The Confidence to Be Yourself commencement speech
By Patrick Alcasabas, P.E. Teacher & Coach G ood morning, CSB, families, faculty, staff, and a big shout-out to the Class of 2024! My name is Patrick Alcasabas, but around here everyone knows me as Coach Pat. It isn’t lost on me how big an honor this is to give this speech. So to you, my little brothers, I give a big and heartfelt thank-you for letting me speak to you on this stage, and I congratulate you on this momentous achievement. I wanted to start out with a dream my mama told me she had, years before I became a teacher. She said, Patrick, I dreamt that you were a pastor, behind a lectern, speaking to a big crowd of people, inside a massive church. Now I may not have the wisdom of a pastor, far from it actually. I’m just a P.E. teacher who tries to come to work every day with a smile on my face. But I just wanted to say, Mama, you were right, like you usually are, we made it! And to the Class of 2024, y’all made it! I’ve never delivered a commencement speech before, but a dear friend and mentor of mine — shout-out to Mr. V. — gave me some valuable advice: “Make it about them. Make it like a class.” So I would like to welcome all of you to the last P.E. huddle for the Class of 2024. Let’s rewind it back to September. School had just started. Kids and teachers are getting back into the swing of the school year. We’re getting the routines down. We’re remembering how to “school.” Now there’s one phenomenon that naturally occurs
in the arc of a middle schooler tenure, and it’s not just exclusive to CSB. We as P.E. teachers always have to brace for it every year: the inevitable P.E. indifference stage. P.E. turns into a glorified recess; having you play a game is like pulling teeth. This usually happens in between the end of Grade 7 and into the beginning part of Grade 8. This class, the so called “golden class,” was no exception. In fact, it got so bad during our first unit that I stopped y’all in the middle of your soccer game, sat y’all down, and I did something that I rarely do. I yelled at y’all. As most of you know, that’s out of character for me. But I’d like to think that when that tone comes out, you know y’all messed up. In hindsight, you did. But that’s your job. Your job is to make mistakes. Your job is to test the boundaries of a situation, and my job is to call you in, to hold you accountable, and to make sure we correct course. Going back to that huddle, I pressed you on celebrating too early. The job not being done yet. All the work you had to do before you were done with me, before you were done with your teachers, before you were done with this place. I looked each and every one of you in the eye, and I challenged you to be better, to lead our community as the “golden class,” to live up to the expectations and standards that you put on yourselves. And that’s part of what makes your class amazing — the fact that it wasn’t us who set those standards for you. By being unapologetically you, by engaging in your classes, by
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