OMG! (Another proud Mommy moment...)

[Menolly]

Just received via email from Beorn's Language Arts teacher:

I just read Beorn's speech and it is really really good. Other than the Valedictorians, we wanted one other student to speak. Is there ANY chance Beorn would read his speech at graduation? It is the kind of speech we are looking for, very personal. Please let me know as we have to decide by next week. Thanks.

[A Gunslinger]

Wow. Will he do it?

[Menolly]

Right now he's resistant. But I told him all he has to do is practice reading it a couple of times a day so it flows somewhat naturally, and to know that it will be much less intense than his Bar Mitzvah last September.

::: of course, he studied one on one with his Bar Mitzvah tutor for 18 months, so there is a bit of a difference, but I didn't point that out to him:::

He thought about it, said "the Bar Mitzvah wasn't all that bad," and has agreed to at least practice reciting it.

I'm pretty sure he'll do it..

[Cameraman Jenn]

Ask him if you can post it! We wanna read it! We wanna read it! POST POST!

[Menolly]

Awww...You made him blush Jenn.

BRB...

[Cameraman Jenn]

Beorn, quit blushing and get to posting! Good for you! Congrats! That's so totally cool.

[stonemaybe]

Beorn!

Just remember - public speaking is dead easy. Speak slow, speak clear, and look up every now and then! You're doing THEM a favour by speaking!

[Beorn]

Beorn, quit blushing and get to posting! Good for you! Congrats! That's so totally cool.

Hi...

Beorn Wagner May 23, 2007

When I stop to think about the last few years here at the Alachua Learning Center I really find it hard to believe that it hasn’t been a lifetime. It seems hard to remember a time when I wasn’t traveling two hundred miles a week to be with such a great bunch of people. It seems like it has been forever that I’ve been in a place with such caring teachers, administration and staff.

Take Mother Ramadevi, for instance, who cooks such wonderful meals and who has always been nice to me since the day I arrived. She tells me I am one of the nicest students at school, and I believe if we were neighbors that we would go on to remain friends, even though we no longer saw each other everyday here at ALC.

The teachers here also go the extra mile for you. I appreciate all the effort KB went through to keep me, and my mom, extremely happy, even when it meant laborious copying of resources and assignments. Of course a few free moments to read the comics and watch Dr. Who helped round off the edges of my keen intellect as well.

Even when I struggled, no one let me flounder for long. I am particularly grateful to Coach Ragu for helping me find a team sport I can enjoy in P.E.: Dodge Ball. Without his enthusiasm I probably would still avoid physical activity like the plague. Now I can look back and see how Coach helped me to gain more confidence in sports overall.

I’ve always enjoyed learning, so academics were not something I worried much about. But here the teachers always pushed me to work at things I used to think were merely fun. Thanks a lot. No, really, thank you. Without a careful balance of assignments and free time for my reading pleasure, I doubt that I could have done as well as I have.

These same drives have given me a tremendous track record of improvement in Art, which I still find frustrating, and I owe Ms. Dorothy credit for that. I would never have pursued the subject without steady encouragement.

But I suppose the single most consistent memory I have is the car pool with the Chavez family. After all I spent more time in the car than in any single subject most days. Whether it was blinding fog in the rosy-fingered dawn or storms of love bugs in the sweltering afternoons, I knew I could count on one thing, day in and day out: adults complaining about gas prices! It was this kind of consistency my parents wanted for me, particularly my father, who went to five different schools in two hemispheres during fourth through eighth grade. He always grumbled about money, but deep down he was pleased I had a certain stability in my middle school years.

So it is difficult, having forgotten much of what came before, to conceive of what comes after graduation. I know I will miss the time I spent here at ALC, even as I am excited to go somewhere else, somewhere perhaps a bit closer. But I doubt very much that I will find as close-knit a group of teachers and staff, or ones as interested in my progress and well-being, as I enter the world of institutional educational systems.

A final word here must go to my fellow students. I don’t always pay much attention to the details of the social world, and I even forget the names sometimes of people I have known for years. Still, nothing can shake my conviction that the students I have known are essentially good-hearted individuals even when they take the trouble to push me out of line or tease me for being different. After three years I am proud to have known you and will continue to think of you as my friends.

[Cameraman Jenn]

Good Work Beorn! I am sure you will deliver it with confidence, humor and finesse!

[Phantasm]

I'd be pretty happy to deliver a speech like that myself.

Well done Beorn. (and welcome to the Watch as a poster)

[Fist and Faith]

Yeesh! Now have someone to hire if I need a speech written!

[Menolly]

Yeesh! Now have someone to hire if I need a speech written!

Never knew he had it in him when we all met, huh Fist?

Oh! So you can now 'officially' add another Watcher to your list of those you've met!