Good afternoon, good afternoon. How's everyone doing today? (cheering) Good, good. So greetings, friends, family, faculty, staff, alumni, and the illustrious class of 2016. Make some noise. (cheering) So my name is Donovan Livingston, and I came to address you in the best way I know how. But you have to forgive me. I have to take this moment in for a little while. When I spoke at my high school graduation several years ago, my high school English teacher threatened to replace me on the program or cut my microphone when she found out that I was interested in doing a poem as a part of my remarks. So I am eternally grateful for being able to share this piece of myself in my most authentic voice with you this afternoon. (cheering) So, spoken word poetry, it insists on participation. So if you feel so compelled, snap, clap, throw up your hands, rejoice, celebrate. Class of 2016, this is your address, and this is your day. (cheering) "Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of the conditions of men." Horace Mann, 1848. At the time of his remarks, I couldn't read, I couldn't write. Any attempt to do so, punishable by death. For generations, we have known of knowledge's infinite power, yet somehow we have never questioned the keeper of the keys, the guardians of information. Unfortunately, I've seen more dividing and conquering in this order of operations, a heinous miscalculation of reality. For some, the only difference between a classroom and a plantation is time. How many times must we be made to feel like quotas, like tokens in coined phrases? "Diversity. Inclusion." There are days I feel like one, like only, a lonely blossom in a briar patch of broken promises. But hey, I've always been a thorn in the side of injustice, disruptive, talkative, a distraction, with a passion that transcends the confines of my own consciousness-- beyond your curriculum, beyond your standards. I stand here, a manifestation of love and pain, with veins pumping revolution. I am the strange fruit that grew too ripe for the poplar tree. I am a DREAM Act, Dream Deferred incarnate, and a movement, an amalgam of memories America would care to forget. My past alone won't allow me to sit still, so my body, like my mind, cannot be contained. As educators, rather than raising your voices over the rustling of our chains, take them off, uncuff us. Unencumbered by the lumbering weight of poverty and privilege, policy and ignorance. I was in the seventh grade when Miss Parker told me, "Donovan, we could put all of your excess energy to good use." And she introduced me to the sound of my own voice. She gave me a stage, a platform. She told me that our stories are the ladders that make it easier for us to touch the stars. So climb and grab them. Keep climbing, grab them. Spill your emotions in the Big Dipper and pour out your soul. Light up the world with your luminous allure. To educate requires Galileo-like patience. Today when I look my students in the eyes, all I see are constellations. If you take the time to connect the dots, you can plot the true shape of their genius shining in their darkest hour. I look each of my students in the eyes and see the same light that aligned Orion's Belt and the pyramids of Giza. I see the same twinkle that guided Harriet to freedom. I see them. Beneath their masks and their mischief exists an authentic frustration, an enslavement to your standardized assessments. At the core, none of us were meant to be common. We were born to be comets, darting across space and time, leaving our mark as we crash into everything. A crater is a reminder that something amazing happened right here. An indelible impact that shook up the world. Are we not astronomers, searching for the next shooting star? I teach in hopes of turning content into rocket ships, tribulations into telescopes, so a child can see their true potential from right where they stand. An injustice is telling them they are stars without acknowledging the night that surrounds them. Injustice is telling them education is the key while you continue to change the locks. Education is no equalizer. Rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream. So wake up, wake up, lift your voices until you've patched every hole in a child's broken sky. Wake up every child so they know of their celestial potential. I've been the Black hole in a classroom for far too long, absorbing everything without allowing my light to escape. But those days are done. I belong among the stars, and so do you. And so do they. (cheers and applause) Together, together we can inspire galaxies of greatness for generations to come. So no, no, sky is not the limit. It is only the beginning. Lift off. (cheers and applause)