Alum Donovan Arthen - 20th Ann. Charter Renewal
Channel: Grace Mrowicki
Date: 2015-06-15

HCCPS Alum Donovan Arthen speaks at the 20th Anniversary Charter Renewal Ceremony in Attleboro, MA in April 2015.

Transcript:
"Thanks for inviting me and all of the other alums to speak here today. I am the product of two charter schools: The Hilltown Cooperative Charter School and the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School, both out in Western Massachusetts. Both were incredible. I moved to Western Massachusetts from Medford, MA in 1995 and was greeted, my very first day walking into Hilltown, by a gentleman whose story is right there on that board, Ian Cutler, a man who I'm still close friends with today. The two of us explored this school that was so based on community, it was so based on bringing us together, on listening to us. We were eight year olds and nine year olds being listened to by our teachers, asked, “What do you want to learn and how can we help you learn it? How can we help you achieve your goals?” It was a school that made us feel like family. It was a school that when we  were looking at graduation in sixth grade that we didn't want to go so badly that we organized a protest outside of the school and the board of trustees listened to us and made a middle school for us. It was amazing. It helped me to learn to advocate for myself, to tell people  what I saw and what I wanted. It helped me to feel that I could steer my own life in a way that I might not have learned somewhere else. It gave me a joy of learning that enhanced what I already had. Since then, I've gone on to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. After graduating there, I've been the executive director of a nonprofit pairing young people with Nobel Peace Prize laureates in a leadership development program for the last three years. And now, I'm the vice president for strategy and growth at a new organization called the Spark Center. I just have to say that you all are amazing and thank you so much for everything you've done for me, for my classmates, and for my classmates at each of your schools. Thank you, and my life would not be the same now if it wasn't for the charter schools that I got to go to. "