Leadership interview with David Young, St. George's School

The mission of the school, which is building fine young men one boy at a time, resonates strongly with me. I think the word “build” is a really important word at St. George's. It's this sequential understanding of the process that we're involved in, that one brick is laid on top of another … It's one boy at a time. It's his construction.

There's a million ways to be a good student, a good person, and a school's opportunity is to support every student on their individual path. We have to think about that quite deeply because we're a boys' school … there's a million ways to be a boy, and we need to celebrate that, and we need to support that, and we need to ensure that each boy's full identity finds its place by the time he leaves us.

Our challenge to our boys is that they should be able to seek out and make a positive impact in their communities, then they should describe communities for themselves.

A boy should graduate confident, and to be confident, he needs to be able to express the fullness of who he is, and that's made up of many different different parts … And how do we develop a culture that already does that really well here, which is to celebrate the fullness of each of our identities, knowing that if we do that well, the chances of a positive impact that society needs, that we feel, goes up.

What it allows is a beginning, an atmosphere of beginning, where being a young boy can be fully celebrated. If you went to our junior school, it's just tons of energy, movement, excitement, just a vibrant, vibrant place. Then we try to capture that in adolescents when they arrive at the senior school and attach it to as many opportunities as possible, such that a boy will snag on his passions.

Our task is to create an environment where we encourage them to take those risks knowing it's going to all be okay. And so it is quite inspiring to us to see how many boys, by the time of graduation, have found something that they love. It's far more fulfilling for us to send them off to their next adventure knowing they're going somewhere they want to go. They're just a really lovely aspect of what we do. We really work hard to find places where every boy feels his learning resonates with him.

We put real thought to the curation of a diverse student body—diverse in thought, diverse in background, diverse in passion, culture, ethnicity.

Our parents are just hugely supportive of the school in being present, and that's really hard given many of our families all work, both parents work. It blows me away how often evening events and how well they're attended and different things. So the plethora of ways in which communication happens at the school is more than just a couple of ways.

My desire is that people will leave with a sense of being part of something that matters. And my hope is that we'll be able to see through the impacts our graduates have made that we got some important work correct. Society needs positive young people.

The ideal scenario is that you have the largest overlapping Venn diagram of you and your child and the school, so essentially fit. I don't see it as a competition between schools. I've been working hard to not be in competition with any of my amazing schools nearby us. They're just doing incredible things, and so are we. I think fit is the best thing you can give your child.