Some Words for the class of 2026

...most of which I'll probably say out loud.

Year 20 – Some words for the class of 2026

Welcome to AP Lit, class of 2026.

I hope you have chosen a seat that will lead to great things. Feel free to choose a different one tomorrow. Usually people just choose a seat and stay there all year. The same can be said about how we all position ourselves in relation to our North Star and the people around us.

So I say this to you – Just because you chose something yesterday or today doesn’t mean you have to make the same choice tomorrow. We are a people whose habits are impacted by psychological physics. Our habits build inertia which require force to alter.

We will read a lot this year. Some of you will read more than you ever have. Others of you will fake it. And sometimes it might work – on a reading quiz. But I urge you – if you are not willing to read these books outside of this room… Make another choice. Maybe you need to go sit and look into the distance for a few minutes and ask yourself some tough questions, then come out the other end and decide to dedicate yourself as a reader in a way you have never tried. It won’t be easy. It takes force to change a habit, to alter the course of a heavy thing that is moving in a direction you don’t want.

Maybe you don’t want to do this class. I’d like to remind you that you don’t have to take this class. It is an optional AP class. I hope you are here because you want to be here. If you want to escape, you still can. I hope you want this, but if you don’t, that is fine. You’ll miss a transformative literary experience and you may have become a proper poet that would be the voice of a generation that would tilt the power back to the people and recognition of labor and dignity, but that is fine if you’d rather not.

You are about to become what most humans would recognize as an adult. But our system remains committed to demanding that you sit, listen quietly, then perform. Sit, listen quietly, and perform again. Sit, listen, and perform. Again and again. It will take force to break that habit. If you don’t wish to simply follow directions into the sunset of your life, it will take fierceness.

It is my 20^th year teaching. 20. When I started teaching, Lebron James was the best basketball player in the world. Now he’s like 5^th. In my third year of teaching, Barack Obama was elected. It was a beautiful time of hope and possibility. That feels like a very long time ago.

Last week I had my 25 year class reunion. I graduated in the year 2000. People told us the world was ending, so we acted like it. I’ll tell you about it when you graduate, but by then you won’t want to hear much more from me. That is how it is supposed to be.

In about 9.5 months, God willing, you will graduate from high school. You will be entering a world none of us have ever seen. I do not know what technological skills will be most helpful to you in your continued education. I do not know the role AI will play in your professional lives and it scares the shit out of me. I do not know what the world map will look like and it scares me even more.

What I do know is that Critical Consciousness will matter. I do know that being able to read something, make your own meaning, and perhaps discuss or write about it will not just be useful, it will be what saves you from just following directions or taking someone else’s word on something that impacts you - like the truth… and your life.

So please. Decide to read like your life depends on it. Because eventually, it might.