The term "community" gets tossed around, but what does it actually mean, out in the world and here at Commonwealth? Head of School Jennifer Borman '81 began the 2025–2026 school year by unpacking the notion of community with Commonwealth faculty, staff, and students, asking them to consider its most basic principles and the beauty that can be found in real connection.

Welcome to a new school year and welcome to all of you—new and returning students, new and returning colleagues. All of us in this room make up the 2025–2026 version of Commonwealth, one that has never existed in this exact way before. 

Commonwealth is, above all, our people, and we need to come together each year to remake our community. What is a community? It’s defined by shared commitments. In our case, those commitments are celebrated in our mission statement: we are committed to learning, to high standards of excellence, to helping students learn to think for themselves and exercise responsibility. Our mission emphasizes the importance of the arts. It asks us to take maximum advantage of this beautiful city around us. It asks us to learn about the world beyond us and commit to improving it.

Our mission also celebrates diversity, and we are indeed a varied group in all kinds of ways. Learning to understand and appreciate each other’s differences and all that we have in common is as much a part of a Commonwealth education as any of the classes you take. 

Communities are also defined by relationships and interdependence. As Charles Vogl said, “Communities are created when at least two people begin to feel concern for each other’s welfare.” I hope our returning students remember what it felt like to be brand new and look for ways to reach out to help our new members feel comfortable and included. We will all need to find ways to get to know each other and to take care of each other. 

One way we will catalyze getting to know each other is by putting away our phones when we are all gathering together. We don’t want to see phones in this gym during recess and assemblies because we want to be truly present with each other. We don’t want to see phones or headphones when we’re sharing the stairs or hallways with each other; we want to push through the awkwardness or discomfort of interacting to get to the beauty of human presence. Our digital lives are seductive but leave so many people lonely and unrooted. We will try to use our brief time together in this building to connect. 

And speaking of the building, there are a lot of us here this year: 163 students, an all-time high for Commonwealth. Given our numbers, we’ll need to watch our traffic as we move around. We’ll need to put our belongings away and keep backpacks in our cubbies. We’ll need to follow Commonwealth’s first rule: No roller skating in the halls. 

Finally, I note that it’s a special day for me personally: my birthday. I’m sixty-two years old and very happy about it. Getting older is lovely. As you age, each day you can harvest what you learned the day before, the year before, the decade before. Your perspective grows, your understanding of yourself grows, your ability to handle any situation is expanded since you have the benefit of all you’ve learned from books, life, and the people around you. I first felt like I stepped into real consciousness when I began at Commonwealth as a new ninth grader in 1977. I know that a journey of growth awaits you, too.

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