Look Up…8th grade graduation speech by Kian Salek

Good evening, everyone. On behalf of the graduating class, I’d like to welcome all parents, teachers, honored guests and students to the graduation of 2019. It was about 11 years ago when I began my journey at Foothills Montessori. I remember it like it was yesterday. There I was, sitting on the P1 carpet with the other students, playing in Ms. Valerie’s garden and using the peace rose to settle very important disputes. Those were the days, but we have come a long way since then. As the years went by, we encountered many challenges and obstacles that taught us how to learn from our mistakes and like Albert Einstein once said, “Failure is success in progress.”  As we kept growing, we learned important life skills like organization, time management, responsibility and teamwork

Eventually, we got to middle school. These two crucial years taught us how to become independent and empathize with the world around us. We went from followers in preschool and kindergarten, always looking up to the “big kids” in E1, to ambassador leaders in middle school. We have made it to the top and we couldn’t have done it without the support from our amazing teachers and parents. As John Irving once said, “You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.”

Even though our amazing journey at Foothills ends here, we begin another journey that will be filled with new opportunities and experiences. FMS has given us the foundation we need to succeed in life and we will never forget how this school has shaped us into the people we are today.

While we have cherished every moment at this school, it is now time for my peers and I to look up to the future and prepare ourselves for the challenges ahead. When I look at my classmates, I see future scholars that can achieve anything and I am excited to see them go far in life. If you think about it, some of us have spent around 108 months together, and during this time we have been through both cheerful and heartbreaking memories, from our fantastic school trips to the devastation on October 1st, 2017. After today, we will part ways and take different paths. Most of us won’t see each other after tonight. And if you find yourself a little anxious about starting at a new school, just remember this; the sky’s the limit, so look up and soar like a falcon.