Food is a funny thing in a boarding school; like other parts of the boarding school experience- academics, athletics, study hall, it’s part of the routine.

And, in many ways, the regular schedule, balancing demands, finding time, fitting something in- is what makes boarding school work and is one of its lasting lessons.

Two, three, or more times in the day boarding school faculty and students gather together to become well fed. We eat. Head off to class. Head off to sports. Head off to study hall- having lifted nary a finger in an effort to feed ourselves.

We are, in short, very well cared for.

We even have special occasion meals & banquets, Thanksgiving together as a school before going home to Thanksgiving with family. But, mostly, boarding school meals become part of the routine. The routine can allow us to become complacent and forgetful of the time, effort, and value of the food set before us every day.

On this Blog Action Day, 2011 I encourage everyone to recognize, appreciate, and work to be ever mindful and appreciative of the meals set before us, everyday, through no labor of our own.

Make an effort. Say thank you to dishwashers. Say thank you to the cooks and assistants who work the serving lines. Say thank you to the executives who manage, plan, and orchestrate every meal. The kitchen staff is there before you wake and there long after the dishes from the evening meal have been cleared.

If someone in the kitchen needs a hand, lend yours. Be thankful that you live and work in an environment where food is not scarce and you have more than enough. Do not waste; wasted is food is energy that could be used somewhere else. Lastly, do not complain. I think you know why.

The meals of the boarding school routine teach us to come together, share and enjoy each others company, and slow our day. The fact that the labor behind the meal comes from someone else make life frighteningly easy. But ease and routine can also lull us into complacency regarding mindfulness and appreciation of the food and labor behind the meal.

Stay mindful. Be Thankful.

A Bit about Blog Action Day:

“Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion around an important issue that impacts us all.

For 2011, our Blog Action Day coincides with World Food Day, so our topic of
discussion for this year will be food. Take the first step now and sign-up your blog to Blog Action Day and then look at our suggested topics for some food flavoured inspiration to discuss.

Our Goal

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.

By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. Our hope is that out of this discussion naturally flow ideas, advice, plans, and action.”

ASI has two interesting concurrent stories- its founding and its students.

ASI is a young organization with young leaders in grad school and, obviously, for our audience, they understand and use the boarding school experience as an opportunity and medium.

Qiamuddin Amiry one of ASI’s founders expresses the value of education having won a scholarship to attend school in Hong Kong and being recruited by Colby College. Amiry explains in the ASI Documentary:

“I could see the stark difference and contrast between how my life could be and how my life was…Two years of education in Hong Kong taught me how you can change somebody; how you can create dreams for someone. How you can build leadership in someone who has the passion but doesn’t have the opportunity.”

This value of education underpins ASI’s work and students.

One of ASI’s first students, Meetra Ameni spoke to The Boston Globe of her ASI, Gould Academy, and Smith College experiences:

“If I didn’t have this chance, I might have had a typical Afghan girl’s life…At first, it was really hard for me to make the transition. But after a while, I am used to it. It makes more sense for me now.’’(TBG)

ASI’s program is rigorous and selective in working toward preparing “Afghanistan’s future civic leaders.”(ASI)

Students “are selected based on their writing skills, reasoning skills, and demonstrated intelligence e.g. organizing thoughts, and school grades” and rigorously prepared for their boarding school experience.(ASI)

ASI continues supporting the educational and social experiences of their students throughout their boarding school years.

Kim Loughlin, Bement School admission director, shares the importance that Bement places on the teaching of gratitude and service. Bement’s a co-ed, junior boarding school located in Deerfield, MA.

Bement teaches students that giving back requires doing through the dedication of one’s time and effort. It is a perspective that emphasizes the practice of service. Gratitude and service may begin with a donation, but they only come to fruition when one dedicates time and labor to a cause beyond oneself.

For four years, Bement ninth grade students have traveled to the Dominican Republic to live in a boys orphanage for 7-10 days- as Loughlin explains, giving of themselves in age appropriate ways: playing, learning to write their names, reading books.

The trip creates a transformational experience so lasting and powerful that Bement alumni return to participate.

Worcester Academy‘s video entry into the Green Cup 2011 Challenge found my inbox.

