by Ryan Pemberton, Ed.D., Director, McCain-Ravenel Center for Intellectual and Moral Courage, Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA
In the summer of 2023, our leadership team met to coordinate summer projects and plan for the year ahead. Dorm renovations, major school dates, academic schedule changes, and student and faculty orientation programming were big points of discussion. I imagine those topics were on the list of administrative teams at precisely 98.9% of independent schools.
As the director of the McCain-Ravenel Center for Intellectual and Moral Courage (MRC) my role is to build programming that helps connect students and faculty with all of the resources provided by the Washington, D.C., area and to help students connect their academic and co-curricular experiences to grow into our School’s Portrait of a Graduate Qualities. The MRC is named for the late Senator John McCain ‘54 and his teacher, coach, and mentor, William B. Ravenel, about whom McCain wrote, “Mr. Ravenel changed my life. He gave me some moorings and a compass. He used his classroom as not only a way to teach English but also to teach values and standards and morals. Were William B. Ravenel the only person I remembered from high school, I would credit those days among the best of my life.”
Our goal is to help faculty invest in students like Ravenel and to produce graduates who serve with intellectual and moral courage like McCain. Those are exceptionally lofty, but impactful, ideals that give our work deep meaning. To accomplish our goals we host monthly symposia, workshops, excursions; invite speakers to participate in our civil dialogue programming; mentor students involved in externship programs; and help faculty build academically rigorous and interesting experiential learning experiences as part of our ‘flex blocks.’ (EHS changed its academic schedule to provide time during the academic day for faculty to lead students in experiential learning opportunities off campus.) My role is deeply involved in all school programming related to civic education.
During the summer of 2023, our Head of School asked me, along with our School Attorney, and Director of Communications, to build a policy to outline expectations when inviting outside speakers to campus. I was also asked to build a document that would house resources related to educational strategies related to the 2024 election. At that summer of 2023 meeting, as we were discussing those priorities, our Dean of Students said, “That’s great — we need to review policies around student dress and signage related to the election.” Immediately, the Director of our Office of Community & Equity said, “We also need to review our language and social media policy.” Other members of the leadership team then said, “You know, we really ought to have a task force to review everything related to the election.” And with that, the 2024 Presidential Election task force was formed.
At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., Eboo Patel, noted author and founder of Interfaith America, an organization dedicated to promoting religious pluralism, stated that “the job of campus leaders is to create the conditions and infrastructure needed to keep our communities together to educate our students.” In that vein, the task force was formed with the stated mission to “provide foresight in a number of areas of campus life in order to foster an educational community where students, faculty, and staff feel welcomed, supported, and a sense of belonging; to ensure that all learn how to express political views in a respectful and civil manner; and to support academic excellence by using the 2024 election cycle as an opportunity for learning and growth.” Simply put, we want to make sure there is broad administrative awareness with everything happening related to the election and to make sure our community uses the election as an opportunity to grow and learn. We hope to limit surprises, identify opportunities for collaboration across departments, and provide as much lead time as possible to make thoughtful decisions.
The election is especially salient to our school because of our location, nature as a 100% residential boarding school, and makeup of our community. EHS is blessed with an amazing location situated just a few miles from downtown Washington, D.C. and two miles from Old Town Alexandria. We have the best of both worlds — an amazingly beautiful campus with 130 tree-lined acres, red brick buildings, outstanding athletics and academic facilities, and immediate access to a fascinating metropolitan area.
The fact that 100% of our students live on campus is a defining feature of our community. Our students live in community with one another and with our faculty, 90% of whom live on campus. Like all boarding schools, what happens on the playing field and dorm impacts what happens in our classrooms, and our faculty are called to help students grow holistically. Our school is lucky to have students with an exceptionally wide range of backgrounds. Approximately 16% of our students identify as international. Students call 28 states and 24 countries home. Approximately 35% receive some type of financial aid. EHS welcomes students from up and down both coasts, the Washington, D.C., area, the deep south, and abroad. The hometowns of my wonderful advisees provide a glimpse into a typical EHS classroom or dorm. They are from Beijing, Durham, San Jose, Savannah, Toronto, New Orleans, New York, and Charleston. Parents and alumni serve as elected representatives and appointed officials in both parties. Our amazing community values and respects differences of opinion. We learn from the experiences of one another and by living in community, we value the humanity of everyone with whom we interact.
EHS was founded in 1839 so the school has experienced 44 presidential elections, and we interact with governmental leaders and elected officials often. In theory, this experience is not new to our community. Perhaps because of that previous experience, we can anticipate potential challenges (use of hurtful language, concern over the choice of speakers, faculty angst about specific expectations, etc.) even if those challenges have not yet become manifest.
