HEBRON — The “endless possibilities of a new year” was the theme of the opening convocation at Hebron Academy, echoed by each of the ceremony’s speakers as the members of the Upper School faculty and student body gathered in the Hebron Chapel.

In her invocation, Julie Middleton, associate director of admissions, noted that although everyone has individual dreams and goals for the upcoming year, Hebron is “a common place of belonging for all of us, with the opportunity to discover all kinds of possibilities.” The new year is a “fresh start for each of us.”

After the faculty welcome from English teacher Ashley Webb, senior Ally Strachan of Hebron offered greetings from the students, reminding each class of the number of days left to until they graduate. “Seniors have 257 days…and freshmen, you have 1352 days until your graduation.” She described the upcoming year as “full of tests, and not just in the classroom,” and admonished the students to “take hold of the opportunities, so we can be proud of our accomplishments” at the end of the year.

Violinist Dong Hee Lee, a senior from Seoul, Korea, performed Haydn’s 7th Concerto in G Major with music teacher Beth Barefoot, and seniors Max Middleton and Ally Strachan sang “Home in the Heartland” by Bill Whelan from Riverdance.

Head of School John King reminded students that the academy’s mission is to “inspire and guide each student to reach his or her highest potential in mind, body and spirit.” He described the mission in the two words, “Humanity, who you are and what you stand for, and Achievement, what you accomplish in your life.”

French teacher Cynthia Reedy introduced the convocation speaker, poet Paul Janeczko, a former Hebron parent whose daughter Emma graduated in 2008.

Looking around the chapel, Janeczko noted the appropriateness of the location of the ceremony “because it gives me a chance to preach on the possibilities of poetry.”

His job as a writer and collector of poetry, he said, “is to find the best poems to convey the possibilities of poetry” and to prove that poems “don’t have to rhyme, follow a pattern, or be long, boring and stupid.”

Noting that the students were embarking on their own paths through the new school year, Janeczko reflected on his path to the present, from a “kid in New Jersey…for whom poetry meant nothing,“ to college, where he discovered Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, whose works “showed me what poetry could be, with a list of subjects as wide as the universe. And the universe, as we know, does not rhyme.”

Janeczko told his audience that “good poetry is alive with possibilities; it is about capturing your experiences, and is rich with the texture of life.” As he closed his remarks, he asked the students, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”

The Hebron Academy Upper School opened the 2011-12 year with 233 students from 17 states and 16 countries, including Brazil, Canada, Poland, Malawi and Lithuania.

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