Commencement Speeches
Alan Safran
Executive Director
MATCH Charter Public High School
I'm Alan Safran, Executive Director of MATCH, and looking out, I am so moved and inspired by this moment. Today we celebrate our Class of 2007. This marks the end of 4 or in two cases 5 or 6 years at MATCH. It is a time to reflect on accomplishment. It also is a time to recognize that our graduates have 100% accomplished their high school goal-but now are 50% of the way to accomplishing our mission: college success.
Graduates, I'd like to do 2 things in the next 5 minutes: first, let me reflect on how far you have come in the past 4, or 5 years.
And then, second, I will ask you to join me in showing your heartfelt thanks to some people who have worked hard to support you to accomplish the extraordinary results that each of you has achieved.
First, let's look back - When you came to MATCH, there were 445 applicants for spots. So we held a random lottery, and you were selected. I remember you and your moms and dads at the MATCH orientation in the spring of 2003. When Mr. Sposato talked about the school, to all the 8th graders and families there, there was an interesting movement in the room. He would talk about the long school day, and parents' heads would move up and down quietly cheering "yes," and your heads would move side to side, quietly (or not so quietly) saying "no way!" He talked about the fact that you don't pass classes at MATCH with a D grade, a grade that still - unfortunately in my view - is passable work at regular city high schools. Parents' heads again moved up and down, and some of you moved your heads side to side. And he told you about our teachers and their commitment to call your home dozens of times every year, telling your parent or guardian something specific about how you were doing...and the parents' heads moved up and down, and the kids' heads moved side to side. Some of you may have known then - but I am sure others did not - that you had won something special when you won the MATCH lottery for admission. Because now, you know this fact: MATCH is a school that asks a lot from you, and gives you a small, safe place with huge amounts of personal support unlike any other public high school in Boston, in Massachusetts, or to my knowledge, in America. MATCH has become for you who persevered here a second home, a community, a place where your expectations and ours have now merged and become one unified force toward your success in college.
Now we need to recognize a fact: there are 16 of you graduating today, and three more will graduate this fall. Your class began with a lot more kids. Some of those kids left along the way because they moved out of the city or out of the state; some left because they couldn't follow our Code of Conduct; and others left because they didn't rise fast enough to meet our academic standard, and could take two "D" grades and transfer to district schools. We're very pleased to have in the audience some of our students who left MATCH. Welcome. Your support means a lot to your former classmates, so it's very classy of you to be here. While we wish we'd done a better job of getting you over the bar so that you too would be on this stage, we praise your accomplishments at other schools, and very much hope that you feel well-prepared for college and will continue to feel part of MATCH. It is very hard for some students to resist the temptation to transfer to a district school because they have not made our standard here. So it is remarkable that some students did resist that exit out the back door. So two of the graduates today should be acknowledged for showing the courage, discipline and perseverance to tough it out - to repeat a year or two years here. Their courage and perseverance will result in their graduation from MATCH: Holdens Philogene and Anthony Bogard, I am very, very proud of you both. And there are other classmates who began with you in 2003 and are still at MATCH, in 11th grade, and we commend those students as well.
To reach today's graduation and achieve admission to college, you worked hard indeed. And you know that you did not do it alone. Graduation is the time to thank some of the people who worked side by side with you - or in the background.
So I want you first of all to thank one group of people, some of whom are here and others of whom are not, who worked tirelessly to build relationships with you and who held fast to their belief that you could do more than even you believed you could: so I will ask this group, of current and former MATCH teachers, to stand and be recognized:
And this year and for each of the last 3 years, you each had a member of our tutor corps to work with you each and every day - and I want to ask ALL of those tutors, from 2005 and 2006 and this year, to stand and be recognized:
And the MATCH staff and administrators, who work so hard with you, and many of whom do so much that you aren't aware of to keep the school running and to provide the things you need: please stand and be recognized.
And the MATCH Board of Directors, our trustees, including our Chair Stig Leschly behind me and Ann Sagan, trustee, academic dean, and a very special person, who meet with me throughout the year, met many of you during the year, and work to steer our school, to bring friends to the school, to provide financial support for the school. To that group I would also like to add an individual who cultivated those Board members to join our work - he is one of the people recognized nationally as a leader and visionary in the improvement of opportunities for urban kids: so would all the MATCH Trustees and our founder, Michael Goldstein, please stand and be thanked.
And the rest of the people in this audience are your parents and your family, and your friends and our friends, and donors to our school, and officials from Boston University, and the student body of the MATCH School - I thank you all and ask ALL of you to stand and be thanked!
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Alan Safran's Remarks
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