This article appeared as "The Long View" in the Winter 2023 issue of Independent School.
Building a plan, developing sustainable programs, being creative, measuring impact, and persevering over time can allow schools to truly meet their missions—and their obligation—to a higher and critically necessary calling. As independent schools come under increased scrutiny, deep and demonstrable commitment to a broader public purpose may be a critical way to justify our existence.
Founded in 1866, Noble and Greenough School (MA) fits the profile of many independent schools. An all-boys school until the early 1970s, the school served a predominantly white and suburban clientele, and served them exceptionally well with traditional academics and sports, triple-threat (white) men as teachers and coaches, loyal alumni, and a supportive board. The school subsequently added girls and slowly expanded the program to include opportunities in the arts, producing healthy enrollment and a stable balance sheet. Nobles was comfortable, homogenous, suburban—and doing good work.
In the late ’80s, a change in leadership heralded a shift in aspiration. “Nobles needed to become more academically focused, more diverse, and more deeply connected to the world outside our walls,” former Head of School Dick Baker said at the time. And so began Nobles’ transformation toward a mission of public purpose. That journey today looks like a path charted and then followed but in reality was a decades-long journey that looks more like a stock market chart with gains and losses amid a steady upward trajectory.
Given today’s independent school context, a school’s mission of public purpose needs to move beyond feeling good about a few anecdotes, events, or isolated initiatives. For Nobles, it has been a long and, at times, rocky process, but we learned a lot along the way.
Transformational Principles
Most independent school missions or statements of purpose at least partially reflect the desire to serve the greater community. At Nobles, translating that language into substantive, sustainable, and impactful action has occurred in fits and starts but ultimately has led the school to identify a collection of transformational principles in which our commitment to public purpose has been realized and elevated and continues to evolve. Many schools encourage and support service-learning opportunities, saying this kind of learning is as important as the core academic program and is critical to the development of character (something in virtually every school mission statement). Here’s what we did at Nobles to help students realize this goal.
Create personal growth for students and institutional commitment beyond the traditional program. Beyond individual lessons learned and contributions to the community, Nobles wanted to build a “culture of service,” one that would support a broad range of student initiatives. Over time, the school offered service options that gave entrée to students with an array of interests. A working group of faculty, alumni, and board members offered recommendations and support to a student-led community service board and a way to share experiences across the school, a way to honor graduates whose careers were in public service, and opportunities to connect with community members outside the school. Staff resources were critical to help students identify meaningful opportunities. For example, it took years to realize adolescent boys thrived when working with senior citizens. Yet the most significant challenge continues to be helping students understand the complex issues that create the need for volunteers. Seminars, workshops, readings, videos, visitors, preparation meetings, and debriefing sessions have all helped, but finding the time and space to dig deeply has been hard. It has taken years to get where we are today, and we continue to evolve, particularly as we come out of the pandemic.
The other important piece of the school’s transformation is the realization that Nobles could provide opportunities for students outside of the school community. Beyond a robust summer camp, our campus could better support programs for local students whose life circumstances had not afforded them opportunities such as those at Nobles.
In 1990, through a partnership with University of Massachusetts Boston, we developed an Upward Bound program serving low-income and first-generation high school students. And in 2007, Nobles founded The Achieve Program to serve Boston middle school students. Each year, these programs work with 130 students for six weeks in the summer and on Saturdays during the school year to help put them on a path to higher education.
Evolve to an aspirational mission and mantra. By the early 2000s, the service-learning program had become embedded in school culture as a foundational principle. Through the admission process, every family understood that service was a critical component of a Nobles education, and this became a market differentiator and drew families who supported the school’s broader public purpose.
Appropriately, many questioned how an “exclusive” private school could be sincere in having such aspirations. “How does Nobles avoid creating the white savior complex?” or “Isn’t what you’re doing simply voluntourism?” or “What data do you have to prove that you’re making a positive impact rather than simply taking from communities you are supposedly serving?” Recognizing the legitimacy of such questions, school leaders initiated honest—and sometimes painful—reflection and program revision.
