Monday morning, we hopped on the TGV high powered train, and started our adventure to Paris! We arrived at the Gare-de-Lyon train station at 12:30 and took our first steps into the City of Light and the City of Love.

Proctor’s girls varsity basketball team boasts a 10-3 record as they surpass the midpoint in their season and look ahead to defending their NESPAC Class C championship from last year. While the core of the team remains from last year’s championship run, roles have evolved and new additions to the squad have brought key new pieces to the puzzle. With a jam-packed February ahead of them, the team and its veteran leadership looks to continue its development under first year-head coach Junior De La Hoz.

My first impression of Spain was how small the spaces are. After arriving in Segovia, Mikaela took me to my host mom Marife’s apartment. In addition to the elevator that could only fit in three people at most, my shower is located in my room and the corridor can only have one person passing each time. Marife seemed like someone that knows exactly how to enjoy life, though; there are approximately more than ten kinds of glasses and cups in the kitchen and living room, and her narrow corridor is full of organised and delicate decorations. Knowing Marife and the daily schedule in Spain, which includes a siesta (a nap about two hours in the middle of the day) and a dinner that doesn’t start until 9:30, I slowly started to process the much more relaxed lifestyle in Spain.

(photo) Jacqui Morris

I have adjusted to life in Aix, and time is going by pretty fast. It’s hard to believe that two weeks has already gone by and that we are leaving for Paris tomorrow! With my excitement for the future, I want to reflect on yet another remarkable seven days in France.

Avery Montgomery '17 wrote the following piece for Proctor's student newspaper, The Hornet's Nest. You can check out the most recent edition of the Hornet's Nest, as well as archived editions and more student work from Journalism classes HERE! 

On the same evening as our beloved New England Patriots convincingly won the AFC Championship over the Pittsburgh Steelers 36-17, we welcomed Eric Barthold back to campus to speak with faculty, student leadership, male athletes, and our ninth grade boys about redefining masculinity in today’s society.

Bahia de Kino in Sonora, Mexico was home to Mountain Classroom for the past week. These videos will give you a taste of our adventures as we spent our time in the water developing kayaking skills, snorkeling, and admiring dolphins and sea lions! Our reading for classes was varied and focused on the local Comcaac tribe, wild foods, diabetes in Mexico, and Steinbeck's The Pearl. Now we are heading out of communication for the next week on solo at the Cascabel Conservation Association. 

After a slow start to the season, Tuesday’s fresh snowfall provided perfect conditions for Proctor’s Nordic ski team to host a NEPSAC race at the Proctor Ski Area Wednesday afternoon. With a roster full of newcomers to the sport, this season has been a learning experience for all involved as the team has worked together to get the most out of its training sessions, to learn the basics of the sport, and to prepare its veteran racers for success in the Lakes Region League.

Watching games last Friday and Saturday in the gym and the rink – basketball and hockey –players pivoted, sprinted, shifted from offense to defense, worked to set up and break up plays, communicated with each other through eye contact, gestures, and position. Sometimes a call, a shout, and when the timing clicked all was flow. Effortless on the surface. Professional. Sports are a natural setting (not the only setting) for collaboration to blossom, for different strengths to fuse together to create team, where the critical lesson of transition is taught. And given this week highlights transition on a national scale, where we witness the transition from one administration to the next, it’s in the back of our collective minds.

We are officially more than halfway through the school year as mid-term grades were published earlier this week. In isolation, these numerical assessments of student performance provide a narrow view of student growth. This is why Proctor’s academic model integrates feedback loops (through our Official Notes system) that provide students consistent feedback not only on academic performance, but the growth process.

On Monday, we gathered as a community to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. alongside guest speaker Dr. Derrick Gay. Together, we continued the never-ending work of understanding our own identities within the constructs of a global society. As we engaged in a series of activities centered around our exploration of self, we worked to understand our blind spots and to better understand, and acknowledge, alternate perspectives.

Three years ago, when I was having hot chocolate at a café in France, enjoying the relaxed and romantic ambiance, I knew I wanted to come back. European Art Classroom definitely became one of the strongest reasons that I love Proctor.

Proctor Academy’s boys’ varsity basketball team is off to a 7-2 start as it nears the midway point in its season. As a member of NEPSAC Class AA, the Hornets compete in arguably the nation’s strongest basketball league. After narrowly missing last year’s NEPSAC tournament, this senior-laden group is doing everything in its power to make sure it earns a chance to compete for a NEPSAC championship come the first week of March.

On Thursday night, seven Proctor students presented in the Meeting House as part of the 18^th Hays speaking contest, while earlier in the week President Obama delivered his farewell address to the nation from Chicago. The seven Proctor students shared their insights to several hundred, while the President shared his with millions. He is a practiced orator, well-known for his grace and passion and his ability to seamlessly cross-thread the reality of a time’s complexity with belief in democracy’s better future to weave a hope we all might share. He inspires with his message, his delivery, and his integrity. One might expect there to be a gap in performance between the speech of a president and the speeches of sophomores in high school, but to be honest? That gap felt minimal on Thursday night.

The work of Proctor’s English Department, specifically American Literature students, will take center stage Thursday night at the Annual Hays' Speaking Prize. While this is certainly the most public display of work by students, these speeches are just the tip of the iceberg of the learning take place in the lower floor of Maxwell Savage Hall. 

As students return to campus after a two week hiatus, Proctor’s girls’ varsity hockey team kicked off the new year with five games in three days including four games at the Phillips Exeter Tournament. Suffering two losses on the first day of the tournament, the team played better with a tie and then a convincing 6-0 win over Vermont Academy in their last game of the tournament before returning to The Ted with a 2-1 win over Tilton School on Wednesday. The team, which sits at 5-4-1 to date, continues to improve, meshing new players and old, into a unique chemistry that will serve the group well as they head into a very busy stretch over the next eight weeks. *Thank you to Zach Webster '18 for sharing his photography for this piece! 

Proctor Academy's Mountain Classroom program transitioned back from Winter Break into the cacti-filled desert. Our first days were spent studying Wilderness First Aid in Arizona's beautiful Lost Dutchman State Park. Read more about their first week back below! 

Most of us go to the technology help desk because we dropped a phone, cracked a screen, forgot a password, or need help with an update. We need something. We go to the tech office humble and looking for help, and when we get to the first floor of the Fowler Learning Center, Anna, Jim, Spencer, Susan, or Seth wait with their store of infinite patient, deep knowledge, and good cheer. Those five manage and work with constant change, continual upgrades, and the persistent (and silly) “user error;” they live professional development. At Proctor, the repair space of grounded work stations, microscopes, and tiny tools is noteworthy and impressive, but the people are awe-inspiring: Anna, I am convinced, can field strip an iPhone (any model) and reassemble it in under ten minutes.

Last week, marketing guru Seth Godin published a blog entitled “The Awareness Threshold”. He discussed the seven step process through which people move from being unaware of an idea to awareness, to categorizing the idea based on our life experience, to forming an opinion, to experiencing the idea, to forming of a new opinion, and eventually to sharing that new opinion with others. This intellectual journey occurs daily as we learn about world events, political happenings, and new technological discoveries.

Shifting back to a regular schedule following vacation never is easy. We are incredibly fortunate to have spent the last two weeks living life at a slower pace as we enjoyed time with family and friends around the holidays.  As we scroll through our social media feed this morning and see friends outside of our Proctor bubble complaining about returning to work, we are reminded how fortunate we are to live and work in a boarding school environment. Our transition back to work does not sacrifice family time, but rather expands it as we welcome students back into our lives after a two-week hiatus.