TEACHING AT WOOSTER
To fully understand what it is to be a member of the community at Wooster School today, one must first understand the history and legacy of the school. More than eighty years ago, Wooster was founded by an Episcopalian priest, Rev. Aaron Coburn, who desired to reach his parishioners on a deeper level than was possible dealing with adults in a parish. He founded it as, essentially, a one-room, country boarding school with a dorm attached and a farm nearby. The emphasis was on living in community as much as it was on academic excellence. The core values of the school, stated today as the “Four Cardinal Principles of Wooster”, were and are intellectual excellence, simplicity, hard work, and religion. While these virtues have taken on more “modern” interpretations over the years, they -- like the model of one small classroom and a few students living in community with one another -- remain at the foundation of our culture.
Today’s Wooster looks on the outside almost nothing like that of Rev. Aaron Coburn. Wooster now includes all grades, Pre-K-12, separated into three divisions (Lower: Pre-K - 5, Middle: 6 - 8, Upper: 9 - 12) and contains about 350 students, or roughly 50 times the original enrollment. About forty years ago, somewhat ahead of other independent schools, Wooster admitted girls and now equally serves each gender. Over fifty years ago, far ahead of the national controversy over integration, Wooster quietly began admitting students of color. In 1990, the school phased out its boarding component, and is now entirely a day school.
While comparable to other independent schools in this country in many ways (class sizes around 12 students, teacher involvement in the lives of students beyond the classroom, significant independence for each teacher in designing his or her own curriculum and pedagogical methods) there remain certain elements of Wooster which not only make it distinctive, but which together move the school towards its mission of promoting the intellectual, spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, and physical development of boys and girls of diverse backgrounds.
1) Community
Most central to our ethos is a distinct emphasis on the responsibilities and power of community. Many vestiges of the boarding program have been carefully retained to further the sense of belonging of each member of the school. Grade levels are small: we are graduating 46 students this year. This enables everyone to come to know everyone else in their division by the end of the first month of school, and enables faculty to come to know much more about each child than his or her name and academic abilities. Lunches are sit-down meals in each division, with faculty sitting at tables with the students sharing lively conversation. A small number of the faculty live in faculty homes on campus, in houses or apartments left from the boarding program which now serve as further emblems of Wooster as a second home and not just as a place to which one commutes. [One long-time faculty member tells the tale of Wooster as a place a student once ran away to.] Saturday mornings are still times when Upper School students come to campus to meet with teachers for extra help or enrichment. Even the chapel (see “religion” below) is laid out like a Quaker meeting room, with the pews facing inward toward one another in a spirit of community.
Perhaps the most unusual feature that lends itself to this sense of community is our “Self Help” program in which all the students contribute to cleaning the school. Lower School students have daily chores in their classroom or in the dining room cleaning their environment. Students in the Middle and Upper Schools move to assigned “job” areas each day at the end of the class day, and pick up brooms, rags, vacuums and dustpans to clean. No bells ring and no faculty member stands over them to make them work. Instead it is the senior class, ceremoniously assigned to various areas about the school each spring, who oversee the whole process and learn the lessons of leadership at the same time while their commitment to the school is renewed each day. While some problems inevitably arise, we find that this 84 year-old tradition not only is among the most fond memories of each alum, but instills in all the students a feeling that the school is theirs and that they are to take care of it --and by extension each other -- because of that sense of belonging and ownership.
2) Diversity
In the midst of this sense of unity, Wooster’s philosophy also includes a profound commitment to diversity, fostering a community of people from different socioeconomic groups, races, and religions. We spend more than 1.7 million dollars (roughly 21% of our annual budget) each year on need-based financial aid to ensure that academically qualified children of all backgrounds have access to our school; about 28% of the students here are on some form of financial assistance. We are proud of the fact that our American minority population comprises roughly 22% of our student body in addition to the students drawn from other countries. Our students are not required to wear uniforms and while some of them find the “collared shirt and no blue jeans” dress code burdensome, it is indicative of our larger commitment to upholding individual expression in the context of a unified community. It is our guiding belief that students and adults alike are enriched by an environment in which individuals are not merely different from one another but in which they are celebrated for their differences.
The administration has also made a commitment to increasing the number of faculty, staff, and administrators from traditionally under-represented groups, enlisting the aid of a national agency, NEMNET, in its recruitment process. It is our goal to increase diversity among employees to a level similar to that of the students. In the workplace now, individual initiative and independence are highly valued. For example, a low-ropes challenge course was paid for and built entirely as a result of the proposal by a second year teacher who persuasively convinced the headmaster (and his “budgeteers”) that we would thereby be better able to reach students who were not fully served by the abundant assortment of athletic offerings in the school. Teachers are given great latitude in their classrooms to devise appropriate means of assessment and pedagogy to accomplish their educational goals. Graduating students often marvel at the array of teaching styles they have encountered in their years at Wooster.
