NCHE: North Carolinians for Home Education is live!

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:04]Oh, sorry.

[00:01:18]Oh, [ __ ] it.

[00:01:47]Please remain standing as we pray and recite the pledge of allegiance. Let's pray.

[00:01:56]Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this special day, this special day on this journey of life for these young men and women. Lord, we celebrate their accomplishments. We ask your blessing upon the parents who poured so much into them and we ask your blessing upon these students. Lord, give them wisdom and direction and blessing as they take this next step in their life.

[00:02:27]Lord, that they would be able to take what they've learned from their homes and their teaching and their parents and take them forward.

[00:02:40]And Lord, may they be a hundred lights shining in this world.

[00:02:49]We ask you that you guide their every footstep as they take the next step on this journey. Lord, we put them into your hands in Jesus name. Amen.

[00:03:02]>> Amen.

[00:03:07]>> Pledge allegiance to the flag And we wish I seated.

[00:03:31]>> I just add a few announcements um before we begin. Please turn a sound up on your phones. sign with your phones.

[00:03:41]While the diplomas are handed out, you are welcome to take photos of your graduate and parents from the center aisle, which is here behind the white picture.

[00:03:54]Others can other pictures can be taken on stage after the ceremony as well.

[00:04:00]These remain in the room until all the graduates are announced.

[00:04:06]Disruptions Those families at the end are not able to hear their graduates name announced.

[00:04:12]So, please stay until the end.

[00:04:17]For the announcements, our graduation speaker would like to introduce he and his wife have homeschooled their seven children and they are now proud parents of 19.

[00:04:35]He is the founder and director of the institute for excellence in writing.

[00:04:42]My my children have taken his courses and he is a regular presence in my home school. So right now I would like to welcome our graduation speaker and Andrea.

[00:05:11]It is a great honor to be invited to address you graduating class and parents and friends and siblings.

[00:05:21]I I always like doing it because it gives me a chance to apologize in case any of you out there have gone up and in your childhood suffered your keyword outlines and dress up checklists and paragraphs and all the rest. If it didn't kill you, it didn't hopefully make you suffer.

[00:05:43]And it's kind of hard to do a graduation talk because you have just a little bit of time and you want to say the best possible thing you can say while knowing at the same time nobody will probably remember anything that they said. It's a very exciting day for you and lots of things coming.

[00:06:06]Supposedly, there is a Chinese curse that says, "May you be born in interesting times." There is no evidence that this is either Chinese or a curse, other than the fact that Senator Robert Kenn, Robert F. Kennedy said this in 1966 and claimed that it was a tremendous curse.

[00:06:31]And you would imagine that politicians would never say anything that wasn't true.

[00:06:37]But it is kind of uh notable to consider that indeed you have been born. You we are living in interesting times. Um every day after my morning prayers I doom scroll for a little while just to see how bad things are in the world. And I often get the feeling I am living in a science fiction movie. This should be exciting.

[00:07:07]And yet there are concerns. And perhaps you share those concerns. Perhaps you lived a nice sheltered life oblivious of the world outside your home. But I'm guessing at this point you you have heard of wars and rumors of wars. You have perhaps been aware of some of the potential dangers that humanity faces.

[00:07:31]Perhaps they are um agricultural dangers or climactic dangers or of course AIS heavily in everyone's thinking these days. And then there's some people out there who who kind of dream that we will be able to kind of get microchips implanted in our brain and connect ourselves with AI and all other people and we'll have continuous uh access to all the knowledge of humanity which will give us superpowers and we will be like superheroes.

[00:08:06]And some of you may not like that idea too much. I don't know. But I think we all sense that there is somewhat of a threat happening against humanity in general kind of against a good and the true and beautiful stuff that makes us full of joy and able to relish life. So uh I guess I would say be careful about doom scrolling because it can you know it can get you after a while. But uh this this problem of artificialness you feel that like you can't really believe anything that you see right you can't believe a video you can't delete pictures you can't necessarily believe that a human being wrote anything and and this big AI monster that people think about or or know about or don't know about kind of I think looms very closely but I could argue that authenticity will be the current state of the age.

