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What Does It Mean to Belong When You’re the Only One Observing?
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,…
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The First Month Is Lying to You: Why Boarding Schools Shouldn’t Mistake Activity for Belonging
September can make a boarding school look like everyone has found their place. That does not mean they have. September might be the easiest month of the boarding school year to fool ourselves. Walk across almost any campus, and everything looks alive. The athletic fields are full. Clubs are recruiting. Student centers are busy. Dorm…
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Who Knows the Student Your Transcript Can’t Introduce?
Why boarding school students might want to look beyond the classroom when choosing an additional college recommender. Anyone who knows me knows there are two things I can spend far too much time talking about: art and sports. I love walking through an art museum and getting close enough to a painting that the image almost…
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Not Every Student Belongs the Same Way. Shouldn’t Boarding School Dorms Reflect That?
What if one of the most important conversations in residential life isn’t about programming at all, but about the spaces students come home to every day? Some of my favorite ideas for Beyond the Bell don’t come from sitting behind a laptop. They come from conversations with people who make me think differently. This one…
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What Every Boarding School Can Learn from Summer Camp Communities
There is a moment at every great summer camp that feels almost impossible to explain. It’s only been a few days. Children who arrived as strangers are already laughing around a campfire. They know each other’s names. They’ve developed inside jokes. They cheer one another on with genuine enthusiasm. They begin to feel like they…
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Why Residential Life Should Have a Seat at the Admissions Table
There is a moment that happens long before a student walks into their first class. It doesn’t happen during Orientation. It isn’t at Convocation. It isn’t when they unpack their belongings in the dorm. It happens during the admissions process. As schools, we spend countless hours helping prospective families understand our academic offerings. We proudly…
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The Second Enrollment: How Student Life and Belonging Shape Boarding School Retention
When a student enrolls at a boarding school, the admission office celebrates a milestone. Yet the true test of a school’s culture comes later, when that same student chooses to stay. That decision to re-enroll is what I call The Second Enrollment, the moment when a student decides that this is not just where they attend…