Adults at Milton—administrators, faculty and staff—are the architects of students’ experience. They work hard to provide a context that encourages a teenager to take ownership of his or her life: in the classroom, as a teammate, in a production, as a roommate. Taking responsibility for yourself is a prerequisite to sharing responsibility for others. These steps are developmental building blocks for leadership. Whether formally through elected office, or informally through attribution, leaders commit themselves to affecting the lives of those around them.
“We want responsibility to have a deep, comprehensive meaning for students, more than just acknowledging past error,” says David Ball, Upper School principal. “Responsibility is affirmative, aspirational—not just reactive.
“A person moving from childhood to adulthood has to stumble a bit to figure out what it means to be responsible, and it’s often easier to figure that out in the aftermath of a decision. As young people grow, it’s challenging for adults to reconcile their desire to encourage the right kind of risk taking, with the desire of adolescents to take every kind of risk, whether it’s the right or wrong kind. We can’t point to a model that shows us that ‘the responsible leader takes this risk and not that risk,’ nor is the safe and cautious choice always the right one.”
Adults at Milton review and tweak elements of student life, trying to maximize the effectiveness of widely diverse student activities. Aiming to develop thoughtful, confident leaders, administrators take stock of what they see on the ground, and make adjustments that they hope will make important differences for students and the faculty who advise them.
A host of adults and student leaders, speaking separately, landed on three components that seem fundamental to the growth of responsibility they see or feel at Milton. The first is Milton’s culture, in and out of the classroom, that insists upon and rewards individual thinking and acting. The second is the sense of connection students feel with one another. Finally, both groups named role models: older students whose influential power, creativity, and the generous ability to give back, inspire their younger peers.
The classroom itself is the baseline cultural experience. New students learn quickly that their own points of view are not only welcome but expected. Each person has a distinct role around the Harkness table or in a problem-solving group. Their peers and their teachers expect that they’ll come to class prepared with their own ideas. They see that their teachers are not necessarily the authority figures that will drive every aspect of how things go, but rather that students share responsibility for that. To get along, they have to take risks, respond to feedback, design experiments and research projects—not independent of adults, but with adults’ mentoring and coaching.
“All the writing and speaking we do at Milton,” says David Ball “communicates the power of language. ‘Here’s a tool,’ we show students. ‘It’s both fun and dangerous to play with.’ We ask students to think about communication as a statement of an individual’s distinctiveness. And we ask them to think about the impact their communication has on others.”
Editors of the Milton student newspapers know about that power of language; their decisions about what to print are complex. Jackie Bonenfant, academic dean, commended the student-paper editors for taking on several issues of global importance this year, and for finding balance in responding to particular issues on campus. “All sorts of conversation and debate that people don’t see goes on among editors,” David reminded the group. “Journalists, particularly journalists in a small community, deal with questions about what constitutes responsibility— and responsibility to whom?”
Once words are printed, editors know, the text stands; it reaches other students, and faculty, parents and alums, as well. Retracting or clarifying is ineffective and damages the paper’s status. As the writer, you are exposed and held accountable. Reporters need to resolve the tension between the need to be cool, to be smart, to uncover things, and the need to represent reality, especially when the story is more layered than met the eye. These editors, “they uphold the Measure’s or the Paper’s legacy, for better or for worse,” David notes, “but they love the School, and are trying to be responsible to the School and to care about one another.”
José Ruiz, dean of students, points out that dorm head monitors also need to center themselves on caring about others. The dorm curriculum revolves around learning how to live in community, acknowledging your impact on others and contributing to the overall sense of well-being. Houses are a strong source of identity and pride at Milton, and dorm monitor positions are attractive. Dorm monitors are excited to set the spirit and the tone for the house, and model the values and the traditions that define each house. It’s not all fun, however. You might need to energize housemates for some group event when you least feel like it, or gather the troops and with the house faculty lead a discussion about some behavior that needs to change. “Sometimes, a challenge can highlight a tension,” José says. “We chose this person for this particular set of reasons, students think; we understand what he or she needs to do, but now that we’re in the middle of it, it feels different. Students who take on these roles are always balancing the needs of individuals and the community—housemates, classmates, or the School as a whole. They have to manage institutional responsibility with responsibility to self and to peers. They end up broadening their perspectives, understanding competing interests and needs, and taking a role slightly different from what peers wanted it to be.”
Sitting on a disciplinary committee (DC) is an intense example of students’ needing to understand their peers and at the same time recognize the institutional need for accountability. All Self-Governing Association (SGA) reps may sit on a DC, which includes four faculty and four students determining, by consensus, what disciplinary response to impose when a student breaks a major School rule. “I’ve appreciated the consensus aspect of our process,” José says. “That allows for good dialogue between adults and students, and often leads to long conversations and some solid growth.”
Students often come in with and articulate one idea, José and Jackie agree, and inevitably work to find a balance between what’s good for the student and what’s good for the community. Students are willing to put themselves in another student’s shoes, and at the same time, recognize that actions have consequences. When you’re running for office, however, the time you may serve on a DC doesn’t figure too prominently in your vision of the role.
“One of the great elements about serving on a DC is that you have to come to a conclusion,” David says. “You can’t avoid it; you can’t walk away; and you’re working on it with other people. Experiencing the responsibility involved in making a difficult decision helps teenagers move from living in the passive voice to living in the active voice.”
Milton likes to award responsibility to groups as well as to individuals. All of Class II, for instance, is responsible for the program of the Class II Retreat (C2R). A weekend in early spring designed to bring the junior class together and focus on their leadership roles as seniors, C2R is a time for reflection and bonding. It typically surfaces a fresh look at each other, what Milton has meant, what’s at stake in the coming year, and how the characters and talents in this class can coalesce to lead the School. Decisions about whether to run for office often percolate over this weekend, and always, some candidates that surprise the class come forward. “I was impressed with the large team effort this year,” Jackie says, “with the students who felt compelled to speak, to include their voices, to demonstrate that they did share some global responsibility in terms of what happens with that class moving into leadership of the School.”
Elections that follow during the spring show are always colorful and show heartening signs of growth. “Students get up and articulate what this place has meant to them, that they have received something, that they want to give to someone else,” David says. “They are interested in giving to others that which they have received. Many students, with or without leadership titles, are in a position to influence others, and do.
“Sometimes it feels to students that when they’re taking responsibility, they’re somehow subordinating themselves as individuals,” David notes. “Often, taking responsibility does involve some kind of sacrifice. But we ultimately see individual growth, too. Students willing to take those leaps gain perspective, skills and confidence, and they take pride in what they’ve done. It’s just a little easier for them to see that on the other side of having done so.”
–Cathleen D. Everett