welcome to President Barack Obama,

Secretary of education Arnie Duncan, White House staff,

school board members, county board members,

superintendent Dr. Patrick Murphy, senior staff,

principle George Jackson, Wakefield faculty and of course

my fellow classmates.

(applause)

I am honored to have been chosen to speak before my

classmates as well as the students across America today.

Over the past three years, I've taken advantage of every

academic, extracurricular and community opportunity that has

been presented to me.

As I reflect, a scholar expressed disappointment in my

writing and challenged me to do better; being reassigned to

another class was not an option.

After that experience, I was determined to excel.

Therefore, I managed to succeed in the advanced placement class

by maintaining focus along with using a

setback as constructive energy.

As I stand before my peers today, I want you to know that

excellent education opportunities may be handed

to us, but as students we must take responsibilities

for our future.

We may be taught but we must take ownership of our learning.

As senior class president I encourage all of our freshmen to

take advantage of all the opportunity's that Wakefield

High School has to offer.

Along with the inspiration I've taken from President Obama,

I would not be standing here, before you, to introduce the

President of the United States if I had not been here at

Wakefield high school, in Arlington Virginia, pursuing my

education. Just as we are fortunate to have President

Obama to come here to Wakefield today to speak to us,

we are also fortunate that after he leaves, we will continue to

have the opportunities and support that Wakefield

gives to all of us.

At this time it is with great honor and pride that I ask

everyone to stand to welcome the --

(applause)

-- to welcome the man that proved "yes we can."

Ladies and Gentleman please join me in welcoming the President of

the United States of America, Barack Obama.

♪♪(music playing)♪♪

(applause and cheering)

The President: Hello, everybody!

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. All right, everybody go ahead

and have a seat. How is everybody doing today?

(applause)

How about Tim Spicer?

(applause)

I am here with students at

Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.

And we've got students tuning in from all across America,

from kindergarten through 12th grade.

And I am just so glad that all could join us today.

And I want to thank Wakefield for being such an outstanding

host. Give yourselves a big round of applause.

(applause)

I know that for many of you, today is the first

day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten,

or starting middle or high school,

it's your first day in a new school,

so it's understandable if you're a little nervous.

I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty

good right now --

(applause)

-- with just one more year to go.

And no matter what grade you're in,

some of you are probably wishing it were still summer and you

could've stayed in bed just a little bit longer this morning.

I know that feeling.

When I was young, my family lived overseas.

I lived in Indonesia for a few years.

And my mother, she didn't have the money to send me where all

the American kids went to school,

but she thought it was important for me to keep up with an

American education. So she decided to teach me extra

lessons herself, Monday through Friday.

But because she had to go to work,

the only time she could do it was at 4:30 in the morning.

Now, as you might imagine, I wasn't too happy about getting

up that early.

And a lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at

the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would

just give me one of those looks and she'd say, "This is no

picnic for me either, buster."

(laughter)

So I know that some of you are still adjusting to being back at

school. But I'm here today because I have something

important to discuss with you.

I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education

and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now, I've given a lot of speeches about education.

And I've talked about responsibility a lot.

I've talked about teachers' responsibility for inspiring

students and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure

you stay on track, and you get your homework done,

and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or

with the Xbox. I've talked a lot about your government's

responsibility for setting high standards, and supporting

teachers and principals, and turning around schools that

aren't working, where students aren't getting the opportunities

that they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated

teachers, the most supportive parents,

the best schools in the world -- and none of it will make a

difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill

your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools,

unless you pay attention to those teachers,

unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and

other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

That's what I want to focus on today:

the responsibility each of you has for your education.

I want to start with the responsibility you have

to yourself. Every single one of you has something that you're

good at. Every single one of you has something to offer.

And you have a responsibility to yourself to

discover what that is.

That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a great writer -- maybe even good enough

to write a book or articles in a newspaper -- but you might not

know it until you write that English paper -- that English

class paper that's assigned to you.

Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor -- maybe even

good enough to come up with the next iPhone or the new medicine

or vaccine -- but you might not know it until you do your

project for your science class.

Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court

justice -- but you might not know that until you join student

government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life,

I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it.

You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer?

You want to be a nurse or an architect,

a lawyer or a member of our military?

You're going to need a good education for every single one

of those careers.

You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job.

You've got to train for it and work for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and

your own future. What you make of your education will decide

nothing less than the future of this country.

The future of America depends on you.

What you're learning in school today will determine whether we

as a nation can meet our greatest challenges

in the future. You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving

skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like

cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and

protect our environment.

You'll need the insights and critical-thinking skills you

gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and

homelessness, crime and discrimination,

and make our nation more fair and more free.

You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all

your classes to build new companies that will create new

jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your

skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our

most difficult problems.

If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not

just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now, I know it's not always easy to do well in school.

I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right

now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it.

I know what it's like.

My father left my family when I was two years old,

and I was raised by a single mom who had to work and who

struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to

give us the things that other kids had.

There were times when I missed having a father in my life.

There were times when I was lonely and I felt

like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been on school,

and I did some things I'm not proud of,

and I got in more trouble than I should have.

And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was -- I was lucky.

I got a lot of second chances, and I had the opportunity to go

to college and law school and follow my dreams.

My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, she has a similar story.

Neither of her parents had gone to college,

and they didn't have a lot of money.

But they worked hard, and she worked hard,

so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages.

Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the

support that you need.

Maybe someone in your family has lost their job and there's not

enough money to go around.

Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe,

or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you

know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life --

what you look like, where you come from,

how much money you have, what you've got going on at home --

none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or

having a bad attitude in school.

That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher,

or cutting class, or dropping out of school.

There is no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine

where you'll end up.

No one's written your destiny for you,

because here in America, you write your own destiny.

You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day,

all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas.

Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school.

Neither of her parents had gone to college.

But she worked hard, earned good grades,

and got a scholarship to Brown University -- is

now in graduate school, studying public

health, on her way to becoming Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos,

California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three.

He's had to endure all sorts of treatments and surgeries,

one of which affected his memory,

so it took him much longer -- hundreds of extra hours --

to do his schoolwork.

But he never fell behind.

He's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my

hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the

toughest neighborhoods in the city,

she managed to get a job at a local health care center,

start a program to keep young people out of gangs,

and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and

go on to college.