Following the mission revision in 2009 led by former Head of School Bob Henderson, the school’s strategic planning process engaged multiple constituencies in grappling with what “public purpose” meant for Nobles. The result was an affirmation of the mission and a commitment to raise funds to support it. Generous donors were eager to contribute to these initiatives. In addition, over decades, the school’s board of trustees had been cultivated to understand the importance of this aspect of the school’s mission. Without trustee support, steady growth wouldn’t have happened.
Some constituents still had little interest in the public purpose aspect of the mission. “I’m paying tuition for my child to get a strong education and to get into a top university, not to support poor kids,” they’d say. Creating strong, institution-specific responses to these kinds of comments was helpful. And as the school worked through mission realignment and strategic planning, communications evolved and aligned to support student experiences and institutional commitment, including the easily remembered and meaningful mantra “leadership for the public good.”
Develop sustainable partnerships. Initially, some student experiences were a haphazard reflection of faculty interests. Student service opportunities, including travel, began as one-offs with a focus more on what Nobles students could gain rather than what they could contribute. This realization, uncovered through the working group’s review of the programs, led to several goals: relationships and partnerships would be long term; they’d be as beneficial to the partner as to the student experience; and partner organizations’ missions would align with the school’s.
Today’s partners include more than 50 domestic nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations outside the U.S., schools overseas, and public education close to home. We’ve worked with Immigrant Family Services Institute in Boston, St. Bernard Project in New Orleans, Kliptown Youth Program in South Africa, and Beijing 57 Middle School in China, to name a few. By engaging with partners over many years, each partner’s strengths could be incorporated into program development and the student experience. Over time, the trust we built has allowed us to share ideas, revise or rebuild programs, and stay connected during the pandemic. The model has allowed us to periodically revisit and sometimes terminate partnerships due to changes in leadership or international safety issues.
Fit the business model. So often, broader institutional public purpose (other than financial assistance for tuition) gets put into the “nice to have” category instead of the “must have” column. Making that move requires engagement from multiple constituencies, especially the board of trustees.
Over the years, staff members’ job descriptions have included supporting the service learning and travel/study abroad programs, but the broader institutional vision had not been articulated in an accessible way. By pulling together the service, travel, and study-away programs along with Upward Bound and Achieve, there was an easily identifiable umbrella that illustrated the school’s commitment to outward-facing and inclusive partnerships and impactful experiential programming. In addition to creating more formal job descriptions, we raised endowment funds to create an experiential learning center (EXCEL—Experiential and Community Engaged Learning) in 2015, created a coordinated communications strategy, and began offering a tour of the center for prospective families.
The Pursuit of a Noble Cause
Every school’s path to public purpose will be different. While Nobles’ growth may seem overwhelming to some, key concepts guided the school along the way.
A spirit of carpe diem (seizing the opportunity) has been critical. Faculty and staff have continually recognized the importance of the school’s broader public purpose, and that has led to sustainable partnerships near and far. Initiatives have had relational foundations built on trust and serve the school and communities well.
A number of ideas were unrealistic or failed, but Nobles continued to support the entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to faculty and staff who endeavored to push the school forward. Over time, we realized there’d be inevitable setbacks; the school would need to cultivate patience and persevere toward its larger goals while holding itself accountable and measuring results and impact along the way.
Late Rep. John Lewis said “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble”—and helping independent schools make a profound shift toward a broader public purpose may require getting into some “good and necessary trouble.” Nudging, pushing, prodding, cajoling, inspiring, and convincing our schools to be ambitious and aspirational in serving a broader public purpose—and not just saying so in their missions—requires patience, persistence, resilience, optimism, energy, strong and visionary leadership, and a willingness to take a long view. This work is not a one-and-done journey.