From the Head of School

Below is an excerpt from an address the Head of School, Trevor Ott, gave students at February’s assembly. Assemblies are a long-standing tradition at Delphian, held several times a year to gather and acknowledge students’ production and success in a semi-formal ceremony.

Trevor’s address began with interactive communication with the students. In an effort to duplicate that live communication in a printed format, the following paragraph includes a short exercise that mimics the interaction.

Take a moment to reflect upon and appreciate a recent group-related experience you participated in. More specifically, think about and appreciate the simple fact that you were there, with your group, doing the activity together.

Now, hold onto that feeling of appreciation as you continue reading the following excerpt from the Head of School:

That feeling, or something like it, might be called esprit de corps, “a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty shared by the members of a particular group.” That feeling, for me, is always strongest in moments when the group as a whole, more or less, has come together, regardless of the reason.

These days, we have an assembly about five times a year. Did you know that we used to have an assembly every single week? It’s true. Over the years as the schedule became busier the number of assemblies were reduced.

Even though the function of tonight’s assembly is to acknowledge each other’s production and successes, that isn’t the only reason we are here, and that isn’t the only reason we hold these assemblies.

If it were, we could send your successes and a list of completions around in a group email. You could each hit the reply-all button with the text, “Well done!”

What do you think about that idea? If you reacted negatively, you are far more awake and in tune with what makes a group work than I was twenty years ago. That’s good.

Some of you noticed that I became interested in a dirty stairwell recently. Some of you talked to me about it, there on the stairs as you passed by. One for one, those that did thought it was the dirt that was on my mind.

No. It was esprit de corps.

I was recalling my experience on the building crew as a student. At the time, it was a crew of about twenty, and I remember coming together to clean the building, yes, but also simply to be together while doing it. It was our crew. We looked forward to coming together and took pride in getting it done.

In contrast to that memory, while sweeping the stairs earlier this week, I was told that only a few students had been assigned to building crew the previous weekend and that, as a result of the small crew, “they hadn’t been able to get to everything on the list.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why didn’t they sweep these stairs?” they responded.

“No. Why so few?” I asked.

See? I wasn’t thinking about the fact that it didn’t get done. I was thinking about the esprit de corps of the large crew I remembered.

The answer to “Why so few?” was a list of very, very good reasons such as cheer had a tournament, the seniors were on community service, there was a make-up basketball game due to the ice storm, etc.

Those conflicts are inevitable and increasing every year. In fact, every day a new opportunity for the pursuit of education is created at this school. With every opportunity created, a new barrier to coming together in larger groups, a new barrier to the esprit de corps I experienced while part of a twenty-person building crew for example, is also created.

And so this has been on my mind.

I’ve heard recently about efforts that have gone into increasing attendance at weekend activities. Most of what I’ve heard, and most of my own thoughts have been in the direction of improving the activity itself—a completely valid thing to do.

We want people to attend, and they will want to attend if the activity is something they want to participate in.

After all, what does a weekend activity feel like—let’s take a dance for example—when it is only a mediocre dance? Most students only work out how to be there for ten minutes around their other activities, which leads to only a fraction of the student body attending the activity at any given time…if they managed to work out coming at all.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination, does it? Unfortunately, you don’t have to imagine. You can recall.

I don’t particularly like dancing, and I think that’s fine. Some of us don’t like to dance, some of us don’t like to eat burgers, some of us don’t like to watch sports, some of us don’t like…whatever it might be.

Similarly, some of us would simply rather do something else, some of us have to do something else, some of us simply do something else—you get the idea.

We are all busy. For example, last week’s staff meeting was canceled as it came into conflict with Valentine’s Day. We all have multiple instances of similar conflicts every day in our lives.

“Valentine’s Day” and “I don’t like burgers,” which might be a reason not to attend burger night, for better or worse, affect our coming together as a larger group and have an impact on the larger group’s esprit de corps. Some reasons are better than others, and choices sometimes do have to be made.

However, there is power and enjoyment, there is esprit de corps, to be found in simply being together, as many of us as possible, at the same place and time, regardless of the reason.

If that’s true, then those moments are worth going out of our way to create, which, in many beautiful ways, we do. I hope you hear these things, which have been on my mind, as an invitation to a higher potential rather than as a criticism of Delphian’s esprit de corps.

For example, the recent Senior Night activity was absolutely wonderful. From staff, students of all ages, parents, grandparents, and so on, it felt as if everyone was there, and I loved it.

I received an email the next morning about how one individual there experienced it. I didn’t ask permission to share it, but I’m going to anyway.

“I am sitting here at the varsity game surrounded by what feels like the whole student body from lower school on up. There are siblings, parents, and grandparents here, all to support the group. The word that comes to my mind is ‘family!’ The environment we are trying to create is an extended family…We show up because that is what a family does—they support each other even when we are tired or have a lot of work to do.”

The choice of words in it was significant to me. I noticed that the word “group” was chosen rather than the word “team” when naming what everyone had come together to support. This is a good example of esprit de corps, which was created by coming together regardless of the reason.

So, I wanted to draw your attention tonight to this. It is something that I think both you, the individual, as an individual, and the group, as a group, can benefit from: going out of our way to come together whenever we can, regardless of the reason. Knowing that we are causatively creating a sense of esprit de corps when we do.

What if we all thought of the next event on the calendar like the best versions of ourselves might think of a family dinner? We might like what is being served, or we might not, but we would all go out of our way to be there. As a family, I think it is important that we do.

“Brussels sprouts, you say? I’ll be there.”

I hope you will think about this over the coming months and that you continue to think of many more ways in which esprit de corps can be created. Have fun with it.

“Go Dragons” on three?

…one, two, three: GO DRAGONS!

Trevor Ott