All I Really Needed to Know (About Positive School Culture), I Learned at Dana Hall

As an administrator, I sort of grew up professionally at Dana Hall, learning sometimes formally, but often informally, some strong and powerful lessons about leadership and school culture from our students. When I returned to Dana Hall in the Fall of 2025, the culture of Dana Hall felt so familiar, and in many of the best ways unchanged from 25-30 years ago.

Dana Hall students are proud of their school. This shows in their faces, which light up when they talk about their school, and in their eagerness to show you around and answer any question you have. They know each other: who is from where and what they like (and don’t like); they have a story about each other (“remember that time in 9th grade when we…”); and although there is still talk of the Dana Hall “bubble” as well as the Wellesley “bubble,” where we live in a protected and safe space, the world is still brought to Dana Hall daily. Boarding and day students from around the world enrich daily announcements; trips, exchange programs, speakers series are varied and heartily fully enrolled; the news is brought to campus in 60-second sound bites in Morning Meetings weekly. I have some other observations:

Required Fun/Showing Up

Part of building a positive culture is deciding which of the many school events to require and make mandatory. The rationale being: it makes the event more joyful, more lively, and more meaningful when friends and community show up. Busy Dana Hall students are taught time management and prioritizing skills in and outside of their academic and cocurricular activities, and they are challenged to show up for their thespian and musical classmates and friends. It means a lot to ninth graders when seniors show up for Cabaret. By “requiring” fun at certain events, we are teaching and learning about how to fully participate in the rich opportunities at Dana Hall: not only by participating in them directly, but also by showing support to the event itself and the people in it. Both enrich the experience for the individual and also for the collective gathering.

School Spirit

Cheering on a classmate/a team on the fields or in the Ship is authentic and real. While Dana Hall does not have an official cheerleading squad, they do have CREW and spirited spectators who dress up, cheer loudly, run up and down the sidelines, and even sport a tutu on occasion to support the team and keep the spectators engaged. 

In more formal settings — music and choral recitals and concerts, school plays, art openings — classmates and friends show more formal and quiet school spirit sitting silently and hooting and clapping wildly as appropriate. Gingerbread buildings for architecture class? Kids show up.

[Our] Common Ground

To find common ground means (according to several Google dictionaries) to find shared interests, values, beliefs, goals and having these as a foundation for connection and understanding—despite any differences. What an interesting name for our gathering space in the Erisman Student Center! Here smaller groups of students gather during breakfast and lunch to share food and talk. On weekends, boarders check in during brunch and sign out to go off campus as well as gather to chat informally with the faculty member on duty. You find signs of gratitude and appreciation on the walls and windows, and coloring books and puzzles near the chairs. Athletes gather in Common Ground for their “walk out” before games on the Upper School Field. Although we do not officially use this space for individuals or groups to work out their differences, informally, this space is suited to just that: movable couches and tables to be arranged and rearranged, high tables for smaller groups, a bright spot on opening day to welcome new families to Dana Hall!

Snack Is A Non-Negotiable 

This year upon arriving back on campus after Harbor Cruise (an all-school boat cruise around Boston Harbor) where we were offered a full breakfast menu of eggs, potatoes, oatmeal, breakfast meat, and fruit, I got a text from one of the bus chaperones. “One of the students is asking: ‘Will there be Snack up in Common Ground once we’re back on campus?’” The answer? A resounding, “Yes, of course!” Snack is scheduled regularly into the academic daily schedule, and it is not to be messed with. Gathering for a quick snack and conversation, catching up and refueling is healthy nutritionally and also social-emotionally is important. Take time every day for Snack.

Glitter

Always plenty of glitter. Worn on faces, around the eyes, in hair, sprinkled on posters, and other decorative objects, glitter truly shines at Dana Hall. At the conclusion of Cabaret? Glitter was shot out from cannons. Senior-Sophomore posters? Along with loads of candy? Glitter! Sophomore beanies? Glitter! Sophomore-Senior? Glitter! And as with all traditions, even those which are top secret, one thing is not secret: glitter—multicolored, reflective, sticky, iridescent, glitter. Even when the memories of the tradition begin to fade, you can find on a sweater, in a corner of your room/house/in Panera or the SHA a few lasting tenacious sparkles of glitter.

