Is middle school just too young for your son to live away from home in a dormitory?

There’s a good reason so many parents worry about this as they consider junior boarding schools for their sons. Given that there are only a handful in the nation, junior boarding school is hardly a universal experience. Most parents have no idea what life is like in a junior boarding school dorm.

Junior Boarding School Dorms vs. College and Secondary Boarding School Dorms

If your idea of dorm life is based on on the unsupervised free-for-all you experienced in college, then yes; that’s not a good environment for a pre-teen.

But junior boarding school dorms aren’t like that. Nor are they exactly like the dorms of secondary boarding schools, although a few years in junior boarding school are a great way to prepare your son for the kind of independence he’ll have at a top secondary boarding school.

While students at a junior boarding school are encouraged to develop a certain amount of independence, structure and supervision by caring adults is just as important—if not more so.

Junior boarding schools understand that this is the first time most of their students have lived away from home. They aim to provide the same nurturing support boys would receive if they were living with their families.

We talked recently with Fessenden’s Residential Director Ken Howe about some of the ways a junior boarding school like Fessenden helps its students feel at home. Here are two of the most surprising ones:

1. Your dorm parents are also your teachers.

At The Fessenden School, boys live in dorms of no more than 18 students. Two faculty or staff families live on each hallway, actively supervising and supporting dorm life. Plus, each floor has two ninth-grade proctors, veteran boarding students who are there to show their younger schoolmates the ropes.

More than 70 percent of Fessenden’s Upper School faculty live on campus. For boarding students, the campus is not just a place to sleep at night, it’s a true community. Teachers and staff spend time with the students not only in the classroom and in their dorms, but in the dining hall, on the playing fields, and on weekend trips.

“There is a two-to-one ratio of boarding boys to faculty that live here on campus,” Ken says. “All of these boys get to see adults in a very different light. They get a chance to go to the movies with their English teacher, to play indoor soccer with their math teacher, to go on a ski trip with their Spanish teacher, to play mini-golf with the woman who runs the bookstore. They get these opportunities to establish healthy relationships with adults that they may not get at other schools.”

2. Your son’s roommate could be from anywhere in the world.

Fessenden’s student population represents 13 different countries and 13 U.S. states. If your son were to come here, there’s a good chance his roommate would be from another country. If not his roommate, then certainly there would be international students on his floor.

Stories abound of Fessenden students forming close lifelong friendships with classmates from all over the world. By becoming comfortable at a young age around people with different first languages and different cultural backgrounds, boys gain an invaluable head start to becoming a global citizen.

“Our boarding community is diverse, and it’s really important that we’re always talking about that, exploring that, and finding ways to support it,” Ken says. “We’re always looking for ways to encourage the boys to try new things. For example, when there are celebrations, we see them as opportunities for international students to have a dinner with food from their country and also share a cultural insight with their peers.”