Yom Kippur gives boarding schools a chance to think beyond recognition and ask a deeper question: Can students bring their whole selves into the communities where they live and learn?

Today is Yom Kippur!

For Jewish students, families, faculty, and staff observing the holiday, it is a deeply significant day centered on reflection, repentance, prayer, and atonement.

I want to begin by acknowledging something important.

Yom Kippur is not my religious tradition.

I am not going to use this space to explain someone else’s faith or pretend that I understand the experience of observing Yom Kippur firsthand.

What I can do is ask a question about something I spend a great deal of time thinking about in boarding schools:

Belonging.

More specifically:

What does it mean to belong to a residential community when you are observing something deeply important to you and many of the people around you are not?

That question goes beyond Yom Kippur.

It gets to the heart of what we claim residential education can accomplish.

Boarding School Is More Than a Place Where Students Attend Class

One of the reasons I believe so strongly in boarding education is that learning does not stop when the academic day ends.

Students learn in classrooms, certainly.

But they also learn at dining hall tables.

They learn in dorm common rooms.

They learn on athletic fields and courts.

They learn in art studios.

They learn during weekend activities.

They learn through roommate disagreements, late-night conversations, cultural differences, mistakes, traditions, friendships, and moments when they encounter something completely unfamiliar.

That is experiential education.

Students are not simply being told how to live within a diverse community.

They are actually living in one.

And that creates opportunities for learning that cannot always be recreated through a textbook, lecture, or classroom discussion.

But experiential education only works when we are willing to reflect on the experience.

A student encountering someone whose religion is different from their own is an experience.

Learning how to respect that difference, become curious without being intrusive, and make room for another person’s traditions is education.

That distinction matters.

A Boarding Student Cannot Simply Go Home

This conversation takes on additional importance because boarding students live inside the institution.

School is where they wake up.

Where they eat.

Where they study.

Where they practice.

Where they spend evenings.

Where their friends live.

For months at a time, school becomes home.

That means a student observing an important religious or cultural tradition cannot simply leave school at 3:00 p.m. and return to a family or community where everyone understands what the day means.

Their observance happens inside the residential community we have created.

That gives boarding schools an extraordinary opportunity.

It also gives us a responsibility.

Putting a Holiday on the Calendar Is the Easy Part

Schools have become increasingly intentional about recognizing religious and cultural holidays.

That matters.

Recognition communicates that different traditions exist within the community.

But recognition and belonging are not the same thing.

Yom Kippur can appear on the master calendar while a Jewish student still spends the day explaining why they are fasting, why they may not be participating in an activity, why they need transportation somewhere, or why that particular day is different.

Eventually, even well-intentioned questions can make someone feel like an exception.

So perhaps the question should not simply be:

Did we recognize the holiday?

Maybe it should be:

What was the experience of the student observing it?

That is a much harder question.

It is also a much more useful one.

Inclusion and Belonging Are Not the Same Thing

I keep coming back to this distinction in my work.

Inclusion says: There is room for you here.

Belonging says: You do not have to stop being yourself to occupy that room.

A boarding school can enroll students from different states, countries, religions, cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, family structures, and life experiences.

That diversity is valuable.

But diversity describes who is present.

It does not automatically tell us how those people experience the community.

The deeper question is whether the school has created an environment where those differences can continue to exist after everyone arrives.

Can students practice their traditions?

Can they talk about their identities?

Can they ask for what they need?

Can they say, “This is important to me,” without feeling like they are creating a problem for everyone else?

That is where belonging begins to become visible.

What Does Yom Kippur Look Like From Inside a Dorm?

Imagine being the student observing while much of the dorm continues through a normal day.

Friends are eating.

Practices are happening.

Homework still exists.

People are laughing in the common room.

The regular rhythm of boarding school continues around you.

Meanwhile, your day may look completely different.

The question is not whether everyone around that student should observe alongside them.

The question is whether the environment allows the student who is observing to do so without feeling like an inconvenience.

Does the dorm parent know?

Do teachers understand?

Does the coach understand?

If transportation to religious services is appropriate and feasible, has anyone considered it?

If the student needs quiet or privacy, can they find it?

Have dining arrangements been considered?

Does the student have to explain their needs to five different adults?

Most importantly:

Does the student know whom to approach without feeling difficult for asking?

That last question tells us a lot about belonging.

The Most Powerful Experiential Education May Be Learning How to Live With Difference

We often associate experiential education with trips, outdoor programs, service learning, internships, leadership exercises, and hands-on projects.

Those absolutely matter.

But I think boarding schools sometimes overlook one of the most powerful experiential classrooms they already have:

the residential community itself.

Think about what happens when students from different backgrounds actually live together.

Your roommate may practice a different religion.

The person sitting beside you at dinner may speak another language at home.

