Three years ago, Proctor art curator Molly Leith connected with renowned sound artist, Spencer Topel, about designing an installation for the atrium of the Fowler Learning Center. Originally planned as a student collaboration during Project Period 2019 last March, the complexity of the project postponed the installation until the first week of December. After a week of ropes, rigging, and detailed construction alongside Brad Hardie of Fireside Design Works, Time Lines now graces the Fowler Learning Center. 

The holiday shopping experience has changed over the past decade. The days of wandering through shopping malls have been replaced with the ease of adding items to your Amazon cart, the promise of two-day shipping, and a purely transactional nature of consumption. In this transition, we have lost much of the meaningfulness associated with giving a gift to a loved one. 

We woke Sunday morning to temperatures hovering around zero degrees. The frozen silence a much needed blanket under which we could spend the day seeking restoration after a busy first week of the Winter Term. 

As a coach, momentum is either your best friend or your worst enemy. If it’s your team making a run, you hear fans cheering, watch as players dial in their focus, adrenaline rushing. If your team is on the unfortunate end of momentum, you pray for a referee’s call to go in your favor, search for any stoppage of play, and then desperately call a timeout in hopes of allowing your team to regroup. 

Natural learning requires the transfer and construction of knowledge. Spend time with toddlers as they explore the world around them. They touch, feel, taste, form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, evaluate their findings, and then explore again. Over the last two days, faculty have engaged in professional development conversations exploring the learning cycle and how we can deepen our own understanding of how to create classroom experiences that encourage students to ask questions and pursue understanding. How do we give our students the autonomy to act, to actively question the world around them? How do we pursue our best selves? 

Campus is quiet, for the moment. No bikes or skateboards or scooters zooming down pathways. No laughter or chatter as students pass between classes. No rushing off to our next class, meeting, assembly, or practice. Faculty have plenty of grading to do as we wrap up Fall Term assessments, but we take a collective deep breath this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. 

The power of Proctor’s academic model lies in both the breadth and depth of academic pursuits. A single student’s path through Proctor may take them on multiple off-campus programs, summer internships, AP courses, Project Periods, and a summer service trip. They will customize their journey by taking a minimum of three art courses and three technology courses in addition to English, Social Science, Science, Math, and World Language classes, all while benefiting from the nation’s leading integrated academic support program - Learning Skills. Despite over 135 course offerings, individual classes do not differentiate Proctor from other independent schools. Instead, the entirety of the Proctor experience, and the collective opportunities available to students, set us apart. 

At the heart of Proctor’s educational model is the belief adolescents learn most deeply when they engage hands-on with their learning. Five years ago, Proctor launched a biannual Innovation Night to elevate the great work happening in our classrooms. Each fall and spring, we gather as a community to not only celebrate the work of our students, but to learn about the important issues they are wrestling with in their classes.