Leadership interview with Michael Fellin, Crescent School

So probably the thing that I love most about my job is I get to be around boys pretty regularly and facilitate their learning and their character education. I get to be around amazing colleagues who are interested in the same thing, people who are really focused on boys and their needs. I feel very blessed to be with people who are that like-minded and who are devoted to boys' education.

I grew up in a boy school, and I've been in boy schools my entire life. And I happen to just be, again, grateful for the fact that the school is not too far from where I live. And so we think about ourselves very much as a school within a community, and we're deepening relationships with members of our community. And so for me, it's about working to encourage our boys, bumping into people when I'm out and about buying groceries, or even being with my own family. Those are some of the things that I love best about Crescent School.

I was blessed to go to a school that helped me realize myself and what I was potentially capable of doing in the world. And I found my voice, I found my calling, and I really discovered the importance of education, and specifically the power of relational teachers. I think for me, that was the big difference maker of my own education. So I think that that experience really shaped the way that I thought about myself and thought about the importance of me giving back to the world and to other kids. So for me, it's all about what I benefited from and how I can do a small part to impart that back onto other families and other boys. 

I think Crescent is very much a similar place in terms of fostering relationships, creating experiences where boys can discover their identity, their giftedness, their talent, their promise. It's far harder today to be a student in school than it ever was. I never had to really worry too much about overall averages and the pressure to get into university and the need to perform on a daily basis. These pressures are very real for kids now who are trying to balance it all, trying to get into very competitive university programs, trying to get into very competitive work environments. They're probably sleeping less than we did in the past. They're managing so many more responsibilities.

And so I think, as a result, school is very different now. We have people in school who are trying to respond to a variety of needs that kids have that are both scholastic and social-emotional, and sort of on that spectrum and everything in-between. And so I think schools today are filled with many more people who have different levels of expertise, who are here as supports for boys, as I say, both inside and outside of the classroom.

And I would say that's a fundamental shift in education. Again, 25 years ago, these supports were not in place. It was by and large, a school filled with teachers. Now there are social workers and learning support specialists and nurses and all of these amazing people. So those are some thoughts on what's changed and what has stayed the same.

I think it starts with the staff and the faculty. And there was a very significant study about boys education a number of years ago, and in part it was conducted as a global study in all sorts of cities around the world, in every different type of school for boys, whether it was a private or a public school in an urban or rural setting. And what ultimately it concluded was that the single most important factor in whether a boy will learn or not is the relationship with the teacher, and so that relationship is transitive in terms of whether learning will occur or whether learning will not occur.

And so boys and young people in general have all of these challenges that they have to face. But if they have a caring adult, if they have somebody that has their back, if they trust that that person is not just there to teach them what is explicitly part of the curriculum, but also to support them with the challenges that they come across, I think that makes the world of difference. One of the things here that we're most proud of is our mentor group. And so every boy in the school is attached to an advisory group, a mentor group we call it, that has one or two, depending on the size of the group, caring adults.

And I think it's so important in schools today that kids have at least one, hopefully a lot more, but at least one caring adult that they can turn to from their perspective, that teacher, that staff person who understands who I am, cares for me deeply, and will be here to assist. So it's so hard in some ways to quantify all of the needs that our boys face because, again, they're coming from so many different backgrounds, different parts of the city. But if they have that person that trusted adults to turn to in moments of need, I think that is so important for schools.

And for me in particular, yes, I want to know that a person is a trained teacher and that they know the curriculum and they have a certain capacity and a methodology in which they can ensure that learning happens in the classroom. But I want to know much more about who they are, what they stand for, how they were raised, how they approach the relationships with their students, because there's a difference between skill and just human qualities.

And those dispositions that we see here are so fundamental to how boys will forge a deep relationship, a professional relationship, but a deep relationship with their teacher, their coach, their drama leader, whoever it is, and whatever program they're involved in at the school. Relational learning is fundamental to the way boys approach school. You know, if they have a caring adult, if they have somebody that has their back, if they trust that that person is not just there to teach them what is explicitly part of the curriculum, but also to support them with the challenges that they come across. I think that makes a world of difference.

We have a rolling admission process. So we have boys that come in in grade three. We have another batch of boys that come in in grade five, as well in grade seven. And then the final group of boys come in at grade nine. And so it builds sort of consecutively. So 20 boys, generally speaking, at a time, eventually leads to a group in the upper school and the high school of about 100 students. So by the time a student shows up in grade nine, whether because they've been here since grade three or they're arriving as a new student in grade nine, they will experience a student class cohort of 100 students. And that's effectively what we graduate each year.

If you were to come into the school, you would see these murals that have been painted by the boys and they feature different backdrops but a common word, and that is: brotherhood. So the boys talk about themselves as brothers. They look up to the older boys and they very much interact with them throughout the course of the day. We have all sorts of formal activities. We have house activities. When a boy comes to the school, they're put into a house, one of six houses, and that house group is a three-to-twelve grouping. And so at various points of the year, we have house activities; some are athletic, some are scholastic, and it all leads up to a house cup at the end of the year.

We have boys in the upper school who serve in formal leadership positions within the house or even outside of the house as prefects. And part of their job is to actually facilitate interactions with older boys and younger boys in each of the three schools. So it happens on a daily basis in all sorts of different ways. It wouldn't be uncommon for you to see, if you were to come in, that there'd be older boys who would actually find their way into a class of students in our lower school and just pop in and visit. It's amazing to see the relationships among the boys and within their peer groups themselves.

