It's a muggy spring morning and the spirit is alive and moving through many of the students gathered in the auditorium-turned-Sunday-chapel at the Piney Woods Country Life School.

This is the last worship service before graduation and summer break, and the Rev. Robert McCathern is consumed by his weighty charge - making sure the independent school's nearly 300 students are prepared to leave the stony gates of the idyllic campus and return to their homes across the nation and around the world.

Piney Woods, one of only a handful of Black private boarding schools left in the country, is where you can "still hear about God" and "escape what's out there," says McCathern, a lean, young and streetwise chaplain.

"You've got to put on the whole armor of God. [You need] the breastplate of righteousness. [You need to] bind up your feet to walk in places of peace and put on the helmet of salvation," he explains before arriving at one of the more sobering passages of his sermon.

"For many of you, the things and people you left behind in the streets are still there and your home situations haven't changed. The world out there will eat you alive if you let it."

For eleven months of the school year, many of the students who come to Piney Woods watch as relatives and friends fall victim to drugs, violence, and the breakup of families. At Piney Woods, they can live, study and play in a peaceful and safe environment.

Although the majority of students come from economically-depressed backgrounds, there is a small percentage, according to Piney Woods President Charles H. Beady, who come from middle- and upper-income families. Some of these are the children of legislators and entrepreneurs. Students come from twenty-five states and several foreign countries, including Caribbean nations and Ethiopia, to attend this school which is virtually all Black. Currently, there is one White student enrolled.

An Emphasis on Conduct

Since Beady, an urban education and academic motivation expert, became the school's third president in 1985, he has established a strict uniform code. Every morning, dorm parents - in boot-camp style - inspect white oxford shirts and Navy blue skirts or trousers. Boys are banned from wearing earrings, loose-fitting pants that expose their underwear, and dreadlocked hair styles. Students caught fighting, kissing, or walking arm in arm can be dismissed from the school.