Elevate: 16 Boarding Schools and the Practice of Holistic Education

Elevate: 16 Boarding Schools and the Practice of Holistic Education brings together first-hand institutional narratives and a sustained inquiry into what it means to educate the whole person.

Authored and curated by Jake Weld and Jeremy McGeorge, the book brings together sixteen boarding schools, each represented by reflective essays written by heads of school and senior leaders from within their own communities. These chapters describe the lived architecture of schooling: how academic rigor, residential life, mentorship, governance, and daily norms converge to shape adolescent development.

Framing the volume is a broader inquiry into holistic education itself. What does whole-person formation require in practice? How do mission, structure, and culture reinforce - or undermine - that aim? And what becomes possible when a school's stated commitments align with its lived experience?

For families exploring boarding school, Elevate offers a window into how schools think about character, responsibility, belonging, and growth beyond the classroom. For educators, trustees, and administrators, it provides comparative insight across diverse boarding school models and a framework for thinking about governance and coherence. For graduate students and researchers, it offers contemporary case material grounded in institutional reality. For anyone who works with young people, it brings clarity to the moral and ethical obligations of schooling.

Taken together, these sixteen schools suggest that education is not merely the transmission of knowledge, but the formation of judgment, resilience, integrity, and purpose.

What does it take to educate a whole person?

Sixteen schools offer their answers.

Featuring contributions from leaders at:

• Avon Old Farms School
• Dublin School
• Gould Academy
• Hawai'i Preparatory Academy
• Interlochen Arts Academy
• Kimball Union Academy
• Mercersburg Academy
• Middlebridge School
• Midland School
• The Oxford Academy
• The Putney School
• Riverview School
• Scattergood Friends School
• Solebury School
• St. Johnsbury Academy
• The Woodhall School