I’m a recent university graduate and in a little less than a month, I will be starting my first year working at a boarding school, which will include being an advisor. I’m extremely excited and passionate about working with students, especially in a boarding school environment.
If it’s alright, I’d like to ask if any of the parents can offer some thoughts on what is most important to them in a boarding school staff/faculty member.
Let me start off with a point about the academic side of the classroom experience. Some schools are wedded to using textbooks in class, others to “student-centered” inquiry models, in which, typically, groups of students problem solve. We have found that the same school can have course or classes that neatly divide these approaches as if by a fault line. In our experience, as professional parents, most students will benefit from a blend of the two approaches and not using one to the exclusion of the other.
Secondly, alluding to the great Maya Angelou quote, make your students feel the excitement of questing into the unknown. Get them to understand their ignorance, and show them how excited you are about the subject matter and its potential to take them to a place of more “wisdom”. This will go a long way toward what your school is selling, a transformational experience as opposed to a more transactional one. It will also bring more of the students into the conversation which is so important as many will probably have missed the “lateral learning” in middle school that is emphasized at the boarding schools.
So a word on the advisor role: my son’s advisor (who he has chosen to stay with each year), is very low key. She responds to any emails we send or questions we have on parents’ weekend, but we don’t hear from her a ton. A couple of times, we’ve raised some minor concerns, especially about either course selection or time management issues (definitely not his strong suit). She listens, but doesn’t turn around and either express out concerns or bug him about whatever issues in her own voice. She might bring up the issue and just ask him if he thinks it’s an issue.mat the beginning of freshman year, this kind of bugged us-- she seemed too low key. Over time, however, it’s become very clear it has worked for our son: he feels like she is TOTALLY on his side on all sorts of issues, appreciates she never “bugs” him, and actually feels like he can go to her when there ARE issues. He is a really good student, good boy, etc., so he doesn’t need much intervention, so far at least-- but he also is pretty reticent about going to anyone with any issues, so it’s pretty impressive that he will go to her. Again, I’m sure this wouldn’t work for all kids, but I’ve ended up being pretty impressed with her ability to listen to us but not to do much, and to make him feel she is totally in his corner. Of course, if there were some issues that were really problems, I’m sort of assuming she’d step up, and I could be wrong about that-- but I just thought I’m put in a plug for advisors who are kind of low key, especially for kids who don’t find it easy to seek advice. I’m sure there are plenty of kids that want or need lots of intervention, but I thought I’d just give you a perspective you might not hear from everyone.