Senior Dinner Address

Upper School English teacher and Twelfth Grade Dean Jenny Leffler was chosen by the Senior class as this year’s Rice Award recipient. She delivered the Senior Dinner Address on June 5, in which she shared anecdotes and takeaways from the pages of her own life story.

First of all, I want to express my gratitude for giving me this honor . I want to begin by thanking the Rice brothers, Tony ’56, Don ’57, Bill ’62 and John ’64 who have endowed this award . Thank you to the Senior Dinner Committee who have done so much to organize this amazing event, especially co-chairs Fran Rowbottom P ’21, ’23 and Sonia Sandhu P ’18, ’23 Thank you to the senior advisors and all of the faculty and staff who have helped this amazing class to make it to tonight—the list is long, and I appreciate all you do every day I wanted to extend a special bit of gratitude to the Senior parents who have been so supportive throughout our time together, but especially during the past few months when things have been particularly difficult for me And, most of all, the guests of honor, the Class of 2023 I am so thankful for you

I feel so honored and humbled to be talking to you tonight at your senior dinner. While there are many people here who have really seen you grow up (your families), I feel like I have had a unique seat for the past four years. When I look out at you tonight, it is hard to remember how far you have come—you are so grown up. You are ready for your next chapter, and while I know that you are probably carrying a whole bunch of emotions about leaving the Hilltop and leaving home, I know you are ready and I know you are going to be great.

As an English teacher and someone who loves books, I often think of things in literary terms. That sounds way fancier than it is—what I mean is that, as my teams know, I often think about a season, for example, as a story. But what I am thinking about now is that really a season, or any finite amount of time, is just a page or a chapter—not the story as a whole.

A few weeks ago, I went to a museum in Philadelphia for my cousin’s daughter’s 8th birthday. It was a natural history museum, and in one of the rooms, I read about something called a Commonplace Book. The museum defined a Commonplace Book as “a form of notebook that compiles visual or written materials collected or created anew based on individual passion, whim, curiosity and observation. Unlike a journal that relies on personal reflection, commonplace books assemble fragments of inspiration from external sources.”

I was kind of taken by this idea.

As someone who likes to think of herself as a writer, I really struggle to keep a journal. I have so many journals on my bedside table and have had countless New Year’s Resolutions involving writing every day—it makes almost all of my lists of things I want to do, but I have really never been successful with my followthrough. But this kind of book—where you might collect inspiration from the people around you and then develop it and fit it into your own story—that is really interesting. And in thinking about it the past few weeks, I realize that I actually do that already. Without knowing it, I guess, I do have my own Commonplace Book.

I thought that tonight I might share a few pages from my book with you—some inspirations that I have found and how they help me to frame the pages and chapters of my own life story. Because you know me so well, much of this will probably sound familiar.

Page One:

Lollipop Moments.

I came upon this TED talk by a guy named Drew Dudley several years ago now. In his talk, Dudley tells a story about being an upperclassman in college, walking into the registration area where the new students were standing with their parents, likely nervous and anxious, and handing out lollipops and making jokes to lighten the mood. This was just a small thing to him, in fact something he didn’t even remember doing. About four years later, or maybe even more, he received a note from one of those people, a recipient of his lollipop who thanked him for making her laugh that day when she was having major second thoughts about her college decision and even considered leaving, until he came into the room.

There are two parts to this story—there is the moment with the lollipop, a seemingly small moment that has a huge impact; one person just handing another a lollipop. And there is the second moment—when the recipient reached out years later to share the impact of that small act of kindness.

Dudley talks about the idea that leadership and gratitude go together and that leadership or the ability to change someone’s life for the better isn’t about making huge overtures, which can often feel overwhelming or impossible to do. Instead, he feels that we can make great change by noticing the little things around us; recognizing when someone might need a metaphorical lollipop to help them get through something challenging or noticing something about a person that they might not see in themselves. And he points out that the moment grows exponentially when the recipient then realizes the impact and lets that person know the result of the original action. I think both parts of this are equally important, and neither is easy.

Mr. Richardson was my junior year high school English teacher. He had a wonderful English accent, a head of white hair, and a white beard and mustache. I remember enjoying his class, but there is one moment that stands out to me. We had read The Grapes of Wrath, a book which in my memory I loved, maybe because of this moment, and he was talking to us about the essay that we had written about the book. Mr. Richardson read an example of a paper that he felt was strong and that illustrated an important point. I was shocked when the small portion of the paper that he read was mine. I can’t imagine that my paper was so great, but what Mr. Richardson gave to me that day was a confidence that literally led me to my job today. I started to think of myself as a writer after that, and I remember it so many years later. Sadly, I have never thanked Mr. Richardson for this—I don’t think I really recognized this moment as being important until much later.

