The Honesty Of The Innocent

The honesty of the innocent is the most valuable wisdom on earth.

The Grauer School celebrated 30 years of great teaching with a Gala event on May 1, 2021. You can read the text of Dr. Grauer's speech from the gala in this column, or watch his message in a video by clicking on the image below.

 

I don’t have to tell you it’s been a long year. At the start of it, we walked all over the campus and put down markers and stickers for keeping the most huggable people in the world 6 feet apart, and 2 students per table. At this point, most of those markers are peeling up and wearing away in nature. It feels like our campus is growing back over it all …after a long year.

This winter, I started driving the classic Suburban wagon again, the gift of Bill Owens 30 years ago. It has so many coats of blue metalflake paint on it now that a car magnet no longer sticks to it, but like our school, it has moved into vintage status. People give me shakas when I'm driving through Swami's. 

Some of my favorite times in the 90's were cruising with the kids in that car back in the founding days of the school—just cruisin’ with the stereo on playing Scott or Vanessa’s mixes on cassette tapes. “Big hands I know you’re the one.” “The low low rider, rides a little lower …” I remember the time I let Leslie [class of 1997] drive it down in Baja, won’t go there. That Suburban wagon’s given a few driving lessons, and it’s still rolling.

One of my favorite formative memories as a teacher occurred one morning in the first or second year of the school. I was teaching English Lit, and, forgetting myself, going on and on about how great the plot and theme were, or internal conflicts or something. I don’t remember what we were reading, but here is the story I do remember: I was going on, and Tarja [class of 1996], in 10th or 11th grade, raises her hand and says, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, Stuart, but we all think this is really boring.” 

In the next moment, I didn’t have time to think that I could never have said that as a student, or that in my previous nearly 20 years of teaching in other schools this could not have happened, or that at most schools Tarja would have been met with judgement and discipline—I didn’t think any of this. I think in that moment my entire intentions were shifting about what a teacher was anyway, shifting from completing curriculum and giving grades, to just being present for my students, to really hear.

It was like a shift from a teaching career to a teaching life. And since that time, I am 100% certain that the idea of whether our school was being successful or not successful has never occurred to me, because we knew we could not fail if we just listened to kids. This was the information we needed. This was my Tolstoy.

And so, here are the words I heard coming out of my mouth to Tarja, and I will say it to her again, my whole response: 

THANK YOU.

The honesty of the innocent is the most valuable wisdom on earth. Those ‘90s alumni like Tarja S, Leslie F, Paul B, Aaron S, Amanda G, Audrey G, Sara Z, Sarah Z,  Lindsay H, Brandon B, Tom R, Becky R, and others were the greatest teachers I’ve ever had.

Today’s Grauer teachers are not only probably less boring than I was from time to time, they take enormous delight in the voices of students. That’s where we get our stories and our wisdom. 

When people see our campus, they like to talk about my “vision", so let me set the record straight. I have never had a vision beyond listening to kids, listening to teachers listening to kids, or trying to develop better empathy for what all of them are going through. This is what we are endowing with our Teacher Endowment Fund and the only real point of the school: Listening. Empathy. Our legacy is teachers who do this at the legendary level.  

In 2021, we have been celebrating the legends of our milestone thirtieth year. We now have a number of people still walking the campus who are moving into that legendary status who, in the 20 years since the ‘90s, have had a hand in changing a generation of student aspirations: Dana, Don Kish, Miho, Stephane, Chris and Tracy Ahrens, Audrey and Sally Grauer who were dyed in the wool, all people of the ‘90s who embody our values. Now we see the shiny, happy and beloved Clayton Payne and Jessi Brown moving into this 20+ year legends turf… and a posse of other renegades on their heels.

And we honor the legendary philanthropists and visionaries of the 90's who made our campus possible, including Bob and Pam Buie, David Meyer and Liz Ecke, and, always, the late, wonderful Joan Knute whose final bequest on earth endowed our land.

Endowment rewards perseverance, the core value our legends have modeled. Endowment is permanent. It pays out …forever. Someday our school will pass the $20 million endowment mark, and if you doubt that, I’ll show you a picture of this campus when it was 100% coastal sage scrub. Just as we are convened at this year's gala in the theme of 1991 to honor 30 years of fearless teaching, we convene to honor 2041 equally, and 2051, our real work.

This has been a tough year, but we have never lost sight of what is important, or what we envision. To riff off Margaret Mead a little: Never doubt that a ragtag band of renegade teachers can change education if they persevere—indeed, this is the only thing that ever changes it. 

Thank you to all who turned out for our 30-year gala celebration of our teachers.

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