Students at Rumney Marsh Academy were challenged to rethink the way they view their future, their struggles, and themselves during a powerful schoolwide assembly on November 17 featuring nationally known youth motivational speaker Anthony Valentine.
The founder of KLTR and a former inner-city EMT, Valentine has spent nearly a decade traveling the country to help young people understand, as he put it, “the power of their stories and how their choices influence friendships, communities, and well-being.” His visit to Revere was part storytelling, part demonstration, and all heart—reflecting a mission rooted not in his accomplishments, but in the lessons he has learned along the way.
Valentine opened by addressing one of the biggest challenges facing young people: seeing possibilities when the present feels overwhelming.
“It is so hard to see the future when we’re living in the now,” he told students. Many of the beliefs young people carry, he said, are shaped by the expectations—or doubts—of the world around them. Some students may feel counted out before they have even begun.
But Valentine made it clear that the adults in their lives, especially their teachers, see things differently.
“They show up every single day. This is why I show up,” he said. “We haven’t counted you out, and we won’t count you out. So, all we ask of you is not to count yourself out.”
That message would anchor the rest of his talk: possibility is real, but it never happens by accident. He emphasized that greatness requires persistence, practice, dedication, hard work, and above all, consistency. "Nothing," he said, "simply arrives."
“You won’t just wake up one day, and a great thing will happen, or you’ll just do a great thing,” he said. “It comes with persistence… and all of those efforts started yesterday.”
Valentine’s ability to connect his message to lived experience is a hallmark of his work. Before becoming a speaker, he spent seven years working on an ambulance, an experience he said changed the way he viewed people, compassion, and the weight every person carries. He estimates that during those years, he met more than 5,000 people in moments of crisis or vulnerability. Over the last nine years, he has spoken to more than 50,000 students. Each encounter has shaped the lessons he now shares.
What those lessons have taught him, perhaps more than anything else, is that everyone is constantly “pouring”—giving effort, energy, and emotion to the people and responsibilities around them, often without recognizing it.
“We’re all pouring every single day, even when we feel empty,” Valentine said. Students pour into schoolwork, friendships, families, and obligations, sometimes to the point of feeling hollow inside. And that emptiness, he told them, is something almost everyone encounters. By asking students whether a cup he held was “full” or “empty,” Valentine illustrated how perceptions shift depending on what someone believes about themselves.
Beliefs, he explained, are like walls. When young people experience pain, disappointment, or failure, those experiences can build emotional barriers that keep them from seeing what’s possible. Yet those walls aren’t permanent.
“Usually, a bridge is made so that we can carry things across,” he said.
Lowering those walls requires adjusting beliefs—not pretending a difficult experience didn’t happen, but reframing its meaning.
“I can’t change what I felt in those moments… but what I can adjust is how I see those experiences,” he told them. “If I’ve ever felt not good enough, where can I adjust my beliefs so I can feel better about myself, about survival, about everything that is around me?”
The idea, he said, is not just to survive the difficult parts of life but to understand what each person is carrying and pouring from. Like a science experiment—a comparison he returned to often as he shared that science was his favorite subject growing up—every person has an internal “mixture” made from memories, grief, love given, and love withheld. That mixture changes over time as new experiences blend into the old.
“Everybody in this room has their own internal mixture,” he said, reminding students that what they feel inside is shaped by real experiences and is worth acknowledging.
At one point, Valentine spoke plainly about the emotional exhaustion that comes from giving so much of oneself. He described the feeling students might recognize after studying all night for a test, pouring everything into it, and then being filled suddenly with insecurity—wondering if they did enough or fearing the result. The same happens in friendships or relationships, he said, when someone gives so much they feel they have nothing left. What rises afterward—fear, doubt, anxiety—isn’t a sign of failure but a sign that a person has emptied themselves. Those feelings, he emphasized, do not mean something is wrong with them. They mean they are human.
Throughout the assembly, Valentine blended humor, personal storytelling, gentle challenge, and science-based metaphor to keep students engaged. He joked about the best parts of visiting different towns—especially the promise of a good home-cooked meal—and recalled his childhood dreams of becoming a doctor. Now, he said, he may not be a medical doctor, but he heals in a different way.
“My goal is to touch hearts,” he said. It is a mission that has carried him from ambulances to classrooms, from emergency calls to auditoriums filled with students searching for direction.
As the assembly concluded, Valentine’s core message rang clearly: the world needs the faces, voices, and stories of Rumney Marsh Academy students. Their future isn’t predetermined, and their value is not measured by the hardest moments of their past.
“There is still so much possibility, still so much opportunity,” he told them. With persistence, belief, and a clearer understanding of what they carry inside, he assured them, they can build the bridges that lead to brighter futures.