3) Ethical Education
Wooster School has an Honor Code which expects each member of the community -- faculty, parents, administrators, staff members, and students alike -- to act honorably in all phases of their Wooster life, eschewing lying, cheating, stealing, and vandalizing, and treating everyone with respect. The opening days of each school year include a school-wide Honor Ceremony when these values are reiterated and elaborated upon, following which each member of the community signs the Honor Code, pledging their commitment to this ideal. Throughout the year, at assemblies and in classroom and advisor discussions, the Honor Code is explored with the students, and articles about the issue are shared with the home front on a regular basis. Serious breaches of the Honor Code by Middle or Upper School students are cause for a meeting of the Honor and Discipline Committee which is comprised equally of students and faculty members and which advises the headmaster about the school’s response to dishonorable behavior.
But ethical education at Wooster is more than just discussion of, and enforcement of, the Honor Code. Every day, in ways small and sometimes large, the faculty and students enter into conversations about what is ethically right. Our discipline system involves another age-old tradition in which students accumulate a written record which documents both minor rule infractions and the occasions when the student has volunteered to help out the community. This record, combined with a report about the student’s performance in the Self-Help program written by the senior who was that child’s supervisor, is reviewed every three weeks in conference with the student’s advisor. In this way, what has been referred to as a person’s “moral compass” receives frequent and formal feedback throughout the year. It is no accident that our sports teams have won 41 sportsmanship trophies in the last 16 years. Every coach and every teacher make the painstaking task of formation of character a top priority.
4) Religion
While still an Episcopalian school, Wooster has expanded from its ecclesiastical roots in an attempt to embrace the diversity of its members in this most crucial area. Our faculty and student body includes people who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim and many who have no particular religious affiliation at all. It is our philosophy that “It is better to believe” regardless of the nature of the individual’s belief. We feel that a complete education, and a full realization of what it means to be fully human, must include consideration of the spiritual side, yet we make no attempts to proselytize or convince anyone that one brand of faith is more appropriate for them than another. All faculty and students are required to attend the weekly, divisional chapel services that are conducted in the chapel -- the geographic and philosophical center of our campus. The chapel doors read, “Believers, say a prayer. Unbelievers, be respectful,” and the services are loosely Episcopalian in nature with broad inclusion of other faiths and literature in the context of the Judeo-Christian ethic of kindness and service to others. It is our philosophy that experiencing the model of one religious practice enables students to best explore what they believe and to build their ethical framework on those beliefs.
5) Commitment to Professional Growth
The school has an ambitious program of promoting and funding the professional growth of our faculty. It is our belief that we are obligated as teachers to model life-long learning for the joy and personal fulfillment it brings. Each member of the faculty has a responsibility to the school, to the profession, and to herself or himself to invest time and energy in life-long learning.
To this end, we have created Individual Professional Development Accounts for each teacher in the amount of $500 each year. In consultation with the teacher’s division head or other supervisor, each teacher is empowered to spend that money as they see fit for their own professional growth. Additionally, an account is assigned for enrichment grants for which faculty can apply each year to underwrite more major projects that would augment that teacher’s ability to contribute to the school by augmenting and celebrating intellectual pursuits that are tangential to specific teaching responsibilities. Finally, faculty may apply for reimbursement for two graduate level courses per FDAC budget year in the amount of $500 - $600 each.
Also of note is our evaluation procedure for faculty, a process of ongoing reflection, goal-setting, and peer review. The program has proven most beneficial to faculty members who are looking to master their craft.
6) Humor
As stated in our Statement of Philosophy, (included, with our Mission Statement, below) at Wooster we seriously try not to take ourselves too seriously, and value highly the perspective gained by laughing at ourselves. Our unpredictable yet annual Headmaster’s holiday, a spontaneous day off from classes on a beautiful spring day, has been called Don Quixote Day from times long passed (many of our younger students think it is Donkey Hodie Day.) Our chaplain has been known to sing old Beatles songs as part of the weekly service. Announcements at lunch in the dining hall, most commonly lead by students, develop into a comic can-you-top-this string of impromptu performances on a regular basis. Ours is a happy place.
There is much more to tell, as ours is a rich and multifaceted community. Our scenic campus covers 120 acres including 15 buildings and is more like a small college than a day school. The music and art programs each have their own buildings and a faculty that is largely comprised of professional artists who set aside time in their creative careers to share their passion for their art with our students. We have recently completed construction projects and enjoy a new Middle School building, a “black box” theater, and a new gymnasium (our third). Our campus is fully computer-networked, with computers wired and wirelessly connected through fiber-optic cable to our ten servers providing email, data storage, applications and multiple T-1 access to the Internet from each study space on campus. Our endowment is growing and while our salaries are never as high as we would like, morale among the staff is high.
In short, Wooster is a great place to work, to live, and to serve children.
