The following are words offered to the Residential College Sophomore Address at the Quick Center, Fairfield University, September 14, 2019. Scared to death to speak to such a crowd, but sharing my truth the best way I know how.
So, Meredith calls me on behalf of the Residential College planning team and asks if I would be interested as serving as the closing speaker for a residential retreat…your residential retreat. In the email, she wondered if I could share some words of inspiration on how students could make the most of their sophomore experience, and my first reaction was, “Inspiration? Phew. I get nervous speaking at such things. Perspiration. I can do that. But inspiration, under lights and in front of a Quick Center audience? I tend to sweat bullets.” (pwoochoo pwoochoo). “I am really good at perspiration.”
I’ve been asked to speak at the end of a long day, a Saturday, right before the 3rd week of a new semester. Your sophomore year. I also know I tend to squirm a lot during inspirational talks, so I feel your pain and I promise my remarks will be quick, because this is the Quick Center after all (but hello, someone gave me a Mic). I am honored to be with you, to belong here, to engage with you, to experience this opportunity with you, to connect with you, and to share some of my stream of consciousness.
(Slide 2) A friend of mine, Dr. Susan James, and I spent the last summer working with teachers in two states writing about The Superpower of Hope. We are huge fans of Dr. Rose Brock, author of Hope Nation, and are using her book of essays written by Young Adult authors to inspire writers in the National Writing Project tradition. Teachers like William King of Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, have also been using the book to inspire students to write their own hope essays. In a way, this talk is my essay in response to the book.
This morning when I woke up, I asked Alexa to tell me a good 4th grade joke (who doesn’t love a good, corny 4th grade joke. What a great way to kick things off). I really, really hoped it would be good, too. Well, this is what Alexa gave me: Why don’t dung beetles go to parties on the weekend? Because they’re always on doodie.
Thanks, Alexa. Probably not the best joke for an inspirational conversation.
Actually, the real thanks should go to Meredith, the Residential College planning team, and all of you who are here today. I’m thrilled to offer you some of my perspiration.
(Slide 3) And I thought I’d do this by sharing a couple of fish tales - you know, those stories that make you wonder, “Is this true, or this guy totally exaggerating to make a point.” It wasn’t my original intention for this talk, but that is how my week unfolded. This week, in the chaos of life, living and trying to do my best, everything kept leading me towards fish (and I should tell you that I used to have a mole on my nose. It was big before I removed it. Once, on a date in Kentucky in 1999, a girl actually reached across the table pulling on it, thinking it was a piece of fish. It wasn’t. It was the mole).
Actually, I started thinking about this speech last weekend when I had the most delicious sword fish cooked in gorgonzola sauce I’ve ever tasted (it was definitely not the Tully). It was at a restaurant down the road in Milford. Then, on Wednesday night when I taught a graduate course - a late course for teachers - I found myself passing out Pepperidge Farm gold fish crackers to keep them awake. It seemed the universe was delivering fish stories in anticipation of my perspiration today.
I’ll come back to the fish, shortly. But first a little context about what brings me here..
(Slide 4) I grew up in Syracuse, New York, and although some of my best friends went to Catholic schools, my educational career has always been in the public sphere: public high school, public colleges, and teaching in public schools. When I took a job at Fairfield University, a few of my friend’s parents chuckled, “Ah, so you are joining the hippie Catholics, are you? Our beatnik brothers. Those free-spirited Jesuits?” To be honest, I didn’t know what I was joining because I’ve never had much dogma in my life and had no clue what they meant. Everyone who knew me sort of cocked their head a little, thinking, “Crandall’s going to teach at a religious institution. How did that happen?”
But I know exactly how it happened.
I’ve always been drawn to the tradition of serving others, for finding knowledge, even bathing it, and, with privileges of being educated, taking action. What good is knowing anything if you’re not working diligently to help your friends, your family, your neighbors and more importantly, those who haven’t been as lucky as you?
(Slide 5) Growing up, my Grannie Annie taught me that God and Mother Nature did the nasty and gave birth to Maude, this incredible planet we inhabit, this Earth. She wanted my sisters and I to respect the trees, the lakes, the birds, the chipmunks, the frogs, the butterflies and even the fields. If we learned to hug the natural world, she mentored us, we’d be in communion with God. This has been my church and religious philosophy.