A few years ago, Mr. King walked into my classroom in the middle of a class and he gave me a hug. He told me that he had heard about something that I had done and he wanted to thank me. This moment is an example of the second part of this lollipop moment—a time when someone recognized something that I did that, unbeknownst to me, had a strong impact on someone else. I had no idea what he was thanking me for until he told me more later, but having that moment pointed out by someone who I respect and love as much as Mr. King is just as impactful and meaningful as the initial moment likely was to that recipient.

Making sure you recognize little things in other people, especially when they might need that bolt of confidence or even to just smile, and also letting someone know when they have had a strong impact on you are both really important things to think about. Lollipop moments are definitely things I think about in my work and in my life.

Page Two:

My dad used to say, “Never run for a bus, there is always another one.”

He used to say it as a joke, which I’m sure we rolled our eyes at. However, I think that I have realized something in this statement that he meant, perhaps even without realizing that he meant it.

Now, the reason that my dad said this so often was because he really couldn’t run, and so whenever we would say something like, “I’m going to run out” or “I’m going to jump in the shower”—any figures of speech that included a reference to running or jumping or something like that—he would often respond with this, “never run for a bus, there is always another one.” But what I think he meant was something about him that always inspired me. Regardless of what he was going through or any pain he was experiencing, he was always there for me.

When I was a kid, I loved baseball. On summer nights when it was light out until almost 8 p.m., I would anxiously await my dad’s return from his long day working in the city, with his hour-plus commute each way. As soon as he walked in the door with his signature whistle, I would throw on my Yankee baseball hat and we would go outside to have a catch. Out there, we would practice all sorts of throws, and I would practice the proper pitching stance that he taught me.

This is what I remember—regardless of the fact that he had a long day at work, he was there to play catch with me until the sun went down.

We shared our love of baseball, and he took me to so many Yankee games as a kid—we would always keep score on the scorecards. It wasn’t baseball so much that was important, it was that he made sure he always had the time for me and never made me feel any differently.

Throughout my life, I knew that if there was anything I needed, or even if I just wanted to pick up the phone to give him a call at home or at work, it didn’t matter. He always made me feel like I was the only person he wanted to talk to—he had all the time in the world for me.

Make sure that the people you love feel special and important; make time for even seemingly little things, regardless of what you really have going on. It’s certainly not always easy, especially when you know that you have so many things to do or places you have to be. But when I think about the fact that there is always another bus, it helps me remember what is important.

Page Three:

A quotation from the book Wonder: “We carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness.”

I hope you have all read this book, but if you haven’t, I’m giving you an assignment. There are many things that I love about the story, but what it says about kindness is the most important to me. There are a few parts of this quotation that seem vital. First, the idea that “we carry something with us as human beings,” that we all share this capacity to be kind. We, as a species, have the ability to be friendly, to be generous, to be considerate—it is just a part of what we have the capability of doing. But this quotation then says something more—it talks about kindness as a choice, and a choice that we also share. The word “choice” changes this—it means that we have to actively think about and then follow through on this choice. It means that we have agency—it’s not our default mode, but something that we must consciously decide to do.

When I was in high school, I was voted “Most Friendly” in the Senior Superlatives. At the time, all I could think about was how stupid my picture in the yearbook looked—my head was put on a monkey’s body and my hair was so short. I was actually considering showing you the picture from my yearbook—but I decided not to—I’m still, I guess, pretty mortified by it! I didn’t really think much of that “honor” at the time, too consumed perhaps with the picture and my own selfconsciousness, and truthfully, I haven’t thought about it all that often since then.

But in going back to reflect on my story, I realize that I was then where you are now. Now, so many years after I graduated from high school, I actually feel proud about that “honor” more than embarrassed by it. In fact, it reflects probably the thing I value the most in my life—my relationships and connections with others. In order to foster those relationships and to make sure that they are at the heart of who I am, I know that not only do I need to choose kindness, but I notice when others do as well. Surrounding myself with amazing people—certainly my family (my husband Matt is here tonight); my amazing colleagues who are way more than just people who work with me, a lot of them are dear friends; and you, my students, my players—that has been so important to so many aspects of my story. And I’ve come to realize that the outstanding moments in my life, the ones that catch me by surprise, are due not to a great accomplishment, but to the people who surround me—and oftentimes, that is you.

