Listen to this song before reading my reflection, please:

I recently stumbled upon an interview with Stephen Wilson Jr. for “Live at the Print Shop,” where he opened up about the story behind his viral cover of Stand by Me. He wasn’t talking about vocal techniques or chord progressions. He was discussing the moment when the silence of grief became the loudest sound in his life.

He shared that his father had just passed away. For years, his dad had been his biggest champion. He believed in Stephen "way bigger" than he ever believed in himself. Stephen admitted that he used to argue with his dad about it. He would push back against that faith.

But then his father died, and as Stephen put it, "I didn't have no one to argue with anymore."

Two weeks later, standing on a stage in Deadwood, South Dakota, Stephen played Stand by Me. He didn't play it for an audience. He played it from the depths of a soul that had lost its anchor. And in that raw, unguarded moment, something shifted. It was, in his words, "a knighting of sorts." He realized he was no longer just a songwriter. He was something else. Everything was different.

The Pedagogy of Belief

As I listened to him speak, something resonated deep within my own story. I know what it is to have someone believe in you when your own mirror shows only doubt. I know the weight of that gift.

But maybe this isn’t just Stephen’s story. This is our story. This is the heartbeat of what education is supposed to be.

We spend so much time today talking about AI, about Quantum computing, about the mechanics of knowledge transfer. We obsess over the how of learning. But Stephen Wilson Jr. reminds us of the who.

True education is not merely the download of information. It is the upload of belief. It is the act of standing in front of a student, whether in a physical classroom or through a digital screen, and believing in them fundamentally, fiercely, and irrationally. We do this until they have no choice but to stop arguing and start flying.

Flying on Borrowed Wings

There is a terrifying beauty in the moment a mentor steps aside. When the teacher leaves the room, or when a father leaves this world, what remains? If we have done our job right, what remains is flight.

The student realizes that they are soaring not because the gravity of the world has lessened, but because they have been flying on our wings all along. Our belief was the aerodynamics that kept them aloft until their own muscles were strong enough to take over.

This is the challenge I place before us today, especially as we navigate an age where technology threatens to strip the humanity out of learning. We must fight to ensure that education remains a place where students learn to fly in spite of themselves. It must be the place where they find their feet, their North Star, and their unique contribution to a broken world that is desperate for who they are.

The Anthem of the Educator

So let this be your song today.

If you are a student still looking for your footing, know that you are worth believing in. But if you are an educator, a leader, or a mentor, I challenge you to be the Stephen Wilson Jr.’s dad for someone else. Be the one who argues against their doubt. Be the one whose belief is so loud it drowns out their insecurity.

Let Stand by Me be our education anthem. Because in the end, we are not just teaching subjects. We are "knighting" the next generation. We are preparing them for the moment when they stop arguing with their potential and finally, beautifully, take flight.