(Slide 6) For me, this also became the Great Whatever, and for as long as I can remember I’ve put my faith into the magical coincidences that make life what it is - a special miracle, a chaotic coincidence and a random opportunity while I have it. Since my days of playing Wiffleball with neighborhood friends, to a decade of teaching high school English in Louisville, Kentucky, and right now on this campus, I’ve always felt that I’ve had a hook in my rib cage pulling me forward into the chapters of my life. It is this hook that brought me to Fairfield University and, well, you can blame Meredith, it is the same hook that brought me to this presentation today.
(Click Twice to Add an O) For me, adding an “O” to “GOD” brings us to GOOD. My career has been a privilege of working in diverse schools settings where Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Animist, Hindu and Atheist students attended. As a result of heterogenous classsrooms, my attention has constantly returned to what it means to be a GOOD human being. Who might I be for myself and for others?
(Slide 7) Which brings me back to the fish.
Although I’ve officially entered aging-fart status, I’m here to tell you I can lose hours and hours of my day reading, scanning and wandering through posts on social media: Twitter, Facebook and newsfeeds. Because of this, earlier this week I found a commencement speech written and given by writer and thinker Jason Reynolds. My friend Rebecca posted it and, immediately, I thought, “Shoot, I need to call Meredith and tell her she needs to get Jason Reynolds to be the closing speaker. I'm just a schlep.” It is the best 10-minute speech I’ve ever heard and I encourage you to check it out after I’m done squawking up here on stage. I won’t plagiarize his words, but for the English majors in the house (woot woot), I will allude and paraphrase what he had to say. You’ll see the fish connection.
See, when Reynolds was in high school he had a teacher who had a fish that no one was to touch…EVER. DON’T TOUCH THE FISH. But then, one day, the teacher threw the fish to the ground, and out of its water element. It made everyone uncomfortable.
They watched it squirming and shaking and flopping and trying to stay alive. They knew the rule, though. Don’t touch the fish. It was agony to watch until two girls grabbed the fish and returned it to the fish bowl. They helped the golden, aquatic creature survive. Of course, the teacher immediately pointed to door with a look of scorn. They knew the rules. The real punishment, however, came for the others in the class, in that room, who didn’t ACT at all. They knew what was the right thing to do, but followed the “rules” instead. They closed off their hearts. They didn’t do what was right. The two girls did and the teacher taught his lesson.
I cross-reference Reynold’s story here with the story of the boy and the starfish (and if you don’t know this story, I assign it to you for homework). No grade. No need to respond. It’s a quick read with an important message.
(Slide 8) In Vincent J. Domino’s “The Characteristics of Jesuit Education,1986,” it is written that a Jesuit education is “radical goodness of the world,” the pursuit of a “human community,” “a lifelong openness to growth, joy in learning,” and a dedication to change. Jesuit education is a faith in justice, a commitment to community values, and a promotion for doing good with and for others, especially those who find themselves in difficult times, underneath tremendous obstacles, and behind the hateful walls that human beings create to keep other human beings out. I challenge you to allow humanity in. That is what I mean by Superpower of Hope.
(Slide 8) This is what I also mean by the Great Whatever. The hook in the chest. The adding of an “O” to God, so that we have Good.
I’m not Catholic and I’ve never been to confession, but today I’m going to confess my truth to you. For the past week, I’ve been on a quest to learn more about Ignatius so I would be better prepared for my remarks. You have to know that in my first year at Fairfield, in a gathering of the Board of Trustees, Jesuits and academics, I actually asked, then Provost Paul Fitzgerald in front of everyone, “Hey, Paul, I’ve always wondered what does the S.J. next to your name stand for?”
He said, patiently, if not comically, “Bryan. It means Society of Jesus.” Of course, it does. I don’t care how many degrees I accrue, I will go to my grave as a doobie doo doo. I honestly did not know. That is my confession.
This is the beauty of the Ignatius spirit. It is a foundation of doing GOOD for others, and doing GOD’s bidding to those who do not have what we all have right now. Your knowledge, your hopes, need to be put into action. The Ignatius spirit is a reminder that we all have a responsibility to this education thing…this life thing…this career thing. We can always do better.