Yeah. Again, it's so important that parents really understand their sons, their strengths, their needs, and then, I think, look for a tool to sort of match and align with those things. And so we are an academically rigorous school, so all of our boys, upon graduation, go to university. So I happen to believe that's a viable track for any student if they're committed to that pathway, and that obviously it takes a village for that to happen. So in one sense, we probably are not a place where if a student was a bit older and they were immediately wanting to head out into the workforce after high school, that this wouldn't be the environment.

This is a different track in terms of preparing boys for university. That said, it's a very well-rounded school. So typically we have programs where, outside of the classroom, outside of those scholastic commitments, we have boys who will be involved in multiple different programs. So we'll have students who are on a sports team who are also in a drama production. We'll have students who are on a robotics team and also be involved in community outreach. And I would say that it's a busy place.

It's not a school where you check in at 8:30 and you check out at 2:30. I think if that's what you were looking for, this wouldn't be the environment that I think would be the place for you. We have boys here sometimes as early as 7 in the morning on the field in practices, and right through until 6 or 7 at night. So it can be a very full experience. And we think that's part of the difference. We think that's why parents choose our school, for the fact that we can provide a high-level, quality education and a lot of extras outside of the classroom that then allows their boy to focus during their time at school, as compared to driving them around here, there and everywhere, trying to piece it all together. 

I think people choose the school, or they should choose the school, because as parents and as a family, they align with what the school is endeavoring to do, why the school exists. So for us, our mission is men of character from boys of promise. It suggests that we exist to do something in addition to just graduating kids with a diploma. It suggests that in addition to learning all sorts of really important curricula, they're going to discover their character, and by virtue of that, commit to developing it for a lifetime. That, to me, is what I have heard over and over and over again from parents, that they chose the school because of the interest in the mission and because the values that we espouse — respect, responsibility, honesty and compassion — are the values that align with what they are doing as a family, what they are committing to as a family. 

We have an amazing parent community. It's called the Crescent Parent Association, filled with all sorts of wonderful people who themselves want to be proactively involved in the raising and the education of their sons. So again, it's one of these things that I think parents need to be looking for. We're not an environment where typically just you hand us your kid and then you pick them up when they're fully formed. That's not the way we think about schooling here. We think accredited education works best when there is a dynamic partnership between parents and teachers.

So our approach is very open. It's different in other places, where sometimes parents don't have the same type of access. We have parents volunteering in the school during the day about around the campus after hours, coming to watch their son at night for various events and activities. It's a place that really encourages parent involvement, parent communication. It's not uncommon for people like me to be out in homes in evenings, having meetings, having various receptions with parents, to explain and to communicate and to draw people in more deeply into what we're trying to do as a school.

So we have a platform that is multi-faceted. We have everything from a website and then an internal we call Green Room, where a lot of information is housed that parents log into to receive. We push out a lot of information on a weekly basis. All parents would be receiving communication from their heads of school. I communicate regularly. I write a blog every month. We have all sorts of in-person events. In the morning we have something called Coffee and Conversations, where we invite parents in, and at night we have Cocktails and Conversations. So I go out into the homes of our parents, usually by grade group, and we continue those conversations.

I would say the overall mindset of the school is guided by a simple question, and that is, how can I help? So we aspire to be very accessible, such that even in all of the things that we push out to parents, we want to create an environment, and we believe we have a community, where basically people can pick up the phone or send me an email, and me and my team will get back to people. It's just the way we are here, and we want people to feel as if they have any questions. We're here to help.

I think you would find that our boys are very respectful, they're kind, they care deeply about each other in their school. These sorts of very human qualities counterbalance the fact that they are also very bright, very capable. Those are some of the qualities that I think of a Crescent student. Nothing pleases me more when I get notes from the community. And by and large, they're always positive. Nothing pleases me more than to hear that out in the community, our boys have a positive reputation.

We have a close affiliation working relationship with some of our sister schools, and we often hear from them that our boys are the type of boys that their friends who are in girls schools would associate with, and would often be in company with. And that's, to me, very pleasing because it suggests that out in the community, our boys are known to be of a certain type. And to me, that's what it's about your character. It's great to say all the right things, but what does it mean when you're actually out in the world and you have to show up and things are difficult or you're in a tricky situation? What will you do? How will you act when no one is watching? That's, I think, ultimately the test of your character.

I think that for many people, girls or boys schools may be thought of as a thing of the past, and I think it's a misconception. I think there have never been more progressive things happening in boys schools and girls schools than there are today. People would be surprised, I think, to see that it's anything but a traditional environment. I think that kids today have never been more connected than they are, that, perhaps in the past, schools needed to be more co-educational because it was harder for them to connect with others outside of the school. It's just not true anymore. Kids are connected almost by the second. And so we think it's so important for boys, when they come on campus, that they actually have time to celebrate and to enjoy what it means to be a boy. And I know that our sister schools feel the same thing.

As I say, some people think about boys schools as being very traditional. They're actually very progressive in my mind. It's why I get up and I love coming to work every day. I deeply, deeply believe the world needs better men, now more than ever, and that's what our schools and services do.