This is something that I carry with me, as well—finding people who challenge me but also make me better. And people who show up in good times and bad. This is my team. Beth Staropoli was my JV Basketball coach when I was in ninth grade. We had about 40 people on that team—so many that she had to divide us into two teams: the Stars and the Polis. We were terrible. What I remember most from that ninth grade season is that we practiced almost every day over winter break and we ran more sprints than I had ever run in my life. In fact, when one of our teammates decided to get a haircut instead of coming to practice, we ran even more. Staropoli was tough, even when she was coaching a team of really terrible ninth grade basketball players.

When she became my Varsity Lacrosse coach that spring, we also sprinted after games when we played terribly. I can picture her crouching in the corner of the field making a ball of athletic tape—the bigger the ball, the more we would run. It was never a good sign. But just like in the winter, we did it. We bought in because we loved our team, and we didn’t want to disappoint her.

Like I said, Staropoli was tough, but she also taught me what it meant to be on a team, to be there for others, to experience the highs and the lows together, to show up. There is nothing better than celebrating a victory with your team, but there is also nobody that you would rather be around after a defeat than that same team. From Staropoli, I [also] learned that teams aren’t just there for you on the field or the court. In the spring of my senior year, one of my best friends was really struggling with her home life and her mental health—things were pretty bad. She was not in a good place. We were really worried about her and didn’t know what to do. I remember being at an endof-year lacrosse party, and after most people had left, she had a bit of a breakdown. She ran into the woods and we were terrified. We didn’t know what to do, so we called Staropoli and, within minutes, she was back at the house. It wasn’t that Staropoli had the answers, but she helped us to navigate the situation, to get our friend help and, mostly, she was just there.

Staropoli has been showing up for me for 40 years. Some of you have met her as she comes to our games every once in a while. In fact, she was at our Spring Sting lacrosse game just about a month ago, standing in the pouring rain with my family, watching the game, all the way from her new home in Pennsylvania.

Whether you are talking about a team that competes or just think about the team that gets you through, this is what you want to find—your team.

Choosing kind doesn’t mean you can’t be tough and you can’t have expectations. Instead, it is about showing up, about understanding the generosity of spirit and the value of just making the choice to be there, and letting other people know that you are there.

I know that I carry this with me every day—it’s not always easy to choose kind, to make the choice to show up, but it’s also way harder not to.

Page Four: Clear Eyes, Full Hearts…Can’t Lose.

In ways, the first three pages are summed up in this last one. My Varsity Field Hockey team knows that this quotation is something I love. This quotation from Friday Night Lights is, I think, about optimism and hope. It’s not actually about losing or winning but about making the choice to play and understanding what you get from just being on the field. It’s aspirational.

As I have been thinking about this quotation more and more, my thinking about it has changed a bit. Perhaps we are not always going to be able to have truly clear eyes—for one thing, tears can get in the way, or we might have an obstructed view. Similarly, having a full heart is also really hard. We are constantly put in situations that threaten that full heart—emotions like jealousy or regret, anger or fear, those are things that can make it impossible to feel that full heart. But maybe it’s the moments that might get in the way that help us to truly see and feel.

My daughter Annabel graduated from Hackley in 2020 —many of you know her! You remember 2020 it was the quarantine spring, your freshman year. As I was writing this speech, I went back to about a million things for inspiration, and I happened upon her Chapel Talk, which was actually given to YOU, since you were the freshmen! I don’t know if any of you remember the talk, or even if any of you heard it, I think we had stopped taking attendance at those Zoom Chapel Talks that took place during our remote lunch period. At the time, the idea of a Chapel Talk being delivered over Zoom seemed like such a sad thing, but it means that I have a recording of it now, which is pretty awesome.

Her talk was our last Chapel Talk, so I think it was about now, during this time of year, the final week of school. Typically, this is the start of all the senior celebrations—as it is for you—but the class of 2020 was stuck at home (as were we all). Hackley did an amazing job and figured out how to have a senior dinner and a graduation, but that didn’t happen until August. At the start of June, there was no thought or assurance that anything like that could happen.

