School portraits / A freshman pool party · September 2013
The Form Master on the Diving Board
A form master gets one very specific chance to improve his reputation.
At Cistercian in September 2013, Father Joseph Van House had an unpromising reputation among the freshmen. In middle school, they had regarded the possibility that their form master might possess any cool at all as an outlandish proposition. The standard adult instinct in that situation is to take refuge in grown-up dignity: you accept that you are hopelessly square, assign the reading, and get on with your life. What is rare is being offered a single, slightly absurd stunt to wipe the slate clean. Yet for weeks the boys kept urging him to jump in the pool.
When Friday evening arrived, the freshmen were already soaking in the water, chanting his name. A chant among teenagers quickly gathers its own momentum, and party-goers encircling the pool joined in to swell the volume. Faced with that kind of racket, an ordinary teacher might feel the pull toward the snack table, or suddenly remember an urgent errand by the car. A tactful drift toward the parking lot usually protects adult dignity until Monday morning. Father Joseph walked toward the diving board instead, wearing his habit.
Atop the board, Father Joseph paused and cracked a smile. As freshman Ray Kitziger remembered it, the priest took “a step and a hop” and dove straight in.
The reaction from the water was instantaneous: Kitziger recalled the boys exploding in excitement, convinced that their form master was “on the journey with us.” In the school magazine four years later, Father Joseph admitted that taking the plunge helped “turn the tide.”