I didn’t think an all-girls boarding school would be right for me. But it turned out to be just the perfect place.
By: Hannah P. Galeone
“Nan, what do you think of this school?” my mom asked me as she passed a glossy brochure across the bed. We were moving to Virginia from New Jersey and I was looking at high schools where I would start as a sophomore. She had known about the school since she was young but revisited it when we chose Virginia as our next state.
“It’s an all-girls boarding school, Mom, absolutely not. I want to have a boyfriend during high school,” I said. I was so opposed to the idea that I didn’t even think I needed to look at the pictures.
“Just take a look. It’s a really beautiful school and they have an equestrian program -- you might be able to ride there if you go.”
With reluctance I took the dark green pamphlet, scanning over photos of girls in khakis and pastel-colored Polo shirts, aerial shots of rolling hills, brick buildings, and the biggest barn I’d ever seen.
Looking at the photos of girls on horseback riding through green fields sparked something in me that made me rethink shutting the idea down as quickly as I had. I could have horses in my life, but no boys. That was an idea I could work with -- surprisingly.
About eight months later, I was on that campus from the glossy brochure. I still remember that day in 2011 when my parents dropped me off. I stood on the stoop of the side door to Court House, the first dormitory I ever lived in, with tears welling in my eyes as I hugged my mom. I was nervous. I was surrounded by girls who all dressed the same, had known each other for years, and I would literally be living at school. What in the world had I gotten myself into?
What I didn’t know, was how much I was going to grow to love living on a campus amongst friends who would turn into my family. Transitioning from the regular high school experience to the boarding school life was filled with emotional highs and lows, but it was so worth it.
As I sit here, almost seven years later, I can truthfully say that attending boarding school was one of the best decisions I have ever made. The friends that I have from high school are going to be my bridesmaids, my teachers have become my friends, and the lessons I learned there shaped me for the better.
But at the same time, people always act surprised when I say I went to boarding school. “Oh my gosh, what did you do?” “Did your parents send you there?” “You wanted to go to that place?” I’d heard it all. It’s difficult for people to understand that there is a certain type of person who chooses to go to boarding school.
This is a story about why I loved boarding school so much and how it helped to shape me as a person.
Transitions
I began my boarding student experience as a kind of defiant teen who wasn’t fond of being told what to do or how to do it. The first few weeks, or months, -- it’s hard to gauge -- I spent feeling out of place. I felt strange in my new khakis and array of solid-color collared shirts. I missed my parents. I wanted my old life back, or so I thought.
Later that year, I joined the riding team which helped me feel like I had a purpose for being there. I started to figure out where I belonged on campus. I started to garner campus leadership positions, took part in more activities with my new friends, had favorite spots on campus.
My friends and I started The Jam Sessions during my junior year. We took over an unused study room in Schoolhouse, our main academic building, and filled it with instruments. We spent hours in that Christmas light covered cube forming our girl band, the Moderately Alright.
By senior year I held two leadership positions, was playing soccer -- badly -- but still playing, and had an amazing group of friends who I still love dearly. I knew the campus inside and out from being an admissions campus guide for two years and had created an incredible bond with my teachers, my housemothers, and many other people who worked there. The school had actually turned into my second home.
Our tired, giggle-filled nights were spent on sleeping porches. Underclassmen didn’t have their beds in their rooms. These long, bunk filled spaces were the most bizarre configurations I’d ever seen, but they were fascinating. The porches didn’t have climate control and taught us the value of a good down blanket.
We did community service, we helped out around campus, and we were taught to be appreciative. Several of the weekends we spent on campus were dedicated to making sure that it was kept beautiful. We helped the groundskeepers with gardening and prepared meals for the whole school in the Brick House kitchen. Groups of us would go to the barn and help clean the aisles or organize materials. We were taught to be grateful for those who worked around us by experiencing time in their shoes.
