The day I met up with our students and program leaders who study and reside in Spain, I experienced what many of our students must feel when they come to Segovia for the first time. 

It’s a rainy early start of my journey to Europe, landing lightly at the house where the Proctor students, as well as where European Art Classroom co-directors Dave and Jen Fleming, live in Aix-en-Provence, France. 

This past week in Charleston Harbor, a group of Proctor folk gathered for the send off of the Harvey Gamage and Proctor’s Ocean Classroom program. Students from Proctor and the MET Schools in Providence, RI prepared over the course of the last two weeks to learn to be mariners and how to collaborate with each other while helping to run a tall ship for the next 65 days. Led by Brooks Bicknell ‘77 in his final stint as Ocean Classroom director, the fall and winter versions of Ocean Classroom culminate with one of a kind lessons that students carry with them for the rest of their lives. 

This past few months has had me reflecting on the past six months, particularly our good news and successes. That is what you might expect when you are at Proctor Academy where our hard work and effort does come with positive outcomes. Of course, we are not about just curating Instagram highlights. To be sure, our work comes with challenges, pitfalls, and even a few pratfalls. But in the main, we are a school that goes from strength to strength, incorporating feedback when we don’t succeed, so that we can get better at what we do, which fits our mission and our motto, “living to learn, learning to live”. 

Last week ten Proctor folks, four students and six faculty members, traveled to San Antonio, Texas for the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Conferences – the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) and the People of Color Conference (POCC). 

Last week’s Holderness Weekend had all of us reflecting on the trimester that has now come to a close. Last week, not only did our students compete at the highest levels on and off the field of play, but they were nice people who had fun being with each other. In fact, I don’t ever remember working at a school in my long history of being in schools and visiting other schools where the students cared so deeply about supporting each other and honoring the games and activities in which they participated. 

What happens along a student's journey when they are discovering different aspects of their personality? This is one of the questions that surfaces in Proctor’s newest production of “Almost, Maine” directed by Charley Stern ‘08. In fact, Charley’s return to Proctor is also a journey of self-discovery that closely mirrors that of many of the characters in the play he directs. I would also surmise that our current students are inspired by the life lessons of their director as they zero in on creating characters in “Almost, Maine,” a play that depicts a place that is not quite a real place but an “almost” place in Maine. 

Pictures tell you things that written history never will or perhaps can. On my wall in my office just behind my left shoulder is a photograph taken in 1895. It is of the Proctor and Carr families of Andover, NH. During the opening weeks of school, I spoke at great length to our community about members of this family, but John Proctor is the person from whom we as a school get our name. When the picture was taken, John Proctor was gone from the scene for 12 years, he died in 1883, but his extended family and relatives were alive and well represented in Andover. What Proctor planted, the regenerated seeds and start of a new school, still stands today. Vibrant and prosperous.