Each spring, we conduct senior exit interviews with all of our soon-to-be graduating seniors. Typically, one-third of our seniors have been at our school since kindergarten, and the vast majority since middle school. We buy them lunch and meet with them in groups of 6-8 students at a time. We ask them questions about their most memorable experiences, what they learned from their involvement in fine arts and athletics, which teachers best prepared them for college, which staff members made the biggest impact on them, how our school’s culture affected them positively and negatively, how they grew spiritually, and anything else they want to discuss in the time we have. I try to listen and say almost nothing in response. I take copious notes every year. This summer I spent some time reviewing my notes and began to realize how much these meetings have taught me. This is a summary of what I have learned so far.

Seniors can be grumpy. This is not a knock on seniors. You’d be grumpy too trying to navigate the labyrinth of AP classes, college visits, admissions essays, financial stressors, and nagging parents. When you’ve been at the same school for 14 years, you tend to get tired of that school near the end. Parents and educators have long observed that seniors tend to “soil their nest” before they leave home. Seniors still need our help more than they wish, and certainly more than they’ll admit. They have high expectations for a memorable and fun senior year, but they also have high anxiety about the future. To cope with this cascade of emotions, seniors tend to create interpersonal conflict, sabotage relationships, and generally make themselves a nuisance to those around them. The effect is that leaving home becomes a relief, for them and the adults in their lives. As a result of this phenomenon, exit interviews can become gripe sessions no matter how we try to steer the conversation. Seniors will never be as thankful as we hope, or as aware of the sacrifices people have made for them as we wish. I must check my ego and remind myself before every meeting that I can learn something from even the harshest criticism.

Every teacher gets compliments. Every teacher gets criticized. No teacher connects effectively with every student, and no student connects with every teacher. A teacher may be described as the best teacher at the school one week, and the worst teacher the next week. Students tend to pile on, joining their friends in their positive or negative assessments, even when they’ve had no direct experience with the person they are evaluating. I do not mean to discount the criticisms; they have value. Even when the facts are skewed or downright wrong, at least we learn about student perceptions, and with teens, perception is indeed nine-tenths of reality. The lesson to learn here is that teachers who seek to be popular among students are fighting a losing battle. Teens may like you for all the wrong reasons, or dislike you for all the right ones.

Students look at much of life through the lens of what they like and dislike. They assume adults do likewise. I often hear students say, as an explanation for poor performance in a class, “that teacher hates me.” If you try to correct this believe, you’ll be met with the gravest skepticism. My own children were confused to hear me say that mature teachers give little thought to who they like or dislike. Professional educators will spend hours with students they may not necessarily like in order to help those in need. In my experience, teachers operate from a deep sense of calling, not from superficial preferences. You will be hard-pressed to convince high school students of this fact.

Students place a high value on relationships with teachers. Perhaps students value relationships too highly, but nonetheless they learn more from teachers who make an effort to connect with them on a personal level. Teachers do not have to be cool to make connections and they shouldn’t try. Students are remarkably adept at detecting inauthenticity. The best teachers relax, be themselves, and show genuine concern for their students, always within appropriate boundaries. Strong relationships will pay off educationally more often than not. That said, students will attempt unhesitantly to leverage relationships for better grades. Veteran teachers know they are always being played.

Students respect teachers with high levels of professionalism. Students appreciate teachers who are well organized and return graded material in a timely manner. They give little grace to teachers who don’t keep their word or meet deadlines, but they consistently want more grace for similar failures, certainly more grace than universities are going to give them. Students admire teachers who are humble and admit mistakes, even those students who view themselves as beyond fault. Students revere fairness. They are sensitized to favoritism, sometimes see it when it isn’t there, and hate it wherever they see it, unless they themselves are the beneficiaries. Students may like teachers who are laid back and easy, but they respect teachers who are professional and make them better scholars.

Students tend to give athletics an importance disproportionate to their value. Don’t get me wrong, I am an avid believer in athletics. My wife and I spent untold hours and dollars on the athletic pursuits of our three children. Students can make great health gains and learn valuable lessons from playing sports, no doubt. And yet in the pantheon of things important to families, sports are near the top of the list for many. Student athletes see sports as a path to social acceptance, self-worth, or the college of their dreams. Parents see athletics as a path to college scholarships. Seniors tend to judge their high school experience based on the teams for which they played or cheered. Often they praise and criticize coaches with greater gusto than teachers. Students involved in fine arts sometimes feel marginalized by the prevailing athletic culture. Obviously, many of these observations are unique to our school, but I know Heads of School across the country report similar trends. Keeping sports in perspective remains a keen challenge for students, parents, and school leaders alike.

If students don’t get into the college they want, they will often blame their high school. Universities strive to make themselves appear desirable to drive up applications and drive down admissions rates. Low admission rates signal the school is elite or selective, whether it is of high quality or not. Selective universities carefully curate their incoming classes. As a result, we see highly qualified students fail to gain acceptance at a school one year, only to see less qualified students gain acceptance at that same school the following year. The game seems capricious and the outcomes increasingly unpredictable. As a result, seniors stay stressed about college nearly all year. It colors everything in their lives for many months. Applying to 7 or 8 schools on average, our seniors spend enormous amounts of time and money on the process. Some hire outside counselors because they think, often wrongly, that doing so will increase their chances of getting into their dream college. Even in this test-optional era, many seniors enroll in test prep classes and/or get private tutors to help boost their scores. They compare themselves with their peers at every step of this emotionally brutal process. Inevitably, students experience disappointment, and they sometimes blame the school (the teachers, the classes, the counselors, etc.). It is never our fault (and I do mean never), but when the stakes seem so high, and you do everything right but still miss your goal, you want someone to blame. Many inside higher ed will admit the system is broken, but it isn’t likely to change anytime soon. In the meantime, we try to reassure seniors that what they do immediately after high school does not determine who they will become in the long run. When you’re a high school senior in an academically rigorous school, however, that message can get drowned out by louder voices.

Conclusion
I get to know our seniors better than any students. They are probably my favorite group of students at our school. I find them bright, funny, filled with energy and hope, but often riddled with anxiety. I fear that as a society we put tremendous pressure on seniors to accomplish two somewhat incompatible goals. First, we want them to have the time of their lives, often hoping to live vicariously through them as they do so. Second, we want them to be fully prepared for life after high school. These two goals do not coexist well. Each year when I listen to seniors talk about our school, I am reminded of the psychological and spiritual turmoil they experience as they juggle these goals. They’ve made it this far by determination, hard work, and intelligence, but maybe we place too much on them in their final year of high school. Maybe we expect them to grow up too much in too short a period of time. Most accept the challenge and rise to the occasion, in their own way and at their own pace. I always look forward to what they become after graduation. In the meantime, I never cease to be amazed at how much I learn from them as they prepare to leave our campus.