We got grounded. We had mandatory study hall when we fell behind in our school work. Leaving campus on the weekends required the pre-arranged permission of the dean of student life. And don’t forget to flip your card up when you leave the dorm; you could get grounded if you’re off campus with your card down, she’d say to us as we left her office. As an underclassman I had a bedtime of 10:30 p.m on weeknights, and a dorm prefect would make sure we were all in bed. Cell phones were not allowed on the sleeping porches. Weekday breakfast sign-in, which was required for everyone except seniors, was from 7:00 to 8:00 and then the day began. Structure was important.
I have never been fond of following rules but I’m good at it. My stubbornness manifested itself in testy behavior or internal frustration but I never crossed the line. It took me a while to accept that the rules were there to help me and once I did I started to understand why. By making a lot of our decisions for us, the school was actually liberating us in other ways. I didn’t have to think about what I was going to wear each day, when I was going to have breakfast, or when I was going to study. It was all laid out for me. Our regimented lifestyle allowed us to focus on what was truly important like school, sports, and friendships.
Our teachers were our allies and they were our support system. I will never forget the night one of our most beloved teachers, Mr. McCarty, came through the door of Dillon Dorm, where I lived my junior and senior year, in the most outrageous dark green snowsuit I had ever seen. Safety protocol had us trapped in the dorm during a snowstorm and we were panicking about an AP Econ exam. We needed to study but couldn’t get to the library. After calling his home on campus, Mr. McCarty came to tutor us during dorm study hall hours.
Foxcroft School, Middleburg, VA - Molding the tough young woman
Foxcroft was founded with the exact intention that it would not be a finishing school. Instead, it would be a place to enrich and strengthen the whole student, placing focus on tough mentality, integrity, and leadership.
The woman who started the institution was named Charlotte Haxall Noland. As a young girl, she had not enjoyed school and later in life dreamt of creating a place where girls would love to be and hate to leave. In October of 1914, when she was 32, she bought Brick House, which at the time sat on about 23 acres of land. She had 24 girls join her on those few acres, and together they started an institution that would flourish into a place unlike any other. At this point, she came to be known as Miss Charlotte, an icon of strength.
In her effort to create an environment for independent, well-rounded young women to thrive, she developed a number of rules. Girls might arrive at Foxcroft with servants or handmaidens in tow and shipping trunk after shipping trunk of garments and hats. But Miss Charlotte would send the handmaidens and several trunks of clothing home with the family.
Miss Charlotte’s girls would be self-sufficient and learn the importance of hard work and humility. Around 1918, Miss Charlotte and Foxcroft developed a relationship with the now-closed Unison-Bloomfield School in Middleburg, VA. Miss Charlotte provided its students with emotional and academic support. Together, the Unison-Bloomfield and Foxcroft students learned skills like carpentry, sewing, cooking and other necessities of home economics.
One of Foxcroft’s most defining features of the on-campus lifestyle are the sleeping porches. Miss Charlotte felt that if her girls slept amongst the elements, they would gain a newfound toughness. So she put their beds on porches. Girls would sometimes wake up with snow on their blankets, in extreme humidity, or with bugs in their hair. Canvas curtains were the only thing separating them from the outside air.
Since that day in 1914, Foxcroft’s campus has grown to 500 acres and is home to around 160 students annually. The school still bases its curriculum around the on-campus lifestyle and the boarding aspect of Foxcroft continues to set it apart from any other place. The sleeping porches are still in use and have been adapted in the school’s newest dormitory, Stuart Hall.
History of Boarding Schools
Boarding schools and their values are based on institutions that began in the United Kingdom. Boarding establishments across the country have looked to the original British schools for influence and inspiration.
One of the oldest boarding schools in Britain is the King’s School in Canterbury, England. The King’s School was founded in 597 and for a while after its founding, was a heavily religious institution. King’s School students were taught by clergy and attended many chapel services each day. Students boarded on campus and were expected to dedicate much of their time to the faith. Academics were not a major focus.
Another British institution that contributed to the development of the boarding school is Eton College in Eton, Berkshire. The school is near Windsor. Eton College was founded in 1440 by King Henry the VI. The mission of this school was to provide education, free of cost, to approximately 70 underprivileged boys.
