After delivering the valedictory address to CM’s graduating class of 1998, much was expected of this young man, Brian Shuman. And you have continued to inspire and awe your family and your school with the work you have done, earning a reputation for leadership, enthusiasm, and dedication that has brought you here this evening.
At Bowdoin College, you majored in government and economics while serving as captain of the varsity hockey and golf teams. After graduating, you went to work in biomedical consulting in Waltham. But as you say, “something was missing.” It was clear what that something was: the South Boston son of two teachers who would marry his college sweetheart Tara, also a teacher, you had pedagogy in your blood. And after earning a graduate degree at Tufts, you found yourself in the classroom at Westwood High, where you have earned a reputation as a demanding teacher who rewards his students with loyalty and devotion.
Students in your classes learn to respect, love and become a part of history, and in teaching psychology to upperclassmen, you make young men and women into critical and analytic thinkers. The Don Salvucci Award precedes tonight’s honor on your mantel, awarded this year to you for Excellence in Promoting Civic Education. And Westwood High’s 2010 Yearbook dedication recognized the rising star within its ranks.
On those pages, students praised your work ethic. “No matter what he’s doing, he commits himself to it with honesty and integrity,” one wrote, and another, “I wish I had Mr. Shuman for more than one year. He wants everyone to succeed, and with him, success always seems reachable.”
As a hockey coach at Canton High since 2004, you’ve turned a mediocre program into a stellar one, winning the school’s first state title and earning the Boston’s Globe’s 2010 Division II Coach of the Year Award. While your style is a little different from Coach Bill Hanson’s, you say, “Ultimately, we try to do the same thing--help our players realize their potential, that they’re better than they know. But Coach Hanson’s intensity comes out in me once in a while.”
“Brian’s gift in the classroom is his ability to connect with people,” your colleague Corey Rocha says. “It doesn’t matter who you are, he can connect with you. All his kids would run through a wall with him. He’s not a rah-rah type guy, but he inspires confidence and he never misses a teaching moment.”
Of course, your career is in some sense just beginning, and just as we expected much of you in 1998, we know there is much to come. Ten years from now, you say you’d like to be teaching and coaching, raising your son Teddy with your wife Tara, and continually “getting better and better.” We look forward to what that will look like.
In recognition of his promise as an inspiring young teacher, and his pursuit of excellence as a coach, altruist, and young leader, we recognize Brian Shuman ’98 with the Vince in Bono Malum Award for Outstanding Young Alumnus.
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