I was in the middle of my 18th year at Darlington when the opportunity to complete the Foundations of Care and Practice course offered by The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) was presented to me this year. I began as the triple threat here in 2008, teaching a full load, coaching two sports, and doing dorm duty. A few years later I took on the Dean of Students role and continued to teach (a smaller load) and coach. Now that my role is stretching to include more of the residential life component, it seemed like a perfect time to tap into what leaders at boarding schools around the country are thinking about, trends that they are seeing, and ways in which they are taking steps to be on the forefront of those trends in education.
Each Thursday night TABS presented us with either a new speaker or an opportunity to address questions regarding boarding school in small groups, then in the larger group. I was lucky to have Gene Phillips from St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas as my cohort leader. Gene has more than 30 years of boarding school experience and he is someone that our Student Life Office has known for some time. In this cohort, topics like building communities of belonging were extremely helpful in seeing the many things Darlington does well, but also ways in which we could be better at making it feel a little more at home for our students. Simple things like serving food in the dining hall that comes close to what a student might get at home goes a long way in helping students to feel more at ease. Health and wellness was another topic that was the focus of a session, but came up often throughout the course. I am happy to report that our faculty, with the guidance of our counseling team, are well versed in what to look for and what to do when students express feelings of sadness, depression, and anxiety. Nevertheless, there is still work to be done in staying vigilant and reassessing how each new generation of students are faced with different challenges that have their own unique effects on their health and wellness.
In addition to the discussions on health and wellness of our students, there was also a lengthy discussion on the health and wellness of our faculty. It reminded me of how we often try to prepare people who apply to work at Darlington by mentioning that work here is more of a lifestyle than a job. When school is in session, and, for many of us, even when we are on break, we are working on lessons and new material, answering emails and phone calls, working with students in their extracurricular activities, and counseling students through strained relationships, coaching them through failures, and celebrating with them in their victories. Life as a faculty member in a boarding school rarely finds moments when you can completely turn the “on switch” to off. It’s more of an “on call” mode in which we find ourselves hovering. Gaining ideas on how other schools do little things to promote the wellbeing of their faculty was extremely helpful and encouraging for me.
Finally, the topic that I found to be the most interesting was establishing healthy boundaries. One of the things that makes Darlington so special and so much more than just a school are the relationships that are built on trust and the mutual endeavor between student and teacher to seek wisdom more than knowledge. I think about the ability students have to quickly reach out to faculty through Google Chat and email outside of school hours, the many hours spent in dorms, on the playing field, or in rehearsals in the black box, and times in which my family has hosted my advisees for a Christmas dinner or my class for an end of the year cookout and I can’t help but consider the absolute necessity of expectations for healthy boundaries. The things that make boarding schools so strong also open us up for risk. Not only is it imperative that we, as faculty, know and practice those expectations, but it is also important for us to communicate those expectations to our students so that they are empowered to get help if it is ever needed. This course helped highlight some areas in which we can better prepare our students to understand those expectations, which will continue to strengthen our commitment to provide a safe environment in which young men and women may thrive.
