CLASS OF 2011 GRADUATION

JUNE 3, 2011

McLAUGHLIN THEATER FOR PERFORMING ARTS

ST. IGNATIUS COLLEGE PREP

Open to Growth presented by Mr. Thomas Beckley

It has been said that CJA is about bringing potentiality into actuality.  A match stores within it enormous energy waiting to be released by a swift strike against the flint.  Galileo holds his cannonball atop the leaning tower waiting to release it to it’s potential.  In education we seek to identify that potentiality and bring out the brilliant results of act. 

There’s only one challenge to this.  No student’s potential can be brought into act without his acceptance of that act on his intellect and soul.  The act of will is paramountto bringing a student’s inner potential to the surface.  Each and everyone of these students has gotten to this point by saying, “Yes!  I can develop, I can change, I can grow, and most importantly, I want to.”  Each one of them have been active participants in their education and truly open to growth. 

One student has shown this characteristic with particular regularity and depth.  Having transferred here in his sixth-grade year, it would have been too easy to sit back and hope none of the attention fell to him.  To blend and to camouflage would have been the easy, the comfortable, and the most expedient course.  This young man took a different route.  At the top of his class academically, he continued to ask questions, involve himself in new school activities and sports.  When, shortly before his 8th-grade summer, he was given the opportunity to go to summer school at CJA, be a leader at the CJA 6th grade camp, or go to live at Northwestern University for a three week course at Northwestern’s Center for Talent Development, he chose all three.

When offered a choice between playing baseball or acting as co-captain to the track team, his answer was, “Yes please.”Whether throwing pottery or a football, solving algebra problems or solving problems for classmates who were struggling to be successful at home and at school, this student has been marked by a knowledge that the only way to success is through the recognition of his own need for growth and improvement. 

It is this characteristic that I hope will inform his attitude and prospects once he begins this next chapter of growth and development.  When he checks into a dorm room in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts this August, I know that he will be nervous, awestruck, and terribly homesick for the things that he knows and loves.  As well, I know that he will be excited about the future, curious to unlock the mysteries presented by that strange new world, and open in his mind and soul to the potential that Deerfield will help to realize in him. 

I am honored to offer this years Grad at Grad Award for being Open to Growth to Cameron.