It’s high camp- but effective high camp- featuring a supernatural, omniscient enforcer of environmental conciousness. It left me remembering the Japanese Ultraman series and thinking “I want to wear the green suit.”

The new program pairs:

“10th Grade Worcester Academy students with 10th Grade Abaarso Tech students in a sort of 21st century pen pal program. They are not only learning about different cultures, but are also making friends, he said. Additionally, classes in Worcester and Somaliland will be connecting with one another using Skype online live video conferencing, which allows the classes to see and speak with one another in real time. Students have already begun maintaining a blog about their ongoing experience. The blog can be accessed by visiting waabaarsotech.ning.com.”(WA)

Worcester faculty participate by serving as resources and mentors to Abaarso Tech faculty many of whom are new to teaching.

Founded by Worcester Academy alumnus Jonathan Starr (’94), Abrasso Tech seeks to apply a “business model to improving conditions in Somaliland by offering world-class education, assisting rural populations, and backing community improvements.”(WA)

Opening with and inaugural freshman class of 50 this year, Abaarso Tech plans to add 50 students each year until full with 200 students.

Worcester Academy’s “Open Gates” works to integrate real-world experiences into the academy’s curriculum. Worcester currently has sister-school relationships with Abaarso Tech, the Haderslev Katedralskole in Denmark, and The Royal Grammar School in Worcester, England.

More information:

Giving Hope in the Horn of Africa

Every school brings a different philosophy to the two-and-a-half weeks between the Thanksgiving and end of the year break.

At some schools, it’s exam time making it a very focused and intense period. At others, it’s the end of the fall semester with students taking exams on the return in January.

Like Forman, the period between these two holidays can be an odd time for students who took their fall exams before their Thanksgiving break. It’s too short to get deeply into new material before the next major holiday; but, you’ve got to be in school.

How, then, to make an unproductive piece of the school productive?

Forman’s Winterim provides an elegant solution- keeping students engaged through broad topics and experiential learning. Students approach their education differently and gain quality experiences that provide personal and worldly understanding.

Forman students spend the two-and-a-half weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas involved in one of 17 (this year) experiential learning projects of their choosing.

A sampling of this year’s projects includes: working construction on the school’s environmental hut, the “Art of the One Act Play,” teaching preschool in the “Early Childhood Education Experience,” studying exercise science in “Better, Faster, Stronger,” building wooden toys for local children in need, building kyaks, discovering the Berkshires, trips to Barbados and Spain, “Beyond the Blues Winterim,” and Wintermentary- a documentary program to document and the life and happening of Winterim.”

From my non-scientific sampling, the level of student engagement and quality of their work looks exceptionally high. Forman’s Winterim seems a nice combination of purposeful and experiential. The videos, photos and copy of Wintermentary do a nice job capturing the feel and experiences of the program.

To view the NBC piece, click on the image below. Unfortunately, they don’t provide the ability to embed video.

We learned about Blair Academy‘s Society of Skeptics while visiting campus on our video tour (see video segment below).

We just saw the Spring 2011 schedule and two thoughts come to mind. First, what a list of speakers and, secondly, what a history.

The Society of Skeptics has been around since 1962 and under the leadership of Dr. Martin Miller for more than 30 years.The Society “provides a forum for the discussion and debate of important national and international issues,” featuring “wide variety of speakers who are engaging, accomplished in their respective fields and often controversial.”(BA)

A few of the Society’s spring 2011 speakers and their presentation titles:

Judy McGrath
Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks
“The Creation of MTV”

Doug Bandow
Senior fellow, Cato Institute and author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire
“TheMosque at Ground Zero Controversy”

Brian Voynick, DVM,CVA
“Stem Cell Therapy in Dogs”

Arthur F. “Ty” Schlobohm IV ’92
Whistleblower; wore wire for F.B.I. to help convict fund manager who conducted Ponzi scheme
“The Informant”

Steve Steiner ’58
Former U.S. Ambassador
“Afghanistan and Iraq”

Elizabeth Kate “Liz” Claman
Anchor of Fox Business Network’s“Countdown to the Closing Bell” and co-anchor of “Fox Business”

Richard C. Hunt ’70, M.D.
FACEP, Director of division of injury response, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at Centers for Disease Control & Prevention; Clinical professor of emergency medicine, Emory University School of Medicine“Leadership For Life: Defining Moments From the ER”

Lecture Series like the Society of Skeptics are part and parcel of every boarding school campus that I’ve ever been a part of. These lectures and series provide students with the perspectives of real world practitioners. Students get an idea of how and where their educations might take them. The Society, though, seems especially thoughtful and substantive.

