Proctor's Mountain Classroom program reconvened for the Spring Term with a new group of students ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime over the next nine weeks. The group arrived in Tucson, AZ last week and headed to their first campsite at Gilbert Ray Campground. We oriented to our academic courses and the equipment that will play a large role in our lives for the next couple months: the bus, trailer, kitchen, tents, and food planning systems. While in Tucson we also enjoyed an afternoon at the stunning Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  Our next stop: rock climbing in Cochise Stronghold! Enjoy student reflections from the first week of the term below. 

Over the next week, more than 100 accepted students and their families will visit Proctor’s campus for one of our two Admissions Revisit Days. Proctor will most likely not be their only stop as each student weighs options and makes an important decision about investing in his or her high school experience. As our accepted students prepare for Revisit Days at Proctor and other schools, we encourage each to follow the following tips:

After months of planning and four amazing days during which small groups of students spent time with one or two faculty members, Project Period is over. Throughout the week, Project Period Coordinator Patty Pond helped capture student reflections on what community means to them. You can hear a few of these snippets in the video below, but if you were present at Proctor's 3rd Annual St. Baldrick's Event, you felt the Proctor (and local Andover) community in action. 

7:30 a.m. Day three of Project Period and it is raining with a light skim of snow on campus. A freezing rain advisory issued by the Weather Channel is in effect until 9:00 a.m. The lights are on in the Community House where Patty Pond coordinates, supports, and cheers on the various groups as they come and go on campus. Soap Making, Conquering Childhood Cancer with St. Baldrick’s Foundation Event, Backcountry Medicine and Leadership, Maple Sugaring, The Lakota Way, Mono Prints…and so many more. Why do we do this?

During most professional development days, guest speakers come to campus and present new information for us, as teachers, to then bring back to our classrooms. Today, Proctor’s faculty took a bold step to rethink professional development by turning internally to our own faculty to share the work we are doing in our classrooms.

The month of March brings with it a different rhythm as campus empties out for Spring Break, admission decisions are sent to prospective families, and faculty begin to gear up for Project Period. During Proctor’s two week Spring Break, many of Proctor’s athletic teams gather for spring training opportunities. Check out where five of these teams are spending their break!

Proctor Academy's history is far from glamorous, however, it is filled with stories of individuals whose creativity, determination, and commitment to Proctor's mission helped shape the school into what it is today. As we celebrate Women in History Month during March, we wanted to highlight a few of the many women who were influential in Proctor's evolution as well as celebrate the young women who are making the most of their Proctor experience today! 

Greg Mickle ’96 knew he liked math from an early age. In elementary school, it came naturally to him, and as he entered high school, he knew he wanted to be an engineer. His journey through four years at Proctor and twenty years since made that dream come true, but he has found being an engineer is far more than working with numbers.

Admissions decisions were sent to accepted students at 12:01 AM this morning! Proctor had another record setting admissions cycle, but when asked why there is such strong demand for a Proctor education, we often struggle to articulate a concise answer. Proctor’s educational model works not because of a single program, but because of the unique combination of programs and culture undergirding each student’s experience.

I have been looking forward to this term since my application to Proctor. Finally being here closes my time of being a student at Proctor. I sit with my peers on this final night I am truly happy with what this term has given me. Dave always lectures us about living in the moment, and I think those are words that everyone should live by. European Art Classroom has been everything I hoped it would be and more.

Proctor Academy's girls' varsity basketball team traveled to Noble and Greenough School for the NEPSAC Class C Championship Sunday afternoon against #3 seed Lexington Christian Academy. Less than 24 hours after an epic upset over #1 seed Kimball Union Academy, the Hornets were eager to earn their first NEPSAC Championship since 2008. With hundreds of Proctor fans in attendance, the girls did not disappoint, and walked away with a 61-45 win and smiles on their faces!  

Mountain Classroomstudents wrote their final blogs of the term on their climbing in Cochise Stronghold. After climbing, they traveled north to Prescott, Arizona and found audiences for their final projects. Students presented children’s books they wrote describing their science research to 3^rd graders, and then they presented their final English assignment to Prescott College students. The term finished with a student-led and designed backpacking trip that left from Arcosanti.

Attitude of Gratitude. I first heard this phrase years ago from Jen Fletcher as she talked about students who thrive at Proctor, students we want at Proctor. It’s applicable to adults as well as student: the attitude of gratitude. We all need to cultivate it, need to preserve it, need to see it as an essential element of inner balance. There are books written about this sort of thing, naturally, and the best one I have seen recently is Oliver Sacks’ slim collection of final essays published as Gratitude. It is a powerful, forty-five pages reminder.

As Proctor wraps up exam week, closing out the winter term, reflection on the work of the many diverse arts disciplines on display over the past couple of weeks offers a wonderful sense of satisfaction for all. Both visual and performing arts were hard at work throughout the term, finding considerable success on many levels.

Bryan Stevenson gave the keynote address at the annual NAIS conference in San Francisco this past Friday morning. His hour long address passionately wove his life's story with narratives of injustice that permeate our society. Each of us in the audience were moved not only by the power of his oratory skills, but by his challenge to help our schools get ‘real’ with injustice.

My concerns with the host family in Spain vanished as soon as I stepped into the house. The house is not big, and, to some extent, kind of compact. Yet, it is Olga, Cesar and Jimena that make it super cute, adorable, and most importantly, a family in a completely different region and culture. Whether it is Jimena jumping around, “cheating” in our chess games, posing for pictures and “pestering” for more chocolate, whether it is Cesar playing music, cooking the best fish dish that I have ever eaten and preparing a large tortilla de patata bocadillo to share with my friends, whether it is Olga chattering about my everyday experiences, waking me up from my daily siestas (“Nick, Nick, wake up”), “censuring” me for the untidiness in my room and always asking me to eat more food, I feel like that here in Segovia, I have found my other, long-lost family. For the first time in my life, I get to know the feeling of having a sibling in my life, to care for someone unconditionally. She seems to bring me happiness; her laughter, her dance, and her gibberish have the power to bring a wisp of sunshine through the gloomy sky. For the first time in my life, I get to have two families located in different areas who love and care for me equally.