More than 40 educators with a combined 930 years of experience in education traveled from as far as Florida to attend a ConVal teacher reunion Saturday.

English teacher Jill Lawler organized the event, which was held at the Peterborough Historical Society. Lawler, a longtime yearbook advisor, enlisted the help of friend and former ConVal teacher Lorraine Walker to track down those teaching alumni whose hometowns and maiden names had long since changed.

After months of research, the past and present teachers and administrators gathered Saturday to celebrate the creation and history of the ConVal School District, which will induct its 40th graduating class this month. Many began their careers before 1970, when the ConVal school district was created and the ConVal High School opened. Some taught at Antrim High School or Peterborough High School before participating in the creation of the new district.

The birth of ConVal was not simply intended as a consolidation of resources and facilities for its nine member towns, according to attendees. Former teachers said the new district brought with it an experimental and progressive educational model, the likes of which many had never seen. Bells marking the beginning and end of periods were silenced in favor of a free-form series of 20-minute “mods,” named after the modular scheduling system the district adopted.

“Some of the experiments didn’t go as well as some of the idealists might have hoped,” said Lawler, the last current ConVal employee who was there at the beginning. The mod system, for instance, only lasted a couple of years.

A more lasting experiment was the district’s significant investment in vocational and technical offerings, a program that endures today as a multi-district pooling of educational resources.

During the trivia portion of the night’s festivities, the group was reminded of the time when one teacher jumped out of another’s birthday cake. They also learned that Walker would soon publish a math book based on the Singapore math model.

Ray Richard, the first basketball coach for the new district, remembered fondly that the program went without a losing season for the first 20 years.

Much else has changed since the beginning of ConVal, when teachers might casually smoke at their desks and during student-teacher meetings.

“What were we thinking?” asked Lawler.

Gone, too, are the requirements that female teachers wear dresses or skirts. Gone is a mural at the high school that was supposedly vandalized, requiring school officials to paint over the cannabis leaves that were hidden throughout the original painting. Gone are the days when students might expect a light bit of corporal punishment for their indiscretions.

However, according to Bob Fay, English teacher from 1974 to 1999 and former chair of the department, some things never change. For Fay, idealism isn’t a passing trend of yesteryear, but a driving force for himself and, he imagines, every educator.

“It’s a sense of what humans can be and what human relations can be,” he said. “Education is a way for me to be the best I can be and help others to be their best.”

Fay also challenged the notion that teachers are the only ones capable of teaching, saying he learned as much from his students as they from him.

“We’re all on some kind of journey and we’re all doing some kind of teaching,” he said.

More than a few of the ConVal veterans had taught the children of their coworkers. In some cases, this forged lasting bonds that further solidified the sense that teachers at the school are a family.

“Everybody’s lives just intertwine and you keep reconnecting in different ways,” said Jeanie West, teaching principal at Hancock Elementary School.

As they celebrated the bonds between members of the educational community, nearly all of the attendees, no matter how far separated from their former teaching lives, said teaching and learning are lifestyles, not temporary occupations.

“There’s still a tremendous hunger for everyone to be in touch with the possibilities of a better world,” said Fay. “I don’t find that lessening. If anything, it’s getting stronger.”