Commencement address: Public education creates vital connections in our communities

The following commencement address was given to the Exeter High School Class of 2022 on June 11.

Graduates, parents, families, teachers, administrators and distinguished guests:

Thank you to Exeter High School’s 2022 senior class for inviting me to give a keynote speech. It is both an honor and humbling, as well as daunting to find appropriate words for such an important occasion in your lives. And I am painfully aware that if I go on for too long, I am delaying your long-awaited graduation and the wonderful ensuing celebration.

As a local business owner and active community member, my constant focus is on “building community.” As Principal Monahan mentioned, our mission at Water Street Bookstore is “To build a diverse and vibrant community around the written word.” Therefore, to talk about your place in building community should naturally be my topic. But giving advice is always a slippery slope. I think it would be better to tell a couple stories, one from one of my readings about the natural world, and one from right here in our seacoast communities, and then end with some hopes and wishes for all of you graduating seniors.

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All in five (or so) minutes.

If that sounds good, let me proceed.

There have been several books in the past few years that have influenced the way I think about community. One of the best I have read, is "The Hidden Life of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben. Here is a little story adapted by me from that book:

In an old growth forest, the roots of individual trees are interconnected from growing together (over many years) directly or often indirectly through fungal networks between the root systems of individual trees. These direct and indirect connections deliver nutrients from one tree to another. It is amazing to realize that all the individual trees in a healthy working forest are actually one giant super organism. Each individual tree gives and receives nutrients among themselves according to which tree is relatively healthy or more challenged, and thus all the trees are keeping each other and the whole forest more vital and alive. All these trees connected by an underground root system are a massive organization of growth and connection and affection.

So much happening that we couldn’t see, but the key to a vital forest just the same.

When I think about local communities I often think of that old-growth forest from my reading. All the thousands of people who make up our local communities are connected, but how do those connections form and grow and take shape? How do the roots grow? There are our families of course. There are also work places, and retail shops, and community spots. There are our neighborhoods. All these are important for creating community in our six towns of Brentwood, East Kingston, Exeter, Kensington, Newfields, and Stratham. But it turns out that one of the greatest sources for creating these connections are our local school systems.

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You graduating seniors are the beneficiaries of this educational system, but through your education you are all in a very real way the means by which we create a more vital community. So, I want to thank you all for putting up with our community building exercise while you were getting educated. It wasn’t always easy, especially during the Covid pandemic. You might say we stress tested our community building skills over the past few years.

Again, don’t get me wrong, the purpose of these schools is to offer universal access to a public school education for every child in these six communities. But an amazing ancillary byproduct of these schools is the creation of a super-organism of community. That’s right, the six elementary schools in our six different communities, as well as the Cooperative Middle School, and our Exeter High School are a massive organization of growth and connection and affection.  Just like that old-growth forest.

So let me tell you another story – this one from one of our local schools that illustrates just how that works:

There is a teacher retiring from Kensington Elementary School this month who has taught second grade there for 39 years. Her name is Wendy Lawler. Not only has Wendy taught there for all that time, she also attended grade school there and she graduated from Exeter High School in 1976. In addition to that long-standing connection and affection for KES, Wendy’s father Richard Drew served on the Kensington School Board for 31 years and was recognized by former Gov. John Sununu for service to the town. He also served on the joint school board for School Administrative Unit 16 the forerunner of the Cooperative School Board.

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So, between one father and one daughter that is 70 years of service to the town of Kensington. But it is not just the length of the service, but the quality of Wendy’s service. She was an early adoptee of the “Kindness Circle” in her classroom. Many mornings her students would gather in a circle and practice good community building through the practice of saying kind things to each other. Wendy was an expert at teaching second-graders to read. She was passionate about all her students leaving her second-grade class with a foundation for a life-long love of reading. Wendy or Mrs. Lawler to her students is one of those teachers who is long remembered by her students!

Now take that story of Mrs. Lawler and her family in Kensington and multiply literally hundreds if not thousands of times over the years. How many teachers, and parents, and volunteers, and administrators, and citizen/taxpayers (never forget the local taxpayers for goodness sakes) have created how much growth and connection and affection that we call community? It is just breathtaking how much community is created by our shared endeavor of public education. Breathtaking and remarkable. Just like that old-growth forest.

Simply remarkable.

Now, let’s go back to that old growth forest one last time.

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Sometimes in that old-growth forest there is a tree that is so important in the web of connection of the whole super-organism that even after that tree dies off, the forest cannot give up that dead tree’s place in the root system. So that tree’s stump continues to live. Nutrients are pumped to the trunk of that dead tree so the root system may be kept alive. That stump literally cannot be allowed to die. Without that tree’s particular root system, the larger forest superorganism just cannot thrive. Years after the death of this most important tree you will find a stump still green and growing. The forest refuses to give up on this stump and its root system because literally the degree of connection – or even better – the degree of affection is so high.

So, what does this have to do with all of you graduating seniors? Here is the point of my stories. Here are my hopes and wishes for you:

First, I would wish and hope for you to take a moment right now to remember those teachers who impacted your life in a profoundly positive way over the past 13 or so years. Silently, let’s allow your good thoughts and good wishes toward them to be made manifest. I want you to send nutrients to your still green and growing memory of those most important teachers and your connection with them.

And finally, as you all graduate today I wish that you may all have great adventures. I hope you roam far and wide and see so much of this great good world. But when you find the place you will call home, I hope you will find your place in the great common endeavor we call public education. Whether it be as a parent, or a teacher, or a volunteer, or even as a supportive tax-payer, I wish you all to find a place in a stable community where the web of connection and community through public education is strong, and vibrant, and just. You all deserve the blessing and benefit of living in vital, educated communities. It truly is one of the most valuable things in the world.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today!

Dan Chartrand is the owner of the Water Street Bookstore in Exeter.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Commentary: Public education creates vital connections in communities