(Slide 9) Of course, my graduate assistant found me this lil’ guy in the bookstore as a gift this week and, in my quest to learn more about St. Ignatius, another student shared a photograph of her cat she adopted at Boston College. She named him Ignatius and wanted me to tell everyone in this auditorium that he’s a supermodel cat. Meow. The Ignatius spirit is everywhere.
(Slide 10) Now for my own fish story. It’s not Jason Reynold’s, but it is what I have, so we’re going to go with it. For several summers, I had the luck of teaching in Roskilde, Denmark where I often brought students from my classroom in Kentucky.
In 2000, Danish-Cuban artist, Marco Evaristti, had an exhibit at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding. His work was an interactive piece where goldfish were placed in ten blenders, plugged in the middle of a museum with an On/Off switch. Any visitor was given the choice to flip the switch ON, should they choose, or keep it OFF. Well, several, if not many, flipped the switch on. They did this over and over and over again, until police were called, animal rights activists were alarmed, and artists around the world began licking their lips over the boundaries the artist pushed.
(Slide 11) For me, however, a teacher, I now had a new lesson for my high school students, especially for the conversation of what it means to be a good or bad human being. I learned from Evaristti’s artwork that there are those who choose one way and those who choose another. There are those who have little regard for life, and those who contemplate it and appreciate it. deeply
I love / to believe / in hope - The Superpower of Hope. I’m not an on-switch type of guy, but I would be absolutely foolish to ignore the fact that many others are.
So, in my classroom, and for lessons on ethics while reading Euripide’s Medea - for those of you who haven’t read it, a mother violently kills her two boys as revenge for her husband’s infidelity - I would bring a blender to my room, telling my students the story of Marco Evaristti’s goldfish artwork in Denmark. I would tell the story in dramatic form and lure the kids in with the On-Off switch as I described his intent. Then, I’d toss in a paper-machete goldfish I created (made of orange and red tissue paper) and always hit the On button. The paper would blend quickly and my students would be horrified. Well, some of them. Half would laugh hysterically and say out loud, “I love this class. Crandall just wiped out a fish.” Well, I wiped out a paper fish to spark a conversation about ethics. To talk about life. To talk about what it means to be alive. To talk about our responsibilities to the vulnerable.
And that’s what your retreat was about today….to have conversation about the Ignatius spirit, one that is always between the me, the myself and the I, in relation to others. Men and Women for others.
(Slide 12) When I was a teacher in Kentucky, I discovered a children’s book called If the World were a Village of 100 People by David J. Smith. Ever since, I’ve chosen to keep up with the statistics, as percentages change every year and keep me honest to my personal mission on Earth, with Maude. This year, in 2019, if we were to shrink the world to a village of 100 people.
50 would be male, 50 female.
5 would be from N. America.
33 would be Christian.
51% would make less than $2 a day
40% would lack basic sanitation (indoor plumbing)
33% would have access to the Internet, 15% within their homes
50% of the world’s wealth would belong to 6 people, all Americans,
7 would have a college education.
Welcome to privilege and the responsibility of being educated. I hope your generation does better than all generations before. With an education, we have a responsibility to others. The Superpower of Hope.
(Slide 13) My personal work in Kentucky, New York, and now Connecticut has been with relocated refuge youth and their literacies, in and out of school. There are 7 billion people on this planet and the majority do not live a life like we do.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report there are currently 41.3 million internally displaced people, 25.9 million refugees, and 3.5 million asylum seekers. Daily, 37,000 people around the world are forced to flee their homes because of war, changing weather patterns, poverty and famine. As we are here today benefiting from a Jesuit education, we must ask ourselves how we can help. If we can’t help here, then is there a way we can help locally.
(Slide 14) When I was a sophomore in college, I signed up to move to London where I studied Literature of Exile and the Black British Experience with Professor Carol Boyce Davies at Binghamton University. That semester, she changed my life forever, as her postcolonial teachings and my irreplaceable experience in a foreign land, fused together to alter my life trajectory for the better. I knew I wanted to teach, I knew I wanted to work in urban schools, and I realized I wanted to learn more about global realities than previous schooling allowed. It was the semester where I first exited Plato’s cave and, well, woke up. I was a first-generation, working class kid who was somehow lucky enough to walk the streets of England with a super-diverse group of friends.
