St. Thomas Church

If you like flawless liturgy and heavenly music, then you should visit St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York City.  It is “the” Episcopal church in Manhattan.  It was founded—and funded—by Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors, Morgans and the rest of the American aristocracy.  You know, all those people with places in Newport!  It also has a small, 5^th-8^th boarding school for boy choristers, with around a dozen graduates each year.

I have recently finished reading “Priest in New York,” by Father Austin, who is the Theologian-in-Residence at St. Thomas.  It is a collection of short essays.  It’s good pick-up/put-down airplane reading. 

Being in NYC, St. Thomas must deal with it’s share of homeless, uncertain, dangerous, and, frankly, questionable people who show up off the street, not seeking God but seeking money or food or shelter.  How do you decide whether to serve or turn them away but still fulfill the mission of the Church on earth?  Sometimes their behavior impacts others, threatens others.  Father Austin writes in his book, Nonetheless, our welcome cannot mean indifference to behavior that undermines the gift it is our mission to offer.  I think it is the hardest thing of all to say to someone, “If you do X, you cannot come here.” And yet, discipline is necessary and is the heavy responsibility of those who care for institutions.  There is no identity without boundaries.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Our role requires discipline.  Our role is a heavy responsibility.  Our role is to ensure identity by providing boundaries.  Our role is to say, “If you do X, you cannot come here.”  I know I’ve written on this before but it is because I think it is the most important work that we do.  The shape, future, tone, and culture of our schools are completely reflective of the students we enroll. 

I had two telephone calls yesterday asking about space for next month.  One was for a day student.  We can always squeeze in another day student if we want them.  This was a student who has been looking at us for 9^th grade in 2013 but now suddenly wants to join 8^th grade next year.  He’s a great kid.  I’m sure we can work it out.  The other kid I don’t know and haven’t met but he’s looking for a boarding space and it would be hard to make it work.  My initial radar has also pinged some possible red flags.  It is, after all, mid-August and they don’t know where he’s going to school in three weeks.

Both want to be here, in part, because of our identity; or, put another way, our reputation.  Not sure how it will play out for each student but I do know I’ll be thinking about the importance of “…no identity without boundaries.”  In the land of my school, I’m the border guard.

So what evidence do we have to support this thesis of the importance of identity and boundaries?  There is subjective perception and there is fact.  Subjective perception: I travel a great deal for work and after two decades in admissions, I have seen the inside of a lot of Episcopal churches on Sunday morning across the U.S. and around the world.  My subjective perception is that the Church is in decline.  It’s nothing like my childhood.  Fact: the membership of the Episcopal Church has gone below 2 million for the first time, from a one-time high of 3.6 million.  Subjective perception: St. Thomas seems packed, no matter when I go: Easter, of course, but then all the other Sundays as well.  Fact: the St. Thomas annual fund for 2012 hit an all time high of over $1.3 million in pledges for the year.

The dots I’m connecting and the conclusion I’m drawing is that despite national trends to the contrary, St. Thomas is thriving.  People are drawn to its identity.  No doubt, St. Thomas has some controversial positions that they don’t hide but that seems to have only helped sharpen and brought clarity to their identity and has not impacted attendance or finances.  On the contrary, St. Thomas, with it’s clear sense of self, is ahead of it peers.

It’s not the first and it won’t be the last time I write about the importance of clarity of mission, knowing who we are, and being the gatekeepers who set boundaries for our schools.  St. Thomas is a good exemplum of the success that can be enjoyed.

Paris

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[This is long and rather personal so be forewarned or just skip it altogether.  There is a professional connection at the end if you make it that far.  And, yes, the picture was taken by me.]

If you’re a regular reader then you know I’m tackling French this summer.  Well, I’m starting French this summer.  It will take a good deal of time and effort to actually tackle it.  Right now I’m in Paris.  It’s Sunday night and I’m on day five of my 16-day trip.  I’m here by myself; I arrived not even knowing one to ten in French; I know nobody over here.  I meet with a private tutor each morning for three hours and am expected to do three hours of drills and study each afternoon/evening.  In between, I’m free to be a tourist.  The scene is set.