[00:09:13]Some people are saying, "Oh, no. ARI is going to replace these jobs and that jobs and these jobs and that jobs." I was watching a couple guys repair an escalator in an airport recently. I thought that's the kind of job you might want because there won't be any eyes that will get down there and get messy and repair an escalator for you. So I don't know what your your thoughts or dreams are for the future but I do think that the most valuable thing you can do is to protect your humanity to be authentic. The word authentic of course comes from the same word we get author and authority and so who's the author of life and we keep that first and foremost in our mind.

[00:09:55]I would like to give you a very short course on how to retain your humanity in a world that apparently wants to destroy it. So I'm going to mention four kind of deep level desires that we have as human beings. These are kind of at the core of what it means to be human. And I think that if you strive to to fulfill these desires in a noble and virtuous way, you will you will become more and more authentically human in a world seems to be coming less and less authentically interested in our humanity. The fourth link to know to sing to rule and to receive glory. So we'll briefly unpack.

[00:10:50]The first one is to know. Aristotle said that by nature man desires to know. And I'm sure you've probably watched some game show or some quiz or something and and someone asks a question and and you sit there and think, I know that. And it's very exciting. It's very fulfilling to know things. And yet there's an attack on knowledge. There are actually people in the world of education you can say well why why make children memorize anything? Why should they even you know know multiplication tables? Why should they know the states? Why should they know any history? You can just ask your phone connected to the all knowing all powerful everpresent source of information AI.

[00:11:37]And I would argue that it's hard to resist that. But we can cultivate knowledge because it's good to know things. And your memory is one of the most precious things we have. So while the world is is attacking memory and rewriting history and confusing us and distracting us with all the most important things that they want us to buy, they've kind of commodified you and me so that we will give our money, our time, our attention to something that is not enriching our knowledge or our memory.

[00:12:16]And so it's good to know things and of course you want to know your your stories. You want to know your past. You want to know your places. But most of all, you want to know who you are, your identity. And if you don't know your identity, then the world will very happily label you and tell you who you are. And so I would encourage as you go out and start to decide what you get to learn, do you know commencement actually means the start of something, not the end. And so you go out and now you have quite a bit more freedom to decide what do I want to learn, what do I want to read, who do I want to spend time with.

[00:13:01]The most important thing that you make choices about will be the people that you choose to spend time with because they will either elevate you or they will not. And so uh above all you want to know the nature of your creator of the author of life and we can know that through the word of God. We can know that through fellowship with believers and we also can know it through bringing beauty and truth into our lives. So surround yourself with those things to sing not in like the narrow sense but to live in harmony to make music with other people. You know sing sing in the shower. It sounds kind of cliche but sing as you walk down the road. Sing when you're with people. Play music.

[00:13:56]Dance together. Engage your whole self in the musical nature of the universe.

[00:14:03]There's a a term you may have heard uh somewhere called the music of the spheres. The ancients believe that indeed the heavens themselves were spinning and rotating and creating vibrations that come as music into our lives and into our souls. So whether you're good at singing or not, sing.

[00:14:23]Whether you're good at playing an instrument or not, play in that. Whether you're good at dancing or not, you can learn and you can dance and you can harmonize and you can sing and you can fill your heart, fill your mind and fill your soul with the beauty of song in the in the grander sense.

[00:14:46]the rule. This is a deep need. Uh what was Adam told in the beginning? Take and be practicing this for a long time since since you were playing with Legos and dollhouses. You were ruling your little domain and I'll set it up and I'll make it like this and we'll guard it against the evil guys and we'll create a beautiful space and we'll do all this on the floor in in in the home.

