Anyone who walks into my Morgan Hall office will immediately be struck by a life-size cardboard cutout of landscape painter and childhood favorite Bob Ross, a giant campus master planning map, CH-CH family gifts from travels across the globe, leadership lessons from Ted Lasso, and a rainbow of colored sticky notes adorning a large section of wall space reserved for our annual SWOT analysis derived from the Parent Satisfaction Survey.
Each summer, our senior leadership team is joined by a couple members of the CH-CH Board of Trustees to conduct a review of our Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) as discerned from parent and guardian feedback. The day-long review and discussions help school leadership appreciate operational areas of commendation, as well as understand strategic and tactical recommendations for improvement. The goal, of course, is to live through our institutional identification as a teaching and learning organization, one set on constant growth.
In our most recent annual review, a recurring theme emerged stronger than ever before: Lead with Empathy. Now this can be interpreted in a couple of ways. First, parents and guardians appreciate the approach of CH-CH adults to lead students with empathy and kindness in our everyday activities, whether it’s classes, co-curricular activities, or our student and residential life curricula. Second, parents recognize and value that we’re committed to creating opportunities for our students to discover their voice through leadership moments and events. These opportunities are supported by caring, trusted adults who allow, in fact, encourage, students to expand their comfort zone and embrace new opportunities in safe, empathic environments. Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is a familiar refrain around campus as students discover new leadership opportunities grounded in empathy and common understanding for the common good of the CH-CH community.
See the impact of "Leading with Empathy" in CH-CH's most recent Inspiration Video
To Lead with Empathy is an ethos we’re purposefully and mindfully adopting this school year. In fact, we’ve been doing it effectively for years, but now we’re explicitly identifying it and labeling the enterprise for better community recognition and understanding. It’s an approach that truly differentiates CH-CH from so many of our peer schools in the Boston area.
Practically speaking, we see examples all around us. Student leaders created first-time student clubs in Entrepreneurship, Global/Local Service Learning, Musical Appreciation, Strategic Board Games, and even Powerlifting, to name a few. We see it in the most diverse, neurodivergent team of students debating in Model U.N. this year. We see athletic team captains taking on these leadership roles for the first time in their lives. And, of course, we see our faculty and support staff role-modeling kindness and compassion as teachers, coaches, counselors, coordinators, and house parents. There is a genuine warmth and approach to education at CH-CH that is quite uncommon and a clear stand-out to families when they first step foot on campus. It harkens back to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Such a simple concept, but when applied regularly and rigorously in one’s life and through a school community, the Golden Rule can be a game-changer. At CH-CH, it’s exactly that. It provides permission for students to secure agency and become the best version of themselves. It allows students to embrace the idea of taking risks with some set guardrails in place. It gives students agency to unapologetically be the young people they were destined to be. It creates community norms that are clear and easy to understand and follow. To Lead with Empathy is to identify and reveal a little bit of that “secret sauce” that makes CH-CH such a beloved place.