Let’s set another scene.  I don’t have a particular film or television show in mind but we’ve all seen this storyline play out.  The patient is in a coma.  The reason why doesn’t matter.  She can hear everything.  Her mind is 100% and she is in command of her intellect and her emotions.  What she has no control over is her body.  She is fully aware but can’t communicate in any way—no blink, squeeze of the hand, wiggle of the ear, zip.  People in the room talk around, about and over her as though she is not there.  She has things to say.  She wants to let them know she’s alive in there somewhere.  She is pained by the misery her condition has caused her loved ones.  She is desperate to know what decisions might be made on her behalf, in which she can’t contribute or participate.  She wants to live.

It is maddening, possibly literally.  This could drive a sane person insane.  It’s frustrating.  It’s angering.  It’s heartbreaking.  It’s even infantilizing.

It’s lonely.

It’s Paris July 2012 and it’s me.  When I first got here, I could barely manage a bonjour and a merci.  Someone taught me how to say my name so I could say it to the passport guy, the front desk clerk, the receptionist at school.  Even then, whatever was said to me I did not understand and could not respond.  With my little dictionary in hand, I could stammer out some nouns: “me, taxi, hotel”.  After three days of lessons, I can accomplish most anything if it can be started with, “I’d like…,” “I am…,” or “My name is…,” or involves counting to ten or pronouncing the vowels.  I still can’t understand any reply and can’t engage in a response.  I have a hard time even engaging in a conversation with my tutor because her English is so lacking.  I’ve been here five days and I’ve had no significant, longer than a minute, meaningful human contact.  I can’t even argue with the television.  I’ve got no English language channel.  God Bless the few people (typically in their 20’s and 30’s) who have had patience with me and/or knew a bit of English.  One taught me how to ask for a receipt.  That’ll please the Business Office.

It’s maddening, frustrating, angering, heartbreaking, infantilizing…lonely.

I don’t post this seeking your sympathy.  On the surface, what an absurd expectation.  “Oh, poor Andrew, in Paris for two weeks.  Rough life.”  As a matter of fact, when I get back, I’m sure I’ll just tell my family, friends and co-workers things like, “What a beautiful city.  Let me show you my pictures.  Can we talk about the food and champagne?”  After all, who dare complain about being in Paris for two weeks?  I go where others only dare to dream.  I’ll dazzle them with my two weeks’ worth of French: surely I’ll know a few more verbs, can complete a sentence, and maybe even count to twenty by that point.  I’ll go back to the solitude of my Rosetta Stone and look forward to it.

No, I post this in solidarity with and empathy for our international students at our schools.  They come over with varying degrees of academic and social English, based on our admissions criteria and the level of ESL support our individual schools can offer them.  But without a friend who is also from Germany or Korea or Spain or Brazil, how lonely their life might be.  I’m here for only two weeks; they’re with us for nine months.  That’s a long time to possibly go without a significant, deep, substantial, authentic exchange with another human being.  No wonder they sit together by country over dinner and speak in their own language.  I got it before.  I really get it now.   

Surely, not all are so lonely.  But surely not none.  These last five days have entirely changed my perspective on them.

Je m’apelle Andrew.

Show me the money!!

Mitt Romney has endorsed Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan.  No surprise.  In turn, Vice President Biden has attacked the plan, and by extension, Mr. Romney for endorsing it.  Again, no surprise.  Here’s what the Vice President said to the candidate (via the media), “Don’t tell me what you value.  Show me your budget and I’ll tell YOU what you value.”

Interesting point.  My first thought was to go down the road about our institutional budgets and how much of it goes to the admissions/marketing function and question if that mirrors the importance, if not pressure, our institutions put on our admissions.  But I often find myself telling my staff we need to focus on what is in our control to fix.  We may not like how other people or offices do things so, instead, let’s focus on our office and operations, where we can affect necessary change and improvement, and strive for excellence.  And then hopefully lead by example.

So instead of the possible depressing exercise of looking at how much resources our schools allocate to our work, I decided to give some thought to how we allocate within our operation those resources we are given.  I don’t know a colleague who doesn’t value having a family visit campus.  Don’t we all believe (don’t we all know??) that we exponentially increase the chance of enrolling a family if we get them to visit?  I also don’t know a colleague who doesn’t think the school’s website isn’t the primary source of information for a prospective family.  Sure, they may learn about us from word of mouth or maybe from an internet search but once our names are on their lips, isn’t their first stop at our own homepage?

“Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.”

So, how much of our budget and human resources are allocated to the campus visit?  Is there someone dedicated to insuring a successful visit for each family?  Do you have funds for training, rewarding, appreciating your tour guides?  And how about that homepage?  Do you have thousands of dollars for newspaper advertising but none to add that key button or functionality to your website?  Can’t find $3000 to reward and retain that awesome young recruiter but spending $5000 per annum on food and beverages for admissions events?

