SHARON — The Sharon Academy 2026 graduates Abe Dunne and Phoenix Colburn may have walked the same stage at commencement on Saturday, but their aspirations differ, as do their paths to achieve them.
Dunne, of Hartland, first developed an interest in archaeology during COVID-19, and has since built a personal assortment of artifacts that tell stories of the past.
“It reflects everyday life in a way that I feel like we don’t get in history a lot,” he said.
At TSA, Dunne completed his junior exhibition on “The Growing Threat of Nationalist Archaeology” for school credit, and felt grateful that Sharon Academy supported his interest, despite it not being directly part of the curriculum, he said.
“It’s his passion and dedication to pursuing this interest outside of school that I think is worth highlighting,” Mary Newman, head of The Sharon Academy, said of Dunne earlier this month.
Colburn, a South Strafford resident, has also been exploring his interests outside of school. He currently works part-time at Lou’s Restaurant & Bakery in Hanover and dreams to one day open his own bakery, perhaps in Europe.
“I always felt like I wanted to do something culinary, and I knew that I didn’t want to be a chef or a cook,” he said. “I really like baking.”
Colburn took advantage of a cooking class at Sharon as an underclassman before enrolling in a formal culinary program.
Like Colburn, Dunne’s passion spoke to him from an early age. He had been a fan of history for as long as he can remember, and started metal detecting as a hobby during the pandemic shutdown.
“I just fell in love with it,” he said.
Over the years, Dunne has collected bottles, coins and documents, among other artifacts, to help show what people of the past were like in a “more real way” than textbook entries do. He shares his findings on social media.
To find out the origin of an artifact, Dunne punches its physical attributes into a search engine and uses services such as ancestry.com and newspapers.com to learn more.
One of his favorite findings and the most recent post showcases a paper embosser owned by Irving Gilbert, a Taftsville justice of the peace, over 100 years ago.
Dunne plans to attend the University of Pennsylvania for its anthropology program. He looks forward to learning excavation techniques, improving his skills and becoming more experienced. He wants to work in the field excavating sites, and then possibly shift to a teaching role down the line.
For his part, Colburn has felt interested in cooking since elementary school, and started out small, making lunches. Eventually, he shifted to baking, with an appreciation for how straightforward it is.
As a high school student, Colburn enrolled in a two-year culinary program through the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center, which led him to secure his job at Lou’s two mornings a week as a substitute for culinary class.
Working at Lou’s differs from baking at home, Colburn said, as time is a factor and the quantities are larger, such as 50 quarts of cookie dough. He has some tricky tasks such as cake decorating, which requires careful precision.
Colburn has evolved as a baker through practice, particularly becoming more organized over time. His favorite treats to make are tarts, both fruit and chocolate.
“Those are definitely my favorite. I really like the presentation,” he said.
While Colburn opted not to go to college, he said that he is still interested in pursuing further education in his field, but that the best way for him to spend the next four years is by working and learning on the job.
Colburn “speaks clearly and confidently about both his decision not to pursue a college degree and how happy he is that he completed the Culinary Arts program,” Newman, TSA’s head of school, said.
For his next step, Colburn is considering moving to the Burlington area at some point.
Dunne and Colburn join 21 other members of The Sharon Academy’s class of 2026 in paving their way toward a future that best fits their interests and skills.
The Sharon Academy class of 2026: Kaelyn Blodgett, Sharon; Kalib Burbank, Sharon; Phoenix Colburn, South Strafford; Raiden Danford, Sharon; Abraham Dunne, Hartland; Ava Evans, Braintree, Vt.; Jaqueline Frost, Sharon; Jana Gurley, Granville, Vt.; Evan Hare, Strafford; Shiva Hilliker, Sharon; Finn Huntington, Rochester, Vt.; Ava Lacaillade, Sharon;
Gabriel Malloy, Montgomery, Vt.; Amber McGuckin, White River Junction; Cole Morancy, Hartland; Carter Muckenthaler, Hartland; Jayden Perry, Sharon; Lucy Proulx, Strafford; Aidan Sawyer, Hartland; Caitlin Seville, Hartland; Jack Staff, Tunbridge; Sebastien Thauvin, White River Junction; and Natalie Young, Tunbridge.
