Hopefully if you are a parent of teens, you felt validated. If you are a high school teacher, you felt validated. If you are none of those things, hopefully Jim Carrey's words inspired you. They are beautiful. I'm going to tell you the same thing. You are ready and able to do beautiful things in that classroom.

Beautiful things and the effect you have on others is the only currency you have. Your energy teaches more than your lesson plans and in order to protect that energy, you gotta mind who you hang with. All right, I made it come full circle, right? Okay, until next time, know that I appreciate you being here. 

I believe in you and create your own path and bring your own sunshine.