[00:15:13]And and now you are entering a time when you're going to have a lot more to rule over. You have more space and time to control, more decisions that you get to make. And so to remind you of something you probably heard before, but to rule well, the first thing you have to rule is yourself. And true self-government is self-government. And I think there was even I don't know Marine Corps general who wrote a book called Make Your Bed Like as a starting point to order your space, order your life. Order your thoughts. Thoughts become actions.

[00:15:56]Actions become habits and habits become who you are. And so you have now greater opportunity to order these things and to take on more and more responsibilities.

[00:16:11]And of course the true leader who can lead in love and selflessness and service and even making sacrifices is the leader who can govern himself, govern herself well and contribute to those around you. Because the fourth is to receive glory. We all have a great desire to receive glory. And it's not a bad thing at all, but it can be very misdirected. You think about people who have to constantly post themselves on the internet so that they get lots of likes and comments. And this is a a disordered way of working to receive glory. What is the glory that we really want to receive?

[00:17:01]What we want to hear? And I know the end of life is closer for me than it is for you. But at the end of life, what we all hope to hear is well done, good and faithful servant.

[00:17:18]And that's the trick. The trick is not the well done. That's the good part. The servant is the cheek. And receive the glory and the and the beautiful irony here is we have to give the glory. We have to give worship. We have to give ourselves in our hearts in our minds in our actions to the people around us that God brings us to serve. And one thing I'm very sure about is I never could have predicted my life. I think every adult you would talk to would say, "I never imagined that I would end up doing what I'm doing." I suppose a few people have this idea and they live with it and they make it happen and they go away.

[00:18:03]But but I I guess one of my thoughts is don't be afraid to do weird stuff. Like if an opportunity comes up and you think that's a weird thing to do, but if in your heart you think, "Well, maybe I should do that." And then you pray about it and you consult with people you trust. And maybe you go and do a weird thing, go to a different country, go take a volunteer position, decide you want to, you know, go to a monastery and pray for a while. Who knows what kind of weird ideas might come. But I'm very grateful that I did the weird things I did because now I can look back and I can see ah there was the hidden hand of the Holy Spirit guiding and directing unnoticed to me. Sometimes even without my cooperation I ended up doing things which I kind of thought I didn't want to do but I did them and I looked back and I was like I would not be who I thought if I hadn't done that weird thing.

[00:19:08]So what we hope to strive for then is developing a servant's heart. We hope to I believe find that path towards glory through the imitation of our Lord, our savior who lived a life of service and surrender and sacrifice and even suffering unto death.

[00:19:31]And I believe that when we do that truly try to follow our word to follow Christ no matter how difficult it may be. The joy that comes from that overtakes everything else and we will fulfill as best we can our humanity and help others to fulfill their humanity in a world that seems to kind of hate humanity right now. So, not enough humor. I I know. I'm sorry. I'm known for jokes, but I wanted to say what was on my heart for you. And I will wish you the very best. And let us all pray for each other as we move forward into the next phase of life, whatever it brings us.

[00:20:40]Junior, please take your place.

[00:20:47]First graduate to the side.

[00:21:14]Hey.

[00:21:25]Our 2026 graduates Alexander Caroline Grace Armstrong.

[00:22:45]My real brothers are Adrian, my name Barb and Emily is Winter City Bar.

[00:23:30]It's just the best.

[00:23:50]Robert Alexander Bruce.

[00:24:18]and North Bridges.

[00:24:43]Alexander sit there.

[00:25:08]Isabelle public Easy.

[00:25:39]Elizabeth Garnet.

[00:26:03]Eva Grace, Chris.

[00:26:24]Alana Isabelle Clark.

[00:27:07]Anna Elizabeth Cox Evelyn faith Dennis.

[00:27:42]All right, let's take it. Thanks.

[00:28:16]Julia Faith Mill Isaac, Matthew, and I believe it.

[00:29:36]Ethan Davis, Ever Kale Wayne Ferris.

