In Senator Angus King’s