Speaking to the “Soul” of a School
Schools have souls. I’m convinced of it. But, I’m not sure I’d be so certain were I not a school chaplain.
I will admit, school chaplaincy is a weird thing. You’re a minister, but not in a church. It’s a curious form of embeddedness, a bit like ambassadorship. But for precisely that reason, chaplaincy is also a valuable point of view. It has convinced me that paying attention to an institution’s soul is vital for the health of any school.
Let me share the trying story of how I came to believe this.
Late on a Saturday night in April, one of our students died in a post-prom car accident. The next day was the longest and most challenging day a school can have. Being called to serve a community in its most disorienting moments is the humbling work of chaplaincy. But it was — I have to tell you — really hard, especially figuring out what to say.
We are a school of about 300 boys, small enough that pretty much everyone knows everyone else’s name, but big enough that the depths of relationships vary widely. So when, God forbid, a student passed, everyone was everywhere. Some boys had lost their best friend while others had personally lost very little. It was my job to stand up that evening in the vigil, with all faculty and students present, to say something.
How can you possibly address such diverse and profound emotional states? The truth is, you can’t. You can’t offer a tailored word to everyone. But what you can do, I slowly came to see, is speak to “the School.”
Starting that Sunday night, I spoke in front of the entire school community every day for a week. I tried to say something real, something true, something needed at that tragic time. In those six days, it became clear to me that, no matter where any of our individual members might be, our School was grieving.
The School had lost somebody. The School was in pain. The School was confused. The School felt something.
The simple idea that “the School” was an entity related to, but distinct from, any one of us brought a clarity of vision. I knew I was supposed to care for this curious and almost-elusive element of our community: the soul of the School. Since that evening, this has only been impressed more deeply upon me.
Schools have souls.
As it turns out, this is not quite so strange and mystical a notion as it may seem. The social sciences have developed languages for the idea that human collectives function as a kind of persona which itself reacts back upon the collective itself. They are often called “Super Personalities.” Think, for instance, of “mob mentality.” You might surmise that mob mentality is simply a matter of anonymity-en-masse. But sociologists, anthropologists, and social psychologists have also suggested that groups behave quite differently than individuals precisely because “the Group” is quite different from the individuals that comprise it. The Group has, so to speak, a soul.
So what are school administrators supposed to do with that knowledge? What can a division head, a chaplain, or even a head of school do with the insight that the School has its own soul?
Well, like any individual human being, you can choose to act in ways that move the soul of the School. What feeds the human soul? Beauty, community, affirmation, affection, joy. All of these things are as needed by the soul of a school as they are by the human soul. Programs that bring the arts to campus, that bring mindfulness to athletics, that bring inspiration to all-school events can feed, build, and move the soul of a school.
But I think that high-level administrators, folks in key positions of authority, actually have a privilege that members of faculty may be afforded only rarely: you get to speak to the whole School. At convocation, at graduation, in chapel, at your Earth Day celebration you are the people who more than likely get to stand up in front of every member of the School and say something. Never underestimate how much a good speech can do to move the soul, not only of one individual person, but of an entire institution. You can, quite literally, speak to the soul of the School.
If the School is despondent, you can bring it consolation. If it is grieving, you can bring it comfort. If it is spirited, you can direct it towards the good. You can, with a wise and well written word, serve as a custodian and steward. This, I think, is one of the noblest privileges of school leadership. You can use the beauty and power of language to animate the soul of the School.
If you’re interested in further work on Super Personalities or the Soul of Institutions you might enjoy:
-God the Spirit by Michael Welker
-Experiences in Groups by W.R. Bion
-Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr
Peter Hartwig is Chaplain at Christ School in Arden, NC and a graduate of St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville, VA. He received his B.A. in Religious Studies & Classics from the University of Virginia. He then went on to receive graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge (Master of Philosophy) and Princeton Theological Seminary (Master of Divinity). His writing has appeared in Comment Magazine, the Hedgehog Review, and Earth & Altar. Peter’s articles for “The Classroom” address a range of education topics and we couldn’t be happier to have his contributions.