[00:30:30]Gerard Wav Jr.

[00:30:56]I need >> Go ahead, man.

[00:31:22]Ava Elizabeth.

[00:31:37]I want to come inside.

[00:32:19]Emily Rose and Gabrielle and one sec.

[00:32:59]Fitzen Harrison.

[00:33:07]>> Yeah.

[00:33:29]David Williams.

[00:34:01]J Edward Hoffman.

[00:34:27]Rachel Melissa.

[00:34:43]Yes.

[00:34:54]That's my sister.

[00:35:24]Mason Star Johnson.

[00:35:58]Somaya, how's that coming?

[00:36:05]making sure >> Zachary Grant Jones Everybody li every time.

[00:37:21]Caroline Taylor Kernney Hi, I'm Abigail.

[00:38:09]Kaylee, you don't have questions.

[00:38:35]Emily reads.

[00:38:58]Caitlyn Brook.

[00:39:22]Luke, Ellen, Lam.

[00:39:30]Okay.

[00:39:46]>> Zachary, raise some lemon.

[00:40:18]Shane, Isaac Lley.

[00:40:46]Santa remix.

[00:41:10]Kaylee summer.

[00:41:32]William Carson Little.

[00:42:00]Ender Joseph L.

[00:42:32]William Martin.

[00:42:59]Char McCorm.

[00:43:26]Landon James.

[00:43:45]Ella Scarlet McCoy.

[00:44:04]Will Alexander McCor Jada and call back again.

[00:44:43]What do you think?

[00:45:01]Chloe Danielson.

[00:45:49]Andrew Craig.

[00:46:13]Hannah, Linda, we daddy from >> Oh, no.

[00:46:44]Abigail Catherine Mos Emma Grayson Moss.

[00:47:33]Keshan, I'm here. Muhammad Reika Margaret number.

[00:48:45]Gavin Xander.

[00:49:10]Quiet.

[00:49:43]I'll right there.

[00:50:07]Great. Addison Phillips.

[00:50:37]Last one.

[00:51:06]Tristan Ryan.

[00:51:31]Victoria called Ramsey.

[00:52:08]Michaela Now, Ashley M.

[00:53:10]Lenise Audrey.

[00:53:39]Leslie Marie Rose.

[00:54:03]Zachary Addison Brooklyn.

[00:54:58]What's this?

[00:55:18]Anthony Lewis.

[00:55:43]Malachi Elijah William Blade Schwarz.

[00:56:15]Cameron Chquiz Scott.

[00:56:41]Madison, Victoria.

[00:57:05]Jimmy Marie Star.

[00:57:36]See this? Stop sing.

[00:58:01]match the Kramer styles for sure.

[00:58:13]We missed it.

[00:58:29]Jonathan, my little lady Caitlyn Elizabeth Thompson.

[00:59:25]Giovana Abigail.

[00:59:49]Weston Mark Wells.

[01:00:16]Chandel, excuse me, Kendall Anthony Wilson.

[01:00:51]Daniel James is Oh, >> all right.

[01:01:24]People just Well, congratulations class of 2026.

[01:02:23]Oh my god.

[01:02:38]You know what you get to do now? Move your tassels from right to left.

[01:03:01]I'm going to give the benediction.

[01:03:06]May the Lord your God illuminate your path when you are in darkness.

[01:03:10]>> Give you strength in your weakness. Give you peace in your frustration in times of trouble. give you a vision, his vision in your confusion and uncertainty. Give you his mercy and grace when you fail. Give you knowledge for your ignorance, wisdom, and your foolishness. And may his spirit shine through you. May you glorify God and enjoy him forever. Amen.

[01:03:45]Are we all standing for the recession?

[01:04:02]>> Appreciate I'm going to go Okay.

[01:04:49]Okay.

[01:05:06]Is that Rachel?

[01:05:41]Let's see.