I grew up in Toronto, Canada. One day the fire trucks came to my house. It was every little boy’s dream. Well almost.

Graduating class, as we move forward and our lives scatter in different directions we will be trying to create our own identities in a new world and to rediscover who we’ve become.

When my guidance counselor told me that I was salutatorian, my first thought was, “Can you recalculate my GPA?”

This is probably the last time we will be together as a class for a while, and that got me thinking: what does it mean to the class of 2015?

Editor’s note: The following speech was delivered at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School graduation Sunday.

More than a decade ago, a landscape architect friend from Rhode Island brought us a house-warming gift when we had a cottage in Menemsha.