Over the summer of 2024 I was lucky to participate in the GARDNER CARNEY LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE (gcLi) at the Fountain Valley School of Colorado. The faculty were outstanding and I may have learned even more from my colleagues, whom I now consider great friends and who have become a trusted network of support. It was a wonderfully enriching experience, and I am grateful for the opportunity. One of our faculty members, Mike Pardee, wrote and led us in conversation about the work of leadership scholar Ron Heifetz. Heifetz’s thesis is that there is a distinction between adaptive and technical leadership. Adaptive challenges “require new learning and collaboration in order to solve, and thus a more generative, dialogical sort of leadership.” Technical challenges “entail processes or answers that are already known; so technical leaders succeed by following formulae or recipes that enable their group systematically to solve clearly-defined problems.” During a recent talk, NAIS Executive Director Debra Wilson stated that what “got us here may not get us there.” It is clear that institutions must adapt to stay healthy. Preparation for the 2024 election at EHS is clearly an adaptive leadership challenge.
As the administrative leadership team began its work, we committed to using some regularly scheduled meeting time to share progress, identify opportunities, and discuss needed decisions. The task force also split into multiple sub committees: campus student events; communications; classroom considerations; student and community life; professional expectations; and risk management. Each committee identified specific projects and kept the leadership team updated on progress and plans to adapt to the challenges presented by the upcoming election.
Lara Schwartz, Director of American University’s Project on Civil Dialogue and author of the book Try to Love the Questions: From Debate to Dialogue in Classrooms and Life (a wonderful book that served as a summer reading opportunity for our faculty), argued that “people have deeper, more meaningful, rigorous, and productive conversations once we understand that speaking and listening across differences is a core skill, much like writing, research, or keeping a budget.”
Schwartz continued, “to debate is to prove that we are right. Inquiry requires us to understand what we do not yet know with certainty, and to entertain the idea that we might be wrong… being a scholar (and I would argue, an engaged member of society) requires us to try to love the questions and learn to live in a state of uncertainty.”
With that in mind, the committee went to work. Here is a rundown of the projects the committee engaged in:
- Planned multiple all-school events and workshops designed to provide students with insight into policies related to the 2024 election, media literacy, and civil dialogue.
- Coordinated with advisory and residential life programming to ensure messages related to the election were provided in multiple venues.
- Created a document that captured best practices and resources related to the election.
- Surveyed faculty to assess needs of teachers related to challenging conversations and classroom content.
- Worked with faculty leaders of the young democrats, young republicans, and government clubs to coordinate election-related programming and student activities.
- Provided professional development for faculty at multiple intervals.
- Provided training to student leaders during August orientation to prepare them to serve as role models and to thoughtfully respond to challenging election related situations.
- Reviewed school policy related to language and social media use, promulgation of campaign signage, and dress supporting political candidates/slogans.
- Reviewed school policy related to all signage in faculty yards on school property.
- Prioritized community norms to guide decision making, create buy-in for those decisions, and build clear expectations for members of the community.
- Created a school policy about expectations related to invitations for school speakers.
- Developed all-school plans for inauguration day and MLK Day, both of which fall on January 20, 2025.
- Developed a document (with extensive review and input from teachers) outlining faculty expectations. Faculty were asked to embrace the following roles:
- Mediators of civil and respectful discussions
- Listeners who are calm and empathetic
- Questioners rather than (always) providers of answers
- Reducers of fear, anxiety, and discord
- Supporters of students’ sense of their own dignity and that of others
- Providers of perspective on the greater democratic process and history
(Coming soon: Part 2 of Election 2024, One School’s Plan: Courage, Leadership, & Adaptive Challenges)
Links:
Eboo Patel, Interfaith America
Try to Love the Questions: From Debate to Dialogue in Classrooms and Life
Ryan Pemberton joined the Episcopal High School community in 2023 after serving as the Director of the Wilson Center for Leadership in the Public Interest at Hampden-Sydney College. While at Hampden-Sydney, Ryan taught classes focused on leadership, public policy, government, and public administration. The Wilson Center coordinated two academic minors, provided extensive public programming, and created a four-year leadership program for students. Before his service at Hampden-Sydney, Ryan worked as an Analyst in the FBI.
The McCain Ravenel Center for Intellectual and Moral Courage is a hub of activity on campus charged with creating connections between agencies, institutions, organizations, and corporations in Washington to inspire students to become ethical, courageous leaders in the mold of its namesakes, Senator John McCain ‘54 and his mentor, longtime beloved EHS teacher, William “Bee” Ravenel. Ryan leads a team and works with faculty across campus to support experiential learning, design senior May activities, and provide programming for the entire community that focuses on leadership, civil dialogue, service, and civic engagement.