(Slide 15). I chose to teach at K-12 public school in Louisville, where diversity was a mission and high standards for all were valued. My students were amazing because we gave them permission to be. I taught students like Janessa who spent the year teaching Black history throughout our school, arranging a field trip to the National Underground Railroad Museum Freedom Museum. AJ, who when recognizing a deaf mother couldn’t hear gospel music at his church, created a dance group to perform the songs physically as the choir sang. Michael, an artist, who began painting inspirational murals throughout the school and performing spoken work poetry, and Keith, captain of the basketball team, who did a book drive for hurricane-devastated New Orleans. I taught Peej who sold Adirondack chairs built out of broken hockey sticks to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis, and Loreal who established a youth-group for AIDS-awareness. I had Emily, who was interested in the medical field, and asked if humor is the best medicine, while telling jokes on the morning announcements every day and helping to create an Improv Comedy club at the school. I also taught, Trung, a Vietnamese immigrant, who began an after school English-tutoring program for adults in his community. Before I knew Fairfield University, my students were putting their knowledge into action. They were modeling their Superpower of Hope.
(Slide 16) It was in Louisville, too, that I began working with refugee adults who were relocated to the city from war-torn Sudan, teaching them to drive, to go to the store, to read and write, and to navigate a complicated American culture. In return, they taught me an importance for community, of humbled togetherness, of culture, and the necessity for knowing global history.
They helped me to turn on a switch within, but not the one for harming others or blending fish. With them, I learned how important it is to be like those classmates courageous enough to put the fish back in the water, even when the rules forbade them to do so. This, to me, is the Jesuit way, and what the teachings of St. Ignatius tell us. There’s a call for all of us to do what is right.
(Slide 17) In his 1998 novel, Big Fish, Daniel Wallace wrote, “Dreams are what keep a man going.” I add to this text, “Dreams are what keep a woman going, too.” Dreams, like hope, need to be put into action, because actions speak louder than words.
My personal work with relocated refugee-background youth has brought me to the S. African philosophy of Ubuntu, “I am who I am, because of who we are together.” In other words, a human being is a human being because of other human beings.” Now, with the K-12 students I work with in the State, and their teachers, I am advocate for building bridges between communities. An individual succeeds when embraced by multiple communities. Through the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University, I’ve established teacher institutes, service-learning projects, and young adult literacy labs, which includes Ubuntu Academy, a summer enrichment program for immigrant and refugee kids who live in the area. My Superpower of Hope is to find ways to close both academic and opportunity gaps caused by Connecticut’s zip-code apartheid.
(Slide 18) Over the last 8 years, I’ve reflected on my schooling, the traditions of a Jesuit-education, and what this actually means to actually be here, right now. I’ve been fortunate, and through elevator talks, conferences, papers and a commitment to others, I am proud to say that this year I officially crossed the million dollar mark in grants to do this work in support of Ubuntu, K-12 teachers, and equity in our schools.
This has included:
- Working through singer John Legend, the National Writing Project and the MacArthur Foundation to unite 600 writers in six schools to digitally connect through Ubuntu and storytelling,
- Working with writer Kwame Alexander to help turn-around a K-8 urban school in New Haven, Connecticut,
- Collaborating with teachers Kim Herzog, Rebecca Marsick, and the Westport Public Library to create the Saugatuck Story Fest,
- Publishing 1000s of student writers and teachers in POW! The Power of Words, each year,
- and hosting numerous Writing Our Lives conference for young people each year on our campus.
(Slide 19) These dreams we have, these hopes….they need to become our actions. Hope is a superpower when turned into action. You belong here, you engage here. Because you engage here, you experience here. More importantly, because you belong and engage here, you must connect here, too, not only on this campus, but with the world beyond this campus, beyond this bubble, beyond this state, and beyond this nation.
That is what I mean by The Superpower of Hope. It’s up to you what you do with it.
A round of applause is needed for The Residential College planning team who designed today to launch possibilities for a better tomorrow.
Let’s give them a woot-woot!
(Slide 20) It has been an honor to speak this afternoon and to offer some of my perspiration. If inspiration occurred, too, then I guess I can be happy.
Alexa, tell me a fish joke.
What do you call a fish with a tie?
So-fish-ticated.
Go forth, be so-fish-ticated, and do Good. That’s what this is all about.
Thank you,
Dr. Bryan Ripley Crandall
~CWP Fairfield
