What It Means to Be A Hero

This post is adapted from my graduation remarks to the Shrewsbury High School Class of 2022.

It feels like a perfect night to recognize the Class of ’22 for your hard work and perseverance that enabled you to meet the requirements to earn a Shrewsbury High School diploma. The challenges you have experienced over your high school years were substantial, and we are all very proud of what you have achieved despite them. As many of you know, in addition to being your superintendent, I am also a very proud parent of a graduate, and I think I can speak for all of the parents and caretakers here this evening that when you all were younger, and we as parents were thinking ahead to your high school experience, none of us imagined that you would be coping with the impact of a global pandemic. I think we’re all quite familiar with all the ways in which COVID-19 negatively affected your experience, and this is not a topic to dwell upon this evening as you step into the future. However, there are positives that emerged from the ways in which people responded to the pandemic, and there is one that I would like to highlight this evening: the understanding of what it means to be a hero.

I’m not talking about mythical heroes here, but rather, as Merriam Webster defines the term, those who are “admired for achievements or noble qualities” and “who show great courage.” Over the course of the past two-plus years, we have witnessed so many making sacrifices for the good of others under incredibly trying circumstances. This especially includes the contributions made by those on the front lines of healthcare and public health. It most certainly includes the ways in which our teachers, education professionals, support staff, and school leaders rose to the myriad challenges of providing education and support for you. And there is no question that it also includes the many ways in which your families supported you during a time of fear and uncertainty, as well as everything you did as friends to support one another. At this time, I ask that our graduates stand and applaud all of those people for what they have done to help you get to this milestone today.

The acts of heroism you just applauded, large and small, did not require extraordinary powers. The late actor, Christopher Reeve, said that “...a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” Those of you who are my age know that Reeve was famous for playing the part of Superman in the movies, but this quote was not about the fictional comic book hero. Rather, it was his reflection upon his real-life circumstances after he became paralyzed in an accident. He was speaking of a special kind of strength of character that so many of you have already shown at a young age – a strength our society needs you to keep demonstrating as you move into adulthood.

As the mythical hero Superman, Reeves delivered the famous line that his mission was to “fight for truth, justice, and the American way.” We are living in a time when all three of these aspirations are in jeopardy. We need you to seek the truth by thoughtfully and critically examining the messages you receive, while considering the motivation and intent of the sources behind them, and to speak the truth in opposition to lies designed to manipulate your emotions and beliefs. We need you to promote justice so that our society becomes a more equitable one for all of its members – especially those who have the greatest needs – and so that getting a fair shake isn’t based on who you are or where you’re from. We need you to align our nation’s actions with the noble values articulated at its founding, so that we can indeed form a more perfect union, one that secures the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by protecting the integrity of elections and engaging in the democratic process. We need you to have the strength to fight for these things, because I believe that the fate of our country depends on it.

On the first day of this school year, we opened the new Beal School. When entering this beautiful building for the first time, a first grader looked around with wonder and exclaimed, “This looks like a place where we can all be heroes.” I think he was right, because your strong education has provided you with the foundation to act heroically when circumstances require it. I am confident that you all have the ability to honor truth, promote justice, and advance our nation’s values. But this is not easy work. We need you to demonstrate the everyday heroism of persevering when you face the many difficult challenges that lie ahead. And when you do, you will indeed be the best kind of hero, one who makes a significant, positive impact on the lives of others. I believe that you have what it takes to make a difference in our community, our nation, and our world, and so I’ll conclude by paraphrasing that first grader:

“This looks like a class where you can all be heroes.”

Congratulations, Class of 2022!

Seeking Truth to Sustain Our Democracy

This post was originally published at the Superintendent's Corner column in the Winter 2022 edition of the Shrewsbury School Journal


The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth. – Garry Kasparov

This quote from former world chess champion and Russian pro-democracy leader Garry Kasparov sums up the disturbing reality that citizens face in today’s world, and it underscores why it is so very important that we not only teach our students to be literate in the traditional academic disciplines, but also to be literate regarding the information they consume. Our school district’s mission statement compels us to provide our students with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the 21st century, and to be an educated person this must include the ability to filter the torrent of information flooding smartphones, tablets, laptops, and televisions in order to discern the truth.

Media literacy is defined on Dictionary.com as “the ability or skills to critically analyze for accuracy, credibility, or evidence of bias the content created and consumed in various media, including radio and television, the internet, and social media.” Our schools begin teaching information literacy concepts, along with other aspects of digital citizenship, starting in kindergarten and throughout subsequent grade levels through our library media centers’ curriculum. Using resources curated by Common Sense Media, our students, in a manner appropriate for their age level, learn ways to analyze media messages by considering the credibility of the source, the author’s motivation, the intended purpose, the quality of the information, and who might benefit economically or politically from the message. These higher-level analysis skills are key for our students to become critical thinkers in a media environment saturated with misinformation.

A particular challenge is that today’s young people typically use social media for news and information. Unfortunately, they are awash in messaging, mostly through images and short videos, that often contain inaccurate information or outright falsehoods and are designed to manipulate emotions. Further, they hear professional media organizations derided as “fake news” for political purposes, breeding distrust in sources that actually practice journalistic norms and ethics in reporting the news. As a Connecticut history teacher recently wrote in an article in Education Week, “None of this is good for truth or democracy, which requires a certain factual civic consensus in order to work.”

The ways in which citizens can be duped and manipulated by dishonest, state-sponsored media in an undemocratic society is painfully evident in Russia today. The facts of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine are being twisted or hidden from its own people, with the flow of accurate information from sources other than the autocratic government being restricted or labeled as “fake.” It is painful to see this Orwellian nightmare take place in Russia, while the Ukrainian people and their president use their access to information technology to share the terrible truth of what is happening to their country. Even this information still must be examined critically – as the Connecticut history teacher explains, when sharing with his class that the popular video of the so-called “Ghost of Kyiv” fighter pilot was actually computer-generated footage from a video game, his students expressed that they still wanted to believe it was true.

Our school district’s mission includes developing “an appreciation of our democratic tradition.” Unfortunately, democracy is not only at risk when an autocratic nation makes war to control another. It is also at risk right here in our country when information technology is used, either by a foreign or domestic source, to manipulate emotions and deny reality. It is critical that our schools succeed in our efforts to implement our longstanding policy of “encouraging students to search after truth and think for themselves.” Our democracy depends on it.