When Annabel gave her Senior Chapel Talk, all she really knew was that her graduating spring looked very different than what she had hoped and expected—what she had seen happen for literally her whole life. And perhaps feeling what she was at that time, Annabel focused her talk on moments in her life when she cried, which was interesting, because I don’t really think of Annabel as a crier.

She started with a quotation from The Office—the whole series, I know, is a page in her own Commonplace Book. The quotation said, ”To beginnings and endings, and to middles, the unsung heroes.” She went on to talk about how hard endings are, but that they are really not endings at all, that they are really just middles— that everything is a middle. And I realized that she said, very poignantly, what I am thinking about, too.

In order to have clear eyes and full hearts, it might be OK to find yourself with tears in your eyes because it means that what you have in front of you is that important, is that meaningful. To cry at the end of a game, win or lose, only shows how much you care. To feel dismayed at goodbyes or to be a bit fearful of something ending only illustrates how much it touched you. Annabel’s words have impacted the way I think about clear eyes and full hearts. It is possible to have clear eyes through tears—in fact those tears might just be necessary to really be able to see clearly and love fully.

Clear eyes and full hearts are, yes, aspirational, but they come from choices you can make. They come from showing up, from recognizing the beauty in the small things, in finding gratitude in the way people make you feel more than in accomplishments and accolades.

Seeing an ending as a middle, the start of something new, as the word Commencement is meant to suggest, puts the value on the chapters, the story that is being written every day.

So, as you are starting a new chapter, you’re not writing a whole new book. Instead, you are continuing to add to your story, to continue to fill your book. You already have a good portion of your foundation—maybe the exposition if we are talking about the story arc—but there is a lot more to go.

While I said at the start of this talk that seeing you now makes it hard to remember where you started this present chapter of your story, I do actually remember you way back in the fall of 2019. Today you were reminded as well about how far you have come, whether you started in Kindergarten or were picked up along the way on the Graduation Walk this morning, I’m sure it brought you back to the beginning of your Hackley story, which, regardless of where you started, was still a middle. And the pictures we saw this morning in the slideshow from ninth grade remind me of just how far you have come and all the things we have been through together. It has been quite a journey, full of things we didn’t even know existed when we started out together—things like spit tests, Zoom classes and meetings, plastic dividers in classrooms, face masks. To think that we didn’t gather as a grade in person for about a year is hard to believe.

I asked you way back at the end of ninth grade to post for me two pictures, one that captured what quarantine looked like and the other that provided a silver lining. I went back to these recently and what I saw were pictures of family and loved ones, pictures of nature and natural beauty, pictures of instruments and artwork—these were part of both your quarantine pictures and your silver linings. They illustrate that you have that capacity to recognize the small things, to focus on the present and not to run for the bus, to choose kindness and see wonder, and to see the world, no matter how hard it might be, with clear eyes and a full heart.

You as a group and each of you as individuals embody so much of what makes up the pages of my book. In many ways, you redefined what it means to “show up,” to be present. You had to choose to show your video in a Zoom meeting, and when we first started gathering in person, I know there was an underlying anxiety about whether it was the right thing to do. In fact, for much of the past four years, you have had to make choices about just showing up—in and out of school. There was a time not too long ago when even the choice to eat at an indoor restaurant was daunting and difficult.

I was the recipient of so much of this from you— particularly in the past few months, which have been among the hardest of my life. You showed up for me in so many ways—certainly in the beautiful flowers that you sent to me as a class both on the loss of my dad and again on my birthday. Your simple card, “We are grateful for you,” is something that I treasure. You have also shown up for me in the way you embrace the activities we have done—things like the popsicle stick games in the chapel or even the Graduation Walk today. I am so incredibly grateful for you all.

I hope that you feel like you have clear eyes and full hearts tonight. Even if you find yourself looking out through tears or are feeling a little fearful, I hope that you can see how far you have come and how ready you are to keep going, that you know how excited we are to celebrate you and that you feel the love that is surrounding you now and will continue to surround you all week.

So, as you leave the Hilltop and start your next chapter, lean on and develop the pages of your book that you have already written, but lean into what will come next. Keep your eyes open for new inspirations to add to your Commonplace Book that will help you to continue to write your story. But don’t forget to turn back to the pages you’ve already created. You will make some edits along the way, you will add new characters, plot lines, there will definitely be some twists as you continue to fill your book.

Thank you for letting me and letting us be a part of your story. We can’t wait to see what you do next.