I've given my valedictorian's speech. To my surprise it went over really well. People were interrupting me to clap and I had to yell over them what i was saying. I will link a video my wife made once I have it on my PC. Also here is a transcript of it.

I'm working now, doing supply for a few places, two of the unionized under CUPE (which has recently had a controversial backing out of an illegal strike over pension plans) and one of them under the Mothercraft umbrella, who I schooled with. I am working most of my shifts at a place called Hester How which is a workplace childcare center inside Toronto's New City Hall. I would certainly like to work there as full time staff as the people are great, the directors are slow-speaking and thoughtful (like me.. and unlike most childcare workers,) and the children are among the brightest and most interesting I have ever met. Oh, and there are no male full-timers on the payroll. The other CUPE site is simply called University of Toronto Campus Coop and is run by a woman who used to work at the Margaret Fletcher Childcare Center which was born of protesting the lack of childcare for women UofT workers. It also has about four other men working there which is almost unheard of. The other site, Robertson House, is a Mothercraft childcare center which means they adhere to the policies I was taught in school, which are actually pretty congruent with my own policies of childcare. The center itself, as the name implies, is a big house which was built from day one to be a childcare center and so has all of the appropriate accommodations and built in furniture associated with children and their specific needs. There is also an Ontario Early Years Center in the front half of the house which is basically a drop-in, meeting place and resource center for parents. I am interested in doing wome work with the OEYC program but as of now I haven't persued anything to that end.

I've been offered a job working with a 29 year old autistic man and I am going to call about that today. I met the contact, Linda, at an autism workshop I attended on Tuesday. She was sitting beside me and struck up a conversation, steeled by an earlier encounter when we were both asking the instructor questions about her lessons. We were talking about chelation, about the root of the word and how the medical chelation process takes place when she mentioned to me that she had performed a chelation process on a client of hers. I asked her what she did and she told me about her energy healing. I then told her about how I had some experience in energy manipulation in my past studies and experience. She told me she liked the term "energy manipulation" and then offered me a regular, part-time support work job which I said I would think about and get back to her.

I have begun guidance counseling as a client and have been sick for about three weeks. That reminds me, I still haven't done my Guidance homework yet.

When I was asked to be valedictorian of my class I had to ask, "What's that?"

Now I have to write a speech... Christ.

"One day, some years ago, some friends said, 'Ever seen any silicate putty?' I said I had never even heard of it. They gave me a lump. I kneaded it, flattened it, stretched it into a long thin piece, tore it into smaller pieces. Then they said, 'Roll it into a ball and throw it on the floor.' I did so. My eye, and my brain, and my very bones knew what would happen-the putty would splat on the floor and stick. I threw it, and while my eye stayed stuck to the floor the putty bounced up as high as my head. For an awful split second, the universe rocked around me. I was on the brink of terror. Then, in the same instant, something wrenched in my mind, something said, 'Okay, so it bounces, very funny, what will they think of next?' and i was back in the world of order and reason."

John Holt
How Children Fail, 1958