Singing and Cheering

We gather regularly about once a month for the time honored tradition of a Step Sing. This tradition dates back to the early 1900s and is borrowed from a tradition at Wellesley College. Although we no longer stand on steps—we’re all on the same level—we all fit, grades 5 through 12, in a full circle. The truth is: none of us can hear the carefully thought out and memorized lyrics of these songs, many of which are sort of sung to a tune? Each class shouts somewhat in unison the lyrics while the other classes cheer them on. While they’re ‘singing.’ This is our common ground.

Meetings and Gatherings

Often led by student leaders, Upper School (and Middle School) Meeting, All-School Meeting, Class Meetings, dorm meetings, club/organization and affinity/alliance meetings, include essential components of effective meetings. In Student Council recently, the All-School Co-Presidents noted we had not done a “check in” for awhile, and so we went around the room and described how the person to our right was a certain type of produce. (I was described as ‘pasta’, and so I learned something new that day as well—pasta can also be considered produce!) 

Although individual “check ins” are not possible in the larger division and all-school meetings, the student leaders open and close the meetings with fun facts or a game. In community we learn, celebrate, commemorate, honor, laugh, stay respectfully silent, cheer, stand, clap, sing. Sometimes in assigned seats in Waldo, sometimes lounged on a dorm sofa or in a conference room in the Erisman Student Center, sometimes in historic Beveridge, we share events, traditions and each other.

Vary Your Bathroom Stall 

Innovative technology has changed a lot, and the distribution of the school newspaper is just one example of that. Dana Hall’s newspaper, the Hallmanac, is now posted online. Individual articles are also posted on the inside doors of all bathroom stalls. This fall, thanks to J. Chen '28, I learned much about Formula One racing. I noticed I tended to read and re-read the same few lines of the article. I wondered what the big deal about Formula Racing was and why it was posted in all of the bathroom stalls. Then one day, someone was in my usual stall, and so I chose another. Lo and behold, there I read about Dana Hall’s new Head of the Upper School, Alyse Ruiz-Selsky, and then about the new French department members, Madame A and Madame Taylor. Riveting! And so now, I deliberately change my stall and even sometimes which bathroom I use. What else is there to learn, from the Hallmanac, about Dana Hall and the world? Change it up; vary your stall and who knows what you can learn on any given day.

Believe in the Magic

What is winter in New England without a snow day? Boarding students in particular know and understand the power of believing. Back in the '90s and early 2000s, it was well understood that boarders could help the chances of making a snow day happen by wearing their pajamas inside out. The belief has morphed over the years—now, as I understand it, you sleep with a spoon under your pillow and/or flush ice cubes down the toilet. If you believe in the collective spirit, you can sometimes make things happen. And this year, on January 26, we were sledding (on old Dana Hall dining center trays) down Lathrop Hill in over two feet of snow. Was it the spoons under the pillows? The ice cubes? Who knows! But if you believe, sometimes magic still happens.

Be Gentle

In the 1990s, in my role of International Student Advisor, a student from Taiwan gave me a beautiful painting of koi fish with the word “gentle” written in calligraphy of Chinese characters and in English letters. To this day, I am not sure if this was just a beautiful gift (which it is) or more of a word of advice or even caution—to me and to the world. Gentle. I have since kept it at my desk, sometimes at the school in which I work, sometimes at my desk at home, depending on which environment I needed to better practice being gentle. Although Dana Hall women are and have always been audacious, bold and women of will, they also, it seems to me, learn how and when to be gentle. Gentle to themselves first, and also gentle with others. I have brought the gift of the koi fish with me to Maryland, Pittsburgh, Ohio, even Jordan to help remind me to be gentle.

Dragons Roar

In anticipation of my first talk in Waldo in August, I asked for a training run: to test the microphone, get a feel for the space and the sound of my voice. Would it carry to the back row? How far away should I stand from the mic? And so a member of the Tech Department kindly met me in the empty auditorium to practice. I stepped on the stage, put both hands on the podium and when I looked down there was a Post-It with a handwritten message. Three words. Dragons Breathe Fire. I have no idea who left this message on the podium or who it was intended for, but it was exactly what I needed! Dragons breathe fire. I could do this. I was new to the school, and I had a speech to give to all new Upper School families and needed to exude confidence—in myself and in my facts, and truly I did not have much of either at that time. By the time I was on stage giving that speech, I looked for the Post-It and it was gone. But I didn’t need to see it there on the podium every time I got up in Waldo to give a talk. It was true every time. And for everyone who speaks at that podium. Dragons breathe fire. So look out world, here they come!