Your teammate may celebrate holidays you had never heard of before arriving at school.

Someone across the hallway may have traditions completely different from those in your family.

Students are constantly encountering perspectives beyond their own.

That is an extraordinary educational opportunity.

But here is the important distinction:

The student who is different should not have to become the lesson.

The lesson is learning how to live respectfully alongside difference.

There is a difference between asking someone to explain their identity for your education and developing enough curiosity, empathy, and cultural awareness to respect their experience.

Sometimes experiential learning is not climbing a mountain or traveling somewhere new.

Sometimes it is realizing the person living twenty feet down the hallway experiences the world differently than you do.

And learning how to be a better community member because of it.

Please Don’t Make One Student the Expert

This is where good intentions can accidentally create another burden.

A Jewish student should not automatically become the dorm’s Yom Kippur expert.

A Muslim student should not be expected to explain Ramadan to everyone.

An international student should not become the spokesperson for an entire country.

Students should be invited to share when they want to.

They should not be expected to educate everyone else simply because they hold an identity that is less represented on campus.

Adults can do some homework too.

Curiosity is valuable.

But curiosity should come with respect.

The goal of experiential education is not to turn someone’s identity into our educational resource.

It is to allow experiences with difference to make us more thoughtful about how we live alongside one another.

The Four Finds Need One More Question

Recently, I wrote about what I call The Four Finds.

As new boarding students begin building their lives on campus, I think we should ask whether they have started finding:

Their person.

A peer they genuinely trust.

Their adult.

Someone they would actually approach when something is wrong.

Their place.

Somewhere on campus that begins to feel like theirs.

Their thing.

An activity, responsibility, interest, or community that gives them purpose.

I still believe those four things tell us a great deal about whether a student is beginning to belong.

But Yom Kippur makes me want to add another question:

Can the student bring their whole self into those Four Finds?

Can I tell my person that today matters to me?

Can I tell my adult what I need?

Can my place accommodate moments when I need something different?

Can I participate in my thing without feeling that my religion, culture, or identity creates an inconvenience?

Finding community is one thing.

Feeling safe enough to be fully yourself within that community is something deeper.

The Small Things Usually Tell Students Whether We Mean It

Belonging rarely comes from a mission statement.

It comes from moments.

A dorm parent quietly checking whether a student has what they need.

A teacher already knowing why a student may be absent.

A coach saying, “I understand,” without requiring a long explanation.

A dining hall team thinking ahead.

A roommate learning enough to recognize that today matters to the person living beside them.

An administrator noticing a scheduling conflict before a student has to point it out.

Most of these actions will never appear on Instagram.

They probably will not make the admissions viewbook.

Parents may never know they happened.

But the student will.

And sometimes one of the strongest messages an institution can send is remarkably simple:

We thought about you before you had to ask.

Admissions Has a Role in This Conversation Too

I have a difficult time separating conversations about belonging from admissions because they are part of the same student journey.

Families ask schools questions about dormitories, dining, advisory, religious services, activities, cultural organizations, weekend programming, and community.

Underneath many of those questions is another one:

Will there be room here for my child to be who they are?

That is an admissions question.

But admissions cannot answer it alone.

The real answer comes months later.

It comes when the student actually lives in the dorm.

When they enter the dining hall.

When they meet their teachers.

When they join activities.

When an important religious or cultural observance arrives.

When they discover whether what they heard during the admissions process matches what they experience as an enrolled student.

If we tell families they will be known here, then the student experience has to deliver on that promise.

Otherwise, belonging becomes marketing language instead of institutional practice.

Sometimes Equity Looks Different

Boarding schools depend on structure.

Meals happen at certain times.

Classes happen at certain times.

Practices happen at certain times.

Dorm expectations apply across a community.

That structure is part of what makes residential schools function.

But fairness does not always mean everyone doing exactly the same thing.

One student may need transportation to a religious service.

Another may need a meal at a different time.

Another may need space for prayer.

Another may need to miss an activity.

Another may simply need the adults around them to understand that a particular day carries significance that other students may not share.

Different does not automatically mean preferential.

Sometimes different is what allows someone to participate fully in the community.

The Real Test Comes When Belonging Is Inconvenient

It is easy to celebrate diversity when diversity fits neatly into the schedule.

The harder test comes when it does not.

What happens when a religious observance conflicts with an athletic competition?

A major assignment?

A weekend activity?

A dorm tradition?

An important meeting?

That is when institutional values become visible.

There will not always be a perfect solution.

Boarding schools are complicated communities filled with competing schedules and responsibilities.

But our first response matters.

Is it:

“That’s going to be difficult.”

Or is it:

“Let’s figure out what we can do.”

Students hear the difference.

More importantly, they experience the difference.

And experience is ultimately where our values become real.