Since my first day at George School, I have heard a lot about the experiences of dorm life from students, but very little about the teachers and staff who call George School home. To find out more about what it is like to be a resident of GS, I interviewed multiple teachers and staff about their thoughts on living on campus. This is what they had to say.
When I asked what their favorite part about living on campus was, the most common answer was the community of George School. Though it was stated multiple times that the short commute was a big plus, being surrounded by the GS community was the biggest highlight of it all. As Kim Major said, “from a practical standpoint, the fact that I work so many hours is incredibly convenient, and it helps me to balance my work life and family life. But really from a professional angle, I really love taking part in different aspects of student life. I like to understand what’s happening on campus, so it’s important for me to be able to have my meals on campus with students and to be able to easily access games and weekend activities. And on a very personal level, it’s really, really nice to have so many neighbors and other faculty and staff that are fun. I really just enjoy their company. So it’s the sense of community, it’s being close to students, and it helps to provide a work-life balance.”
When I asked newer residents about how they have adjusted to campus life at GS and how it compared to working at other schools, I was told that George is like many other boarding schools, but has a unique quality of its own. As Pete Holland said, “I was teaching for over 20 years as a teacher at day schools, which is a totally different thing. I didn’t realize how different until I started working here. This is an all-encompassing universe, the George School campus, and living on campus has given me a perspective that I did not have.”
A special aspect of George School is that in addition to housing faculty it’s also home to their kids and families. Kyle Abbott is a faculty member who lives in the dorms at GS with his wife and son, he said, “It’s been incredible. One, It’s actually incredible to watch him [Kyle’s son] grow up here because . . . When we’re in Manhattan, you can’t walk up to everybody in the elevator and say: ‘My name is Arthur! I live here. My dad works here.’ He’s growing up in this place where people are kind, and it’s an open community. That’s not the case in a lot of places. So for me, that’s really amazing. He gets to grow up in the dorm, and he essentially has 36 older siblings who are excited to see him, and he’s excited to get to see them. The past few years I walked him to school to drop him off and pick him up. And for me, that’s become like a transition moment as the more I walk to NFS, the less George School Kyle I become.”
When I asked other teachers about the separation of school and home. A lot of the staff said that it’s a challenge to keep home and work separate, but there are many ways they keep that separation. If it’s not checking emails or having dinner at home, it’s important to a lot of staff that there is a boundary between work and home. As Kim Major said, “I really just try to make sure that if I’m doing work for admission, I’m doing it in my office. I rarely bring my computer home for work when I live upstairs or when I live in Brownhouse. I’d rather stay here and work until ten or eleven at night than work from home because it creates that boundary. I also have made the choice that unless I’m expecting something or unless I’m the administrator on duty, I do not check my work email. Once I’m home, people can send me a teams message or text, and I can choose to respond or not, but I keep email off.”
I was also curious to know how much residents use the amenities on campus such as the dining hall, FAC, and MDA Library as opposed to resources off campus. When it came to the FAC, it was 50/50 due to its fluctuating hours. But when I asked about the MDA Library, it was almost unanimous that many would rather use the GS library than an off-campus library. When asked about the dining hall, Robert Mooney summarized what most residents expressed: “We enjoy cooking but hardly ever do it just because of the pressure of time. Kids in sports and walking the dog and everything is just much easier, especially living in the same building as the dining hall. As a family, we enjoy cooking our own meals, but it is convenient to have someone else helping us do that.”
Along with some staff choosing to live on campus, some staff are also dorm parents. I was met with an overwhelming amount of love that the dorm parents have for their responsibility and students, as Pete Holland said, “I love when I’m on duty and there’s check-in during the week. Starting at 9:30, going up to 10:00. And lots of times kids will hang around in the lobby and there’s this relaxed exchange as we debrief on the day. And it’s just a really great way to relate to each other here because it’s a Quaker school and (one of the) core Quaker values is equality. So there’s that narrowing distance between adults and students, which I love. I’m just Pete.”
At the end of each interview I conducted, I asked if there was anything else that they wanted to mention about living at GS. Most of the staff talked about how grateful they were to be immersed in the GS community. As Robert Mooney said, “I think it’s great. I love living at boarding schools. I think it’s another way to connect with other members of a community. It’s yet one more way.”
But what I was not expecting to hear was when I started my interview with Pete Holland. He gave a surprise statement, “if I could be any tree, I’d be an apple tree because apples provide food. Right. So people will enjoy that.” When I asked what kind of apple tree he would like to be, he said, “I want to be a honey crisp apple tree.” I would also like to mention that when Kyle Abbott was asked what kind of a tree he would be, he replied he would be an Ent. He said, “I wouldn’t be a tree, but I would be an Ent from The Lord of the Rings and be a tree herder.”
After conducting these interviews, the experiences and stories that were shared with me really changed my viewpoint of what I thought life was like at George School. It was an eye-opening experience, coming from a public school, to have teachers and staff that are so open with me about their lives. Thank you to Robert Mooney, Hamilton Davis, Chris Lucas, Kim Major, Pete Holland, and Kyle Abbott who all took the time to let me ask questions for this article. All of your feedback was very valuable.
