School portraits / A proctor retreat, 2016
Hotchkiss Trained 94 Student Leaders, Then a Pig Escaped
A 2016 retreat at Hotchkiss's farm was about building trust and community in the dorms. Then four of the fifteen pigs got out, and the curriculum changed.
In 2016 Hotchkiss in Lakeville, Connecticut, held its three-day retreat for proctors, the upper mids and seniors who help run the dorms. The dean of residential life said the theme was building a community of safety, trust, belonging and inclusion. One day was spent at Fairfield Farm, the school's farm a mile from campus.
It rained. Students built benches for the dorms with saws and sanders, rolled out pie dough in the Grange, sliced pizza toppings and went out to the fields to pull fist-sized onions out of the mud.
Then four of the farm's fifteen pigs escaped from the outdoor pen.
Leadership is a tidy subject when everybody has agreed to be led. A pig has signed nothing.
The school's news site describes the next part as a Keystone Cops chase, with twenty students and faculty members. They got three pigs back. The fourth was what the school called wily. After half an hour, the group formed a circle around him, which is, I believe, the oldest move in community building, and herded him back into his pen. Part of it involved bushwhacking through brambles.
An upper mid summed it up for the school: "Digging up onions was hard work, but it took real teamwork to capture that one last pig."
I would put that sentence on the brochure. The onions do not argue. The pig is the curriculum.
Fairfield Farm is a working farm, bought by the school in 2004, a mile from campus. It supplies the dining hall and hosts classes, concerts and school events. Its stated aim includes a space where students take risks.
The risks, in this case, were taken by the pig.
We do not have pigs. We have the dog, who is old and does not run. Last month, however, the youngest's class hamster came to stay for the weekend and, on Saturday night, got out. The whole family was mobilized. The eldest took the kitchen. The middle one took the stairs. My wife took command. I was assigned the radiator, which is where, an hour later, the youngest found him herself, by lying on the floor and waiting. Nobody had told her to form a circle. She simply sat very still in the middle of everything, and the hamster came to her.
So that is the one technique Hotchkiss did not try.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- 94 Proctors — and Four Pigs on the Loose, Hotchkiss News hotchkiss.org
- Fairfield Farm & Food, Hotchkiss hotchkiss.org
- Hotchkiss public parent and student reviews niche.com