The oldest records of Eton College’s school life date back to the 16th Century and chronicle the “regimented and Spartan” lifestyle of the students. Students woke up early in the morning and were taught to perform chants while they dressed for the day. Their classes began at 6 a.m and were all taught in Latin.
As Eton’s student body grew, the school began to accept students who did not live on the campus. This increase in student population required more formal arrangements and in 1722, one of the first “Dame’s Houses” was built. By 1766, Eton had thirteen houses and they were run by both masters and dames.
Reputations
For years, boarding schools have been labeled by their critics as “classist places” that teach snobbery and elitist ideals. Historically, these institutions were created to provide a regimented, college preparatory environment that would keep students isolated from the society around them. These schools aimed to educate the elite, stress the importance of religion, and keep the students under strict rules.
By the 1850s, there were over six-thousand academies and boarding schools in America. But none of these academies were for women. All-girls schools took a while to develop, mirroring the role of women in society. These schools were referred to as “seminaries” and were the first places to give women higher education.
These seminaries were very different from the boarding schools that boys attended as they stressed the “finishing” style curriculum and students were taught home skills. The all-girls institution was developed in America and did not reflect the ideals from original British boarding schools. Shortly after the Civil War, feminism was on the rise and the all-girls boarding school began providing women with college preparatory education. All-female establishments were starting to match-up with those that were all-male.
These typicalities of boarding school appear in popular movies. For example, Dead Poets Society portrays Welton Academy, a conservative all-male prep school in Vermont. The film highlights the school’s very strict rules for the students, including curfew and bedtimes, silent proctored study hall, and visitor restrictions. During the film, characters are even “paddled” by teachers as a form of punishment. The main character’s parents are also extremely strict and conservative.
The Mona Lisa Smile, although not about a secondary school, chronicles the life of female students at Wellesley College in the 1950s. In this film, the conservative aspects of the private, liberal-arts college are highlighted. The girls attend etiquette and dining classes, are discouraged from embracing their sexuality, and have rules like lights out and study hall.
In both of these films, two unconventional teachers try to break out of the restraints of a regimented curriculum. We see these characters experiment with non-traditional, more liberal teaching methods. But their efforts are quashed when the stuffy administration forces them to comply.
My boarding experience reflects very few of these criticisms and stereotypes. Yes, I did live on a campus with curfews, lots of rules, and fairly strict surveillance, but they were used in the right way. I never felt threatened by my teachers or thought that the way we were asked to live was unfair. We were encouraged to express ourselves and be open-minded individuals, not a subservient to the institute.
Closure
There is something very special about the environment that Foxcroft allowed me and my friends to live in. All the time people say to me, “Wow, you actually enjoyed high school? I definitely can’t relate.” One of the biggest reasons I feel so connected to my high school is due to the level of comfort I felt when I lived there. Schoolhouse doubled as a space to relax on the weekends. On Saturdays, we would plod across the brick paths to breakfast wearing our Foxcroft sweatshirts and sweatpants, affectionately nicknamed “the jumpsuit.” We were encouraged to make the school both our place of learning and our home.
I think the effectiveness of single-sex education is important to take note of as well. My original aversion to going to an all-girls school seems foolish in hindsight because the single-sex factor is what helped us flourish. We didn’t feel like we had to wear makeup or dress a certain way to impress the boys at school -- because there weren’t any. We didn’t have boy fueled drama or the stress of being under male-scrutiny on a daily basis. It was relaxing.
The day I graduated was liberating, to say the least. After three years as a boarder, I was very ready to have freedom and start a new part of my life. But that night when I got home and curled up in bed, I couldn’t do anything but cry. I felt like I had just gone through a breakup and the sadness hit me in a delayed wave of emotion. Foxcroft was my second home and I wouldn’t be going back after the summer. But the sadness was temporary. And now I can look back at my experience at boarding school and find a way to cherish every second, good or bad, that I had there.
Going to Foxcroft also made my transition to college painless and even gave me a leg up in the independent world of higher education. My parents and I exchanged warm hugs on move-in day while other kids cried watching their parents walk away. The amount of people I taught to do laundry during my freshman year at college is too embarrassing to say.
