When we survey our parents about why they choose to send their children to Grace, we provide a long list of possible answers. We always include the school’s Episcopal identity as an option. Without fail, it ranks dead last.
What ranks highest? Parents tell us again and again that they pick Grace for its community and for the academic and ethical values that define it.
As a priest and head of school, I may be something of a hammer who sees everything as a nail. And I admit that there is hardly an aspect of our school life that I can’t view as an expression of our Episcopal identity. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to argue that, whether or not folks realize it, the distinctive qualities of our community emerge from the bedrock commitments of our Episcopal identity. Those academic and ethical values that define our community? We didn’t arrive at them by accident.
When we strive to be a community of broad welcome and deep belonging, we do so because of our conviction that every human being is a creature of dignity and worth and that we are called to love one another accordingly.
When we encourage students (and each other) to value multiple thoughtful perspectives on complex questions, we echo The Episcopal Church’s understanding of the “middle way” not as “a compromise for the sake of peace, but as comprehension of the sake of truth.”
Our chapel program establishes a rhythm to community life and teaches us to appreciate the ways that (to poach an old adage) joy shared is multiplied, just as grief shared is divided.
When I rhapsodize for prospective families about the school’s understanding of its Episcopal identity, eyes glaze over. “Write with things you can drop on your foot,” recommends one teacher to students hoping to produce engaging prose. Compared to a bowling ball or a bologna sandwich, a school’s “Episcopal identity” seems an airy abstraction.
And so I point to the community and its members who translate those abstract values into practical experiences: the security guard who greets you each morning by name; the advisor who believes in you more than you believe in yourself; the teacher who inspires; the classmate who shares; the friend who forgives.
Maybe one day, families will identify Grace’s Episcopal identity as a leading factor in their decision to entrust their children to our care. For now, I’m just glad that they appreciate the community that our Episcopal identity shapes and inspires, and I’m grateful to be a part of it and of our larger community of Episcopal schools.
The Rev. Robert M. Pennoyer II is Head of School at Grace Church School in New York, NY.