Here, up on a beautiful hill in Maine, we at Kents Hill School live in a warm, open community that welcomes students and faculty from all over the world. In classes, on the fields and in the residence halls, we teach our students to embrace differences, to appreciate diversity and to learn to live with all kinds of varying beliefs and values.

Occasionally the real world intrudes. This is good, because the real world is not like this, and this week our students are learning about some of the realities of countries, governments and belief systems that are not nearly as tolerant as the community in which they live. We recently celebrated the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in school, a cause particularly close to our hearts because Jared Genser, her US lawyer, was our inaugural Human Rights Speaker two years ago.

On Friday, Human Rights Day, the co-presidents of Amnesty International, Rachel and Lela, will do a presentation for the school that highlights human rights abuses around the world. Of particular concern to these two young women was a newspaper article that they read earlier this year about the self-immolation of women in Afghanistan who suffer from a lack of education, marriage at a very early age and chronic abuse from spouses and families. Another concern that they will mention is that for the first time since 1936, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in absentia, because no-one from Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo’s family is permitted to attend.

The night before, students and faculty are invited to participate in the Amnesty International Club’s Write for Rights where they will be sending letters to governments all over the world, calling for the release of prisoners of conscience. Last year, the group mailed over 100 letters to governments around the world. I understand that pizza is also involved – another incentive!

Finally the school will come together on Sunday for our annual Vespers service, a time where we celebrate the good in the world and in our community. A time to share traditions and appreciate each other, Vespers is also a moment where we reach beyond the hill by talking about peace, our desire for peace in the world and our commitment to living peacefully with each other.

We work hard to live our mission. While we may live in a wonderful bubble, Kents Hill is also a place where we take seriously our commitment to reach out a make a difference in the world.

Chuck is a consummate boarding school story teller and Proctor has given him license to cover the minutae of boarding school daily life.

As we’ve all come to understand campus happenings- what students do, learn, practice, think, feel and share provides a fount of great stories that can be used to bind all school constiuencies to a school’s ongoing work. Chuck covers his campus better than anyone we know.

Chuck told the Monitor’s Meg Heckman:

Chuck’s Corner is “the voice of a man who is surrounded by teenagers, and who is sort of bemused…It’s sort of like reality web. Here’s what I’m seeing, here’s what I’m thinking about education and this school’s role in education…

“…Knowing what’s going on, what the weather is like, is reassuring to parents…Maybe they’ll see a picture of their child. . . . On family weekends, I’m almost mobbed. The greatest compliment is when a family says, ‘We had a feeling of the school through your blog, and now that we’re here we see it was accurate.’ “

Every school needs a “Chuck” to develop and tell the story.

First, congratulations to Alex Curtis, Ph.D. who trustees chose to succeed Mr. Edward Shanahan as Choate‘s Headmaster.

“My Thoughts on Great Leadership” and “New Head Poised for Success” provide my starting point. For this piece I won’t recapitulate Dr. Curtis’ career and biography or Saint James School‘s Reverend Dunnan’s thinking on leadership. I want to think about the necessity of looking outward from the daily boarding school school routine.  I certainly invite you read both pieces.

Looking Outward While Inside A School

School routines are great.  A rigorous, disciplined day- full of varied activities and demands, requiring successful quick closure and movement on to one’s next responsibilities- is, perhaps, the most influential and long lasting effect that boarding school has on students. Boarding school alumni tend to have a canny ability to get things done and move on to what’s next.

This routine however comes with a price for boarding school adults.  In order to impart the lessons and make the school effective, boarding school teachers and administrators must tightly focus on the school’s daily schedule, life and routines, to make the school as effective as possible.

This focus works for the students but hamstrings the adult in the boarding school.  Ask a boarding school teacher, or administrator, about the larger world during the middle of the school year and you’re likely to get a blank stare undergirded by the thought ‘I teach, dorm parent, and coach six days a week. You think I have time for that?’