Show me your admissions budget and I’ll tell you what it says you value.  But is that what you really value?  As we go into another admissions year in just six weeks, hopefully it’s not too late to think twice about how and where we deploy our dollars and our staff.

Sun. 1pm-10pm

Bonjour.  I live in a bilingual country and that’s all the French I know.  Shame on me.  Well, I do know a few other key survival words: champagne, croissant, brie, quiche!  So it’s about time I learned French and so I now own the complete Rosetta Stone French programme.

My package arrived last Friday and on Saturday I went to install the software on my computer.  Being somewhat of a tech idiot, I, to no surprise, had problems.  No worries.  There’s a 1-800 support number I can call.  I called it.  They were closed.  You feel my pain.  You, like I did, think I’m doomed to wait until Monday. 

Think again.

Rosetta Stone tech support is closed on Saturdays but open from 1pm to 10pm on Sundays.  I just had to wait 24 hours.  I spent those 24 hours being very curious about these odd hours.  So once I called tech support and got my issue resolved (shocking: I was inserting the dvd’s in the wrong sequence, despite their being clearly labeled!), I inquired about their support schedule. 

You know where this is going: people buy the software while running errands on the weekends and then attempt installation on Sunday afternoon.  So 5pm on Sunday and not 9am on Saturday is when RS support is needed and so that’s when they’re available!

When are we needed?  It was something we discussed at this year’s Essex Institute.  Shouldn’t day schools have evening open houses for busy two-income parents?  Maybe even interviews a few times at night during the busy season to accommodate those parents?  Boarding schools work with students from around the world and from many time zones.  Why do we force them all into our 9am to 5pm workday?  Or maybe we don’t and we’re losing families because we’re not available to support them when they need us.  Is it so crazy to ask a staff member to take a 4pm to midnight shift once and a while to be available on the phone or maybe an online chat?

I read something related just recently about social media.  (I apologize I don’t recall the source but I fully confess this isn’t my own idea.)  The advice was to look and see when our blogs and Facebook accounts are the most active and to post then.  Not to do so during our own 9am to 5pm work hours when our prospective students are in school.  Like good teaching, we have to meet them where they are.

My last post was about thinking what’s at the center of our offices.  I guess this one asks us to think about what time to be there.

Au Revoir!

At the center

 

Living in Canada, it’s been a while since I was in a Barnes& Noble.  And given with what haste big bookstores are closing, it’s no surprise.  They’re not easy to find.  But what was a surprise was when I walked in and found that the Nook display and sales area had taken over the center of the floor, replacing what had traditionally been the spot for Barnes & Noble customer service.

You remember customer service, right?  Helpful folks who would look up books for you and then walk with you into the stacks to find the book, as though you couldn’t manage the convoluted alpha-by-author’s-last-name filing system of Barnes & Noble.  Those friendly book geeks were eventually supplemented by kiosks, on which you could look up your own book, thank you very much.  But if you waited just a moment, someone would be right back from helping a customer over in 14^th Century Danish War and Religion and be able to help you next.  Amazon couldn’t touch this!

So imagine my surprise when there was no longer a customer service center in the middle of the store.  I write this as I head off to the Essex Institute for Enrollment Management.  I’ve lost track of how many years I have gone. 12?  14 maybe?  But I am suddenly remembering a conversation from last year’s meeting.  We were looking at school taglines or admissions mottos and were challenged to ask ourselves if the mottos were about the school or the student.  Where was your focus?  It was an insightful, interesting exercise and conversation.

Essentially, it asked what we had at the center of our schools: the school itself or the students?  Nooks or customers?

And this reminded me of an early post by Fran Ryan, Assistant Headmaster at Rumsey Hall School, on SSATB’s “Right On Time: the ALCBlog”.  Fran is a veteran at helping families navigate the waters of secondary school admissions but has recently had to “self-navigate” his family as they went through the process for his son.

Fran challenges us from his new perspective by stating, “In schools, admission processes seem to generally serve the efficient running of the office. That does not necessarily translate into creating a meaningful experience for a family examining a school.  Make sure that your process makes sense for your prospective families. Make sure that it is efficient and easy to manage, which is different from being easy.”

In other words, make sure that service, and not sales, is in the center of your “store”.

