I almost let this comment go, but it’s too good to pass-up. Last Thursday (3/12) David Brooks focused his column on President Obama’s education reform an efforts (No Picnic for Me Either). While Brooks pushes, prods, and argues that Mr. Obama needs to move educational policy to recognize and reward great teachers, I was particular struck by two paragraphs in the piece where Brooks recognizes great teachers as the ones who build healthy relationships with their students.

“…The Obama approach would make it more likely that young Americans grow up in relationships with teaching adults. It would expand nurse visits to disorganized homes. It would improve early education. It would extend the school year. Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).

We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher. You ask a kid who has graduated from high school to list the teachers who mattered in his life, and he will reel off names. You ask a kid who dropped out, and he will not even understand the question. Relationships like that are beyond his experience…”

When families ask me, ‘why private or boarding school?’  My answer invariably is a treatise on relationships. Relationships fundamentally differentiate the boarding/private school experience.