2025 Convocation Grounds the CA Community in a Dynamic Understanding of Common Trust
On September 2, 2025, Concord Academy’s first day of school began with Convocation, a speaking program in the Elizabeth B. Hall Chapel that set the tone for a year of conscious community-building. Trustees and former faculty joined students and educators to mark the start of CA’s academic year—the first with the new Centennial Arts Center in use.
Head of School Henry Fairfax began by welcoming 115 new students and nine new faculty and staff members. Acknowledging the many distractions of the digital world, he urged the community to commit to becoming “great listeners” and to “be fully present and honor each other” this year—skills he noted would soon be cultivated through a series of senior chapels he called “the heartbeat of our school.”
Fairfax recounted the surprising turn his summer took when the time he had intended to spend working on a book was subsumed by the necessity of managing a flood in his family home in Philadelphia. Looking back on all he’d learned while unable to spend the summer in quiet reflection, Fairfax urged students to be flexible and make the most of the unanticipated when “life starts lifing.”
He reflected on the uncertainty he felt during his own senior year of high school. “It is natural to wonder what comes next, but it is also necessary to trust the integrity of your work and to value the process over the result,” he told students. “It’s totally possible that you will set a goal and fall short. That’s OK! What did you learn during that journey and how did the experience evolve you?”
Jen Burleigh ’85, co-president of the Board of Trustees, spoke next. After celebrating her 40th reunion in June, she said she was struck by how quickly her class of very different individuals came together again.
Burleigh couldn’t trace to a single source what encourages such an enduring sense of community at CA—it’s not cemented by a set of rules, dictated by adults, or handed down from class to class. On the contrary, she remarked on how responsive CA’s culture is to changing times. While encouraging every student to discover and express their individuality is part of culture, if that’s all the school focused on, CA would have no “connective tissue.”
That’s what she suggests Concord Academy asks every member of the community to create, intentionally. “In return for the space to be our own authentic selves, we are asked to respect, to listen to, and to care for the other members of this community, even when we don’t fully identify or agree with them,” she said.
She closed with an encouragement: “Every single one of us brings something special, different, and essential to the CA community in every daily interaction. So let your light shine, show up for each other, and help build the CA community that you want to be all in on.”
Student Head of School May Zheng ’26 was next to take the podium. In her first address as leader of the student body, she shared her gratitude for a school that has provided her space to be herself—not a freedom she experiences in isolation but rather as “one voice among many,” where her own thoughts aren’t the only ones she hears.
Though she said she doesn’t expect every student to feel as comfortable as she is amid the noise and bustle of a boarding house common room, she issued her peers an invitation: “I hope that you consider how a simple routine of surrounding yourself with those who will surprise you and ask of you some responsibility can be the easiest way to ground yourself. I ask that you leave some space and time to be in these conversations, or just to be sharing a space, with those from whom you still have something to learn.”
May characterized CA as “a place in which you will get back from the experience what you give.” She added, “I hope you find a way into sharing and allow yourself to grow, to make mistakes, and to take advantage of the support here that will catch you and help you back up.”
Finally, in his address as this year’s convocation speaker, counselor Jeff Desjarlais shared the wisdom of his long perspective on CA. Having previously served as the assistant dean of students and later director of student health services, Desjarlais is in his 27th year of service to CA and his 25th year living as a member of this residential community.
He began with his love for the Chapel—pointing out whimsical details in the carvings—as a gathering space for both sanctuary and celebration. Though he had given two chapels previously, the expectations for Convocation, he noted, were different. He had been asked to speak to this year’s community theme: “Building the We: Responsibility, Connection, and Growth.”
The choice of such a theme, he suggested, implies CA’s habits of community have somehow been lost or diminished. “I believe that may be true, but it’s not the first time that has happened here and, frankly, it won’t be the last,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I believe this cycle of finding and losing our balance, connection, community, and responsibility is, as they say, a feature of CA, not a bug.”
Desjarlais also situated such tensions within the context of recent global events: two “chaotic and tumultuous national election cycles”; the “constant presence and pressure” of social media, which has “disrupted and distorted our sense of community and connection”; and the backlash to a surge in social justice activism in a “country that continues to struggle with the destructive and corrosive impact of systemic oppression.”
Then, of course, came COVID. As a mental health professional, Desjarlais was uniquely poised to contextualize its effects on both individuals and the social fabric. He suggested the “retreat toward the individual” may have resulted from the “intense sacrifices” that were asked of us all: masking, social distancing, testing, proving vaccination status, staying home from school and work, sitting for hours in Zoom rooms.
“We did a lot for the sake of the community. It was overwhelming and stressful and difficult—and it was necessary and important, as commitments to our community often are,” he said. “And the irony was that while we were making behavioral changes to protect the community, we were separated and isolated from the very community we were trying to protect.”
Although all of these circumstances affected our capacity for growth and relationship, Desjarlais said, “the opportunity we have together now is to help shape the inevitable course correction.”
He focused on a core phrase in CA’s mission. “It may be that the key word in ‘common trust’ is not trust, but ‘common,’” he said. “Common decency, common courtesy, common ground.”
“It may be that our true nature, our common nature, is to help, is to be responsible, is to be connected,” he continued. “That’s what makes CA the place that it is. We are constantly changing and reimagining to get back to our core, our essence, our ‘common.’ The gift of this place is that we know when we need to readjust. … Remember, our character and culture don’t come from the pursuit of common trust—they come from a shared belief that common trust exists in the first place.”
Shaped by common trust, CA deliberately opens itself to “ongoing scrutiny and self-reflection,” Desjarlais said. He recalled previous times of concern about losing an understanding of the school community and culture. In 2000, he said, some feared that when Jake Dresden arrived as CA’s head of school, following the 19-year tenure of Tom Wilcox P’01, Dresden didn’t understand CA well enough when he immediately suggested a change: beginning the year with an event to cultivate a shared experience and sense of belonging. That innovation has since become a 25-year-old tradition: Convocation.
That common trust is dynamic in an ever-changing community, Desjarlais said, is worth embracing, honoring, and celebrating. “I’m so grateful that we are here to experience this renaissance,” he said. “That we have the chance to help, once again, to recreate and reimagine a community and space that does indeed support lasting habits of care and connection, knowing the importance of this moment lies not in the outcome, but in the belief that it’s worth doing.”
Pictures by Cole and Kiera Photography
