EHS Pillars - Fall 2016

AS IRON
SHARPENS IRON
The Rev. Phil Kochenburger joined the Episcopal High School
community in July to serve as the Dean of Spiritual Life and
Chaplain. Kochenburger sat down with English teacher and
Pillars contributor Emma Lyders to discuss his background in
education and the military and share his vision for enhancing
and strengthening the Religion Pillar.
Can you give me a little background on your career that
led you to Episcopal High School?
I felt called to the Army Chaplaincy after becoming a Christian
as a young Soldier back in 1981. I became an active duty
chaplain in 1999, and retired from the Army after 20 years of
service just this past April. For the past 20‐plus years, I've
been involved in numerous academic settings working with
young students. I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal
Church through the Diocese of Central Florida in 1996, and
served churches there—including my first church where
Bishop Benitez had served some years earlier—before
entering active duty. My last assignment was serving as the
101st Airborne Division Artillery Chaplain at Fort Campbell,
Kentucky. Prior to that, I served two years as the Deputy
Garrison Chaplain and Resource Manager for all Religious
Support Operations at the Defense Language Institute and
Foreign Language Centre in Monterey, California, an intensive
academic center for 5,000 students.
How would you like to effect change at EHS?
I'm thrilled to see what we are doing well, and learning more
about that day by day. I would like to build on the spiritual
formation potential we have here at EHS with our abiding
commitment to the Religion Pillar through daily Chapel,
community service, religion department classes, and all the
other things we already have. I envision the Religion Pillar as
necessarily suffusing all the other pillars; it is the bedrock.
We have great potential for growth in spiritual formation
that seems largely underdeveloped. Parent Education
opportunities and Choices; relationship‐building; Bible
study; prayer groups and better coordination in pastoral
care support and communication are all areas ripe for
development.
Mentorship is another area that I see as crucial to all that
we do in the EHS community. With our advisory groups,
and small groups of students walking through their EHS
experience with a mentoring figure, I think we have something
here that is unique and can be developed into a powerful
experience, both for the mentors and the "mentees." The fact
that it is already happening, to a degree, is a larger key to
EHS success than I think we may be aware of.
As far as non‐academic counseling support, we have
a great team here with the Rev. Beth Holden, Choices
Counselor Sam Scharff, and psychologist Beth Fowler. Good
coordination within that team provides powerful counseling
support to our community, and I look forward to developing
that support to our students and their families.
How did you come to this career? Was it something you
always wanted to do?
I have always enjoyed working with teenagers and young
people in general, and have spent most of my life dedicated
to youth. It is indeed something I've always wanted to do.
But much more significantly, I think, is my long‐time mentor
and friend, Luis P. Alvarez. My story cannot be told without
telling his as well. I met Mr. Alvarez—my math teacher—in
middle school, and again at Kathleen Senior High School.
Through my teenage years, he became like a second father to
me. His mentorship and friendship have brought out the best
in me throughout my life, and he continues to challenge me
today. A few months back I noticed that he has been asked to
return to Kathleen Senior High to teach again, even though he
had been retired for a while, enjoying time with his family and
grandchildren.
Mr. Alvarez took me under his wing, taught me how to be a
good man, how to treat people, and was the first person to
really ever challenge me. We both enjoyed photography—a
lifelong passion of mine—and I worked for him on the
yearbook. I began to visit him where he lived and worked at
the Florida Baptist Children's Home in Lakeland, Florida, as
a residential care counselor, teacher, and tutor. I got to see
up close the difference he made in all these young lives, and
that inspired me to do the same. I would eventually become
a residential care counselor there as well for about four years
while I was in college. It was a great place to start!
I think this experience, more than anything, is how I "came to
this career" as you put it.
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