Superintendent Osborne Unicycles — and Imparts Words of Wisdom

Superintendent Brian Osborne addressed the graduating classes of both South Orange and Maplewood Middle Schools, making his entrance on a unicycle. The text of his address — in case you missed it over the roar of applause — is here.  Click the video to see him in action.

Graduation speeches are about life lessons and advice. Mine is about unicycling.

I learned to do that when I was in the seventh grade. I found the unicycle in a garage sale and learned an important life lesson that if you show up at the end of a garage sale and you’re 12 years old and show interest in a unicycle, they might give it to you for free without checking with your mother first. The lesson is to be your own person and don’t be shy about pursuing what you want.

Anyway, that was before kids wearing helmets for safety was common, and I started to try to learn how to ride this thing without a helmet. In the first week, I wiped out, hit my head on a rock, got knocked unconscious and woke up in the hospital with a mild concussion. Parents, I’m sorry to say that the lesson here isn’t going to be about being careful or wearing a helmet.

When we got home from the hospital, my mom, who hadn’t been really too keen on the unicycling thing in the first place, said something surprising that I’ll never forget. She said, “Hey, you know, it’s still light outside. You have a little time to practice if you want.” It took me a couple minutes for what she said to sink in, and then I took her encouragement to heart. Even though I was pretty scared of getting hurt I decided to try again, the very same day that my fall had put me in the hospital.

By the time I was in high school, I was unicycling in a traveling circus and competing in the national unicycle meets. And while I didn’t make a career of unicycling, by not giving up when I was literally knocked out, I found something that I loved to do, that challenged me, and that taught me that falling is part of life and getting back on makes all the difference in the world.

Teachers, counselors and administrators, thank you for preparing these now 9th graders to persevere through every challenge and to get up after every fall. You have done an outstanding job. Graduates and families, please join me in appreciating your amazing teachers.

Parents, thank you for partnering with us, for entrusting to our care your precious children. Thank you for all the blood sweat and tears that you have put in to getting your middle schooler to this point, and for all the times you have picked them up when they’ve fallen and encouraged them to try again.

And parents, you can’t let up. Let me be clear: today marks the day they’ve grown out of middle school, but they are not yet grown.

To all of you who are raising one of these sharp-looking young people: please, stay close to them, listen to them, make them show up on time, prioritize their education. Make them do their homework, know who their friends are, and be in their business.

Today is only a step on a long journey that is far from over, they have miles to go and they need your love and your nagging to see them through.

Class of 2011, I am proud to greet you as the Columbia High School class of 2015!

In four short years from now, you will be graduating from high school, and you need to be prepared for success in college. There is no other option but to be college ready, because even if you decide not to go to college, the world of work now requires the same kinds of knowledge and skills that it takes to be successful in college.

Many today will tell you to have a fun summer. I don’t mean to be a downer on your special day, but I’m telling you to use your summer wisely to make sure that you are ready to excel in high school so that you will achieve college readiness. There are only 720 days of high school. You have no time to waste.

You will meet many teachers at Columbia High School who believe in you, who know you can do it – and their job isn’t to make it easy for you. Their job is to prepare you, so at times it is going to be hard and demanding. Sometimes you’ll fall. And when you do, then you have to believe in yourself, get back up and keep moving with your eyes forward.

This really is about unicycling. Most people think that riding a unicycle is about balance, but it’s not. It’s about movement. In fact, if you try to stop and balance, you’ll definitely fall off. To stay on a unicycle, you have to be slightly off balance on purpose, you have to lean in, keep your feet moving, and you have to look forward. No stopping. And if you do fall off, you get back on. And success in anything in life takes the same persistence.

So don’t give up even if you get knocked out, don’t let anyone ever tell you that it isn’t important, and don’t let anyone label you. When I was in elementary school and middle school, I was labeled as unathletic. I hated picking teams. I was always the last one picked – “all right, we’ll take Osborne” – and it hurt. So if this clumsy, unathletic kid could learn to ride a unicycle just by not giving up, then you can learn anything you put your mind to. Anything.

I want you to always remember this about learning: intellectual capacity is neither fixed nor given; rather, it can be built - to high levels - through the sustained application of effective effort at challenging tasks. Ok, I’ll say that in another way: smart is not something that you are, smart is something you get through hard work.

Even Albert Einstein, who many people think was really smart, understood this. Einstein said, “It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

And, yeah, OK, I admit, I do hope you have some fun over the summer, but remember, in four very short years, we’re going to be again on another stage, at another graduation, and you have to be college ready. I’m going to ask you what your plans are and what you are prepared for, and I have high expectations for what you are going to be able to say.

Congratulations graduates!

The best is still to come and I look forward to seeing you as ninth graders!