Since I can remember, there has been this one comment that people make about Darlington students, and what it lacks for in novelty, it makes up for in truth: Darlington students are well-rounded.
On every Darlington tour given to prospective families, I can promise that this sentence is presented with a smile and vague hand motion towards the chapel, “One thing that makes Darlington unique is that everyone is involved in everything. Football players do the winter musical, basketball players are involved in the choir. We have a lot of well-rounded students!” While I applaud marketing the school as this, I think the football player/musical performer is an overused and narrow depiction of the depth and breadth of how involved the average Darlington student is.
A recent addition to this admission tour talk is the addition of Darlington's ELA-8 program combining with the high school to create a “one school” atmosphere. I can’t count the amount of times I have heard this catch phrase used. At first, I was resistant to perpetuating this idea of Darlington. Being a high-schooler, I didn’t like being roped in with children. (Not to mention that working at Camp Darlington for the past few years had helped foster a resistance to children — or, more specifically, to the phrase, “Hey Abraham, this kid needs to go to the bathroom. Oh, and he can’t reach the toilet, so just hold him and let him aim.”) I was one of those quintessential Holden Caulfield-types that liked to tell myself just how mature and adult-ish I was, and how spending time with kids was a waste of my time.
I was epically wrong.
Over the past two months, I got over this grumpy-old-man syndrome. Playing Captain Von Trapp in Darlington's production of “The Sound of Music” meant working closely with a bunch of crazy, hyper, but overall incredibly special kids. At first, there was a lot of finger-snapping eerily similar to that of “The Dog Whisperer” on Animal Planet. The musical, however, helped me grow to learn that the coexistence of elementary, middle and high school students is possible and even fruitful. By the end of the musical, I was very close with all of the kids involved and didn’t want to face a day without hearing them ask, “Abraham, if you’re our Dad in the play, and none of us have red hair, are we adopted? Did you dye our hair so we wouldn’t be gingers?”
A more important example of the "one school" community that Darlington is becoming stems from my favorite RUMPUS memory from this year. I haven’t written about RUMPUS until now because, honestly, the musical is the most time-consuming thing I’ve ever done. But looking back on RUMPUS now, I can’t help but remember the Fear Factor event, in particular — and not for what you would think.
Moser House was cheering on our team as they scarfed down the absolutely disgusting food that Arturo King and I had sadistically designed. The Early Learning Academy kids were standing at the back of the chapel lawn, there but not really participating. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to hear one of the Moser guys yell over the cheering, “Hey, we should go get those kids to help cheer with us.” Although there was a partial motivation of potential spirit points, my friend and I ran over to the kids, taught them a few cheers, and helped them get down to the front of the Moser crowd to help cheer on the puking RUMPUS competitors.
So when people use the admission tour lingo about how diverse the Darlington student body is, they are absolutely right — I just wish they would elaborate on what that diversity means. Yes, it’s awesome that football players can break stereotypes by dancing on a stage to songs from “Grease.” Yes, it’s very cool that basketball stars can also be wonderful musicians and writers for The Inkslinger. But even those depictions are narrow.
At the heart of the Darlington experience is the potential to go beyond athletics and the fine arts and impact children from all age groups. The high school student body has massive potential for becoming not just diverse students, but diverse role models to those in the ELA-8 program right now. It’s not just about sports and arts coinciding — it’s about teaching community service, teamwork and school pride, using such vehicles as RUMPUS cheers and community wide theatrical productions.
The average Darlington student has so much more potential than depicting a scene out of “High School Musical,” where the basketball players sing about baking, playing the cello and breaking status quos (and the random nerdy hip-hop girl, never forget that one). The reality of the Darlington student is that he or she can do so much more than break status quos; we can create them. By setting a high bar for ourselves as a high school, expanding our school spirit and diverse interests, we trigger the potential for setting examples for the youngest Darlington Tigers.
With this said, I hope we keep in mind the amount of power we have to influence and grow the Darlington Community as we step into the future of our One School.