Electronic Toolbox

I have a meeting with the Board of Governors in less than hour.  Why wouldn’t I be working on a blog post??  Well, frankly, my head and my notebook are so full of stats, charts, quaint stories, tales of woe, and predictions for the future that my brain needs a rest before I go in the big room.  But one of the things I will be addressing today is our plan to step back and do a serious communications audit this summer.

We have certainly jumped with reckless abandon onto the social media and in-bound marketing wagon.  In the last two years we have launched a very active Facebook and Twitter account.  They are updated almost daily.  We have launched a new website, built for maximum SEO.  We have an equally active blog up and running and we have over 100 videos on our YouTube Channel.  We even have a full-time employee dedicated to the maintenance of all these media.  Our proverbial toolbox is full.  Our proverbial cup overfloweth.

But two statements in the last month have been ricocheting around in my head.  The first comes from the famous columnist Peggy Noonan.  Whether or not you agree with her politics, she is a brilliant writer and her books are wonderful.  The other comes from my dear friend JT Hanley at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California.  He does not have the fame of Peggy Noonan but he should.  He is an educator and a coach without peer.

Talking about President Obama and how his campaign has become expert at mining the internet and the data to be found therein, Noonan, who is not a fan of the president, asks in this column, “If you have fabulous new ways to reach everyone in the world but you have little to say, does that really help you?”  And then my friend JT, speaking on a topic I honestly don’t remember (we were a few martinis and glasses of wine into dinner at that point!), asked, “If you don’t have focus, isn’t your camera just a plastic box?” 

All this got me thinking of our electronic arsenal.  Now that we have built up these resources and filled our toolbox, what do we do next?  We have spent the last two years creating and staffing for this 21st century world of recruitment in which we must be successful but I will admit we have not figured out exactly what to do with it now that we have it.  Or more accurately, we have not figured out the best use of what to do with it.  How do we harness their power, craft the messages, maximize the potential, and build a strategy?

Ask me in September what we accomplished this summer.

Relationships.

I had the personal and professional pleasure to have dinner with a favourite consultant at IECA this month. The real treat was she invited me to dinner—what an honour. You would know her. We all know her. And we all love her. She is kind, patient and has immeasurable time for all of us, all while running her own practice and helping mentor new consultants in the profession.

Around April 10th when we all constantly vacillate between celebration and frustration, I lost one kid each from two key feeder schools to the same boarding school. I’d heard of this boarding school but, frankly, it wasn’t on my radar and I never had reason to think it was in the same league. (To be honest, I knew so little of it, I didn’t have any reason to think it wasn’t in the same league either.) So, I told this to our consultant friend and asked her what she knew of the school.

She loves the school. She has sent a number of clients there over the years. She had great things to say about it and said her clients had all been quite happy there. She respected their mission and felt they held true to who they were, something very important to her. No complaints.

But then the admissions director left.

And she’s sent nobody since.

She doesn’t know the new admissions director. She doesn’t have a contact, doesn’t have someone with whom she can have a frank conversation about a client, someone with whom she can test the waters. There is nobody at that school who will roll out the red carpet for her clients when they visit, nobody to give them an extra bit of attention and to recognize who sent them. She still thinks very highly of the school but her relationships are the key to her confidence in recommending a school. And she has none there now.

 Four days later I had the professional privilege to stand next to Pat Gimbel from Deerfield at a fair in California. Pat has been doing this forever and is a role model and mentor to so many of us. And if you haven’t heard, she’s retiring next year. What a loss for us. But Pat and I got chatting, making note of who was attending the fair. Directors? Other staff? Local parent or alumni volunteers? I noted with admiration and congratulations that she’s enrolled five kids from this prestigious feeder school out of 13 graduates who were continuing onto boarding school. We then talked about the importance of relationships and why someone of her stature from a school like hers still hits the road and travels the world. Pat doesn’t pawn off Asia on someone else. She’s there in the trenches in Korea like the rest of us. And after a grueling admissions year, just weeks after April 10th, she was on that long 6 ½ flight from Boston to San Francisco to attend this fair, at this school where Deerfield is so beloved that they got over 33% of the boarding-bound graduates. She was on the 6am flight back to Boston the next morning to get back to her office. Why does she do this? To maintain her ties and relationships. They are key to her and to her success.

As she prepares to walk out the door, Pat still teaches us by her words and deeds that it is still all about the relationships.