Lindsay Kaplan Faculty Speaker, Commencement 2017

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1 1 Lindsay Kaplan Faculty Speaker, Commencement 2017 The thing I love most about teaching French is not teaching students to express themselves in another language. Instead, it s the moments that are not translatable that are most thrilling to me. Any of my students, from the seventh graders to the seniors, will remember, hopefully fondly, asking me how to say a given word and hearing my typical response: Give me the whole sentence. I ask for the sentence not because I don t know the word they re asking about, but because in order to choose the right word, I need to know the whole idea. I need to be able to couch the idea in its context to translate it. Though my students get used to hearing this response from me, it takes a while for them to figure out what it really means. One thing it means is that students have to be sure about what it is they re trying to say in English when they translate. This is true less often than we might imagine. Here is a typical exchange: How do you say get? Get what? Get lost? Get your brother from school? Get rich? Get sick? Get married? Get an A on your French paper? Get away with it? and so on. Another example is the Russian version of Farley Mowat s memoire Never Cry Wolf, the title of which rather clumsily translates to Wolf, Please Don t Cry. To translate these ideas, we have to reformulate our understanding of them, break the ideas apart, and reexamine which aspects of the sentences we utter truly contain meaning. Another thing it means is that sometimes, in French class, students hear: You can t say that. Usually the initial response is something like, What do you mean, I can t say that? Generally, we have an understanding that languages other than ours are the functional mirrors of our own, that they represent systems that are different but analogous, and that all languages have the single purpose of communicating preexisting human sentiment. In fact, it s the other way around. While it is true that humans shape language, language also shapes humans, and we are both nurtured and limited by the

2 2 languages we learn and by the ways in which we use them. To help my students understand this concept, I ask everyone to close their eyes and picture the big box of crayons. Then, I ask them to try and imagine a totally new color, one that no one has ever seen. They can t do it. None of us can - if someone says they have, they re lying. The same is true with language; when we don t have a word to describe something, we don t have an easy avenue to understand it. The way we get around these translation problems, the way we try to translate the untranslatable, is to expand our understanding of the idea we are trying to express, expand our understanding of who we are to each other. This relationship stuff is part of the way we build meaning that is not constrained to nameable things. We build complex and simple relationships all the time. Small details of our behavior determine how these relationships develop. We create, build, and nourish our numerous relationships by saying please and thank you. This small detail has an immeasurably positive effect on how others perceive us, how they will treat us, and whether they are inclined to help us. In our present world, where the divide of politics and culture can seem like a chasm instead of facets of the same gem, where we are being assaulted by images of the world as a terrifying place, we can refuse these images by treating each person in our environment with dignity, respect, kindness, and curiosity. Some people seem to be born with these qualities--not me, I was born grumpy and sarcastic, with a cup of coffee in my hand--but they are also qualities that we can cultivate with intention and create space for in our lives. This is what I have tried to do. This is relationship building. This is what you are doing when you learn from your teachers, not just the content of their classes but about their lives and how to navigate your interactions with them. You all know who is a stickler about formatting and who isn t, who accepts late homework and who doesn t, who can tolerate the sound of your chewing in class--and who cannot. You know our stories and our children, and you come to learn that we exist separately from this place and from your ability to contextualize us, like the student who approached me once at Red s to say hello, and asked, You eat ice cream? This is a kind of translation. In that moment, I m not just Lindsay Kaplan the Teacher to you; you are

3 3 recontextualizing me into Lindsay the person, a person who eats ice cream, who always chooses peanut butter, who sits in the sun with her kids in the afternoon. As corny as it sounds, we learn so much from you, too. And about you. We learn simple things, like who always needs a pencil and who is pathologically two minutes late--you know who you are--who needs a nudge to ask for help, and who is always willing to lend a hand. From you we learn that people can change; we watch you grapple with these savage beasts, knowledge, critical thinking, organization, reason, objectivity, advocacy and self-advocacy, discipline and rebellion. We are there when you start to tame these beasts! We help you come to terms with failure, and admit that there is value in being wrong. We track your trajectories; we get to see as your personalities unfold and as you actualize your potential. It s so wild! These connections are everything! They are what gives meaning to our lives. In this gathering of 2017 graduates, their teachers, and their families, there are two people who should be here, and who are not here, and it would appear that those connections have been broken. It might seem as though the feeling of those losses is untranslatable, but what we have now that we didn t recognize before is the language we need to talk about them, a rich and deep context. How did each one of you learn to see Debba Curtis as a person who eats ice cream? How did she come to see you as more than just students in her class? What was the preexisting human sentiment that defined your conversations with Debba, and how did you learn to express it? Even as I saw her every morning for two years with my young child Avi, saw the love and the strong connection that grew between them and therefore also between us, I knew that that s who she was for you as well. When she made you memorize the First Amendment of the Constitution, she was placing you into the context of that which mattered most to her--truth and justice. When she fussed at you for your sloppy bibliography, she was helping you find the context for your entry into the world, one marked by intelligence and integrity. When she trusted you with her beloved dog, Franny, she was also trusting you with her own capacity to move independently in the world. She knew you would not let her down. And you didn t. You shared with her that which is without translation-your relationship.

4 4 When we lose someone we have to expand our language even further; we search for the expression we re missing, we search for the context, but it still exists-it s still there. I know we all deeply feel the absence of Beata, today, too. Like Debba, though, the essence of her is here with us in you. Beata s outrageous creativity, that beaming smile, her gentleness, her intelligence, her generosity, her skill on the field, these things will not leave us readily. The ways that you communicated with Beata, the feelings you couldn t name before knowing her, these remain with you. With us. Even working on a school project with her was like a wild ride: one minute you d be munching on cookies and talking about how to work the subjunctive into your French presentation, and the next you d be nailing down your plans to build a cake pop empire in North Africa. Beata was like that color we couldn t possibly imagine, and now, having seen it, having known and loved her, we can name her as that color, and as that feeling. You have the language of the friendship and the love that you shared with her. You have permission to be joyous when you remember Beata, even today. Especially today! Because with Beata you learned to express an untranslatable idea and to give name to a feeling. You cannot unlearn this. Once you ve seen that color you cannot unsee it again. It belongs in your box forever. What s ahead for you has not yet been translated; there are no words for the future. Go back to your box of crayons, look inside. The color of your future isn t in there yet, but all the shades of context already are. You will create your next community and these kinds of relationships for yourself in your new environment. Insist on relationships built on a foundation of dignity, respect, kindness, and curiosity; commit to treating others this way. That is what you have learned here. I ve witnessed you doing it already, dancing with students from another school in Montreal, reading to littles at Reiche, playing soccer with teenagers in Havana, nodding your heads in appreciation of a peer s remark in class...along with countless other acts for which there are no words. The adults you have become are a product of the relationships you have built here and the moments of connection and contextualization; the ferocious joy and pride of accomplishment that each one of you feels today is the greatest prize for the parents who nurtured you, the educators who shepherded you through your years of learning, and every person who contributed to your development.

5 5 Every act of kindness is a translation; if you can t find the words, you have work to do. In English, I might say Good Luck to you now, but in French, we say Bon courage. Sadly, that expression has no good translation, but I think you know what I mean. ****