In my experience boarding school adults ‘get to’ any external projects during school holidays. Looking outward is hard when doing the job well requires inward focus.

This commitment makes the school work; boarding schools succeed precisely because they focus on their students disconnected, and undistracted by the din of the greater world. But, this focus also hinders a school’s ability to share & communicate the school’s narrative to the larger world. Communicating with a larger, external, varied audience rates a second tier priority when focused efforts and lessons necessary for your students’ success.

Back to our two heads- it’s interesting that in each of their writings both men touch on the importance of looking and communicating outward.

In their positions it’s not enough to make sure that their school does a great job with its students. Each must ensure that their school’s story- its mission, work and success- get told, communicated and sold, to as wide a world as possible.

Dunnan, Curtis, and Looking Outward

Dunnan writes:

“…I also need to function outside the school ‘looking in,’ even as I run the school ‘from within.’ I therefore need to challenge my colleagues to remain responsive to the outside world, even as I need to ‘sell’ our distinct culture as a school to the outside world. Finally, I need to see the ‘bigger picture,’ connecting the different constituencies of the school, students, faculty, parents, trustees, and alumni, without belonging to any…

…Secondly, the leader needs to empathize and communicate well to draw the whole together, to explain the bigger picture, to inform the present of the future, and the inside and outside of each other…”(MTGL)

The Choate News describes Mr. Curtis ability to reach outward:

“…During all the interviews conducted by The News, Dr. Curtis was praised for his overall effect on the growth of Morristown-Beard and for his representation of the school to the wider world. Dean of Faculty Mascaro talked about the financial boom and increased selectivity that MBS has seen during Dr. Curtis’ tenure: ‘Dr. Curtis has raised more money in the past six years than we have probably raised in the last twenty-five as a school, so he’s been extremely successful that way. He’s also increased applications and interest in our admissions office by significant numbers. By any external measurement, he’s brought the school to a new level.’ Ms. Wetmore added that Dr. Curtis’ roles on local boards, such as those of the Link Community School and the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools, have increased the school’s visibility. Dr. Mascaro concurred, ‘I think he’s brought visibility to [MBS], and shown the successes that the school is capable of and the strengths that the school has. There are a lot of schools in this area, and we compete with them for students. Our commission in that marketplace is different now, in large part due to his leadership.’

According to Ms. Wetmore, the student body has grown during Dr. Curtis’ time at the school from four hundred sixty-six students to five hundred forty students, all day. Tedesco, who entered Morristown-Beard as a new sophomore, credits Dr. Curtis with her family’s decision to apply to the school: ‘My parents didn’t know if they wanted me to go [to MBS], but they had a meeting with Dr. Curtis, and it completely changed their perspective of the school, because he’s done so much for the school in the seven years he’s been there.’ Dr. Mascaro and Ms. Wetmore said that Dr. Curtis often participates in such meetings with parents.(TN)

Connecting to the Larger World Represents the Future

The wider world is our future; Dunnan and Curtis touch on this.

Boarding schools compete for students in a world of improving public schools, expanding, and great, day school opportunities, and against our own increasing costs. Families and potential constituent groups aren’t tuned-in, or locked-in, to sending their students to boarding school. Boarding school is another way to go to school.

We (the boarding school community) must come to terms with notion and adapt to the fact that we compete for students just like any other private institution. Families don’t have to spend money on our tuition. Our future lies in understanding that the health of our schools requires connecting with varied families most all of whom will be new to boarding school.

We must, first, communicate our stories and strengths to a larger world, and, secondly, to execute and plan our communications. Many schools have taken steps in this area by creating and filling the post of communication director- someone to tell and disseminate school narrative. But, my anecdotal observations and experiences, show me this post can still become to wrapped-up in daily school life with an inward, rather than outward view. Every school needs an administrator whose primary responsibility is connection to, and communication with existing and potential families.

Boarding school is great and powerful way to go to school. Absolutely, that’s what our alumni and data tell us. We must tell our stories well and regularly. We must connect to the larger world. We must show the larger world the value and lasting affects of the great things we do every day. Our lives depend on it.

Photo credit: M.Christian licensed under Creative Commons