There is a tendency in boarding school scheduling to see ‘residential life’ as those parts of the week to keep students simply ‘happy, busy, and good. However, a strong residential life program typically provides students with far more growth opportunities than they encounter at home and that is a primary aim of the residential life curriculum at Besant Hill School. Indeed, the school labels it a ‘curriculum’ as it is carefully designed to capture the imaginations, motivations, needs and community spirit that the school seeks to foster.
A program that builds in expectations for participation and a strong focus on community service - not least celebrating student involvement - opens young eyes to the sense of accomplishment, personal well-being, and creation of community that is attained from a Saturday morning planting trees or fixing trails for the local Land Conservancy, or preparing and providing food packages for those in need. Indeed, studies report that volunteering in the local area increases students’ emotional intelligence, crucial at a time when it is reported (Dolby, 2013) that student empathy has declined by 40% in the last 50 years. Besant Hill School offers Community Service opportunities each weekend, and students regularly present in group gatherings on their experiences and the sense of achievement attained from their volunteering activities.
Make no mistake - waking sleepy teens early on a Saturday morning to go to their selected Community Service option is sometimes needed, and a motivated teacher/chaperone is paramount for maintaining student participation in projects that spread over several weekends, but the sense of accomplishment students report upon their return to school is infectious. At Besant Hill, community service options each weekend are more heavily subscribed now than shopping trips, where previously coachloads would be dropped at a mall, now they are scattered around the local town at food pantries, beach clean-ups, path re-laying actions, tree-planting weekends and so forth, with rosy-cheeked faculty joining in the efforts (med kit and sunscreen to hand. Safety first.)
What we are finding in our small school is that this outward focus on serving the community then feeds back into how students approach daily life on campus, with a utilitarian approach to community. Students return from volunteering with a desire to spread the ‘warm glow’ amongst their friends and peers. Of course, it helps that the school is set on acres of beautiful Californian countryside, nestled in the upper Ojai Valley between mountains to the north and south. The care that students are encouraged to show by guides as they replant trees and repair trails in the local area is reflected in how they care for their ‘home-away-from-home’ environment: not least on the school’s annual ‘Project Day’ when the student body splits into small groups with assigned beautification tasks around the school - with an ice cream reward at the end of the day.
Nevertheless, students need downtime from their studies and a well-balanced residential life curriculum includes cultural, active, and fun activities that bind the students together. They return from summer vacations anticipating the range of offerings - led by experienced faculty - that they could not really do at home, such as: local theater, museums, hikes, ‘secret’ natural swimming holes, concerts, theme parks, and even satiating teenagers’ desire to shop. Students can earn a little bonus spending money by winning the Golden Broom prize - awarded to the student(s) with the tidiest, sparkliest dorm room, or by being nominated for a ‘random act of kindness’ award, pulled out of the nomination box after a week of nominations, with great anticipation, at the end of each month.
A recent report in The New York Times details how young people today are faced with a barrage of world problems - climate, political, career, relationships, technology - and that human brains need far longer than a lifetime to adapt brains, nervous systems, and bodies to these stressors. At Besant Hill School, a balanced residential life program provides a peaceful, yet exciting antidote to these stressors, but also seeks to equip students with the tools to cope with and flourish in a hyper-connected, fast-moving world. How? The immersion in community activities encourages a calm, tolerant, positive, and philosophical approach to what life throws at students. What happens outside the classroom in the boarding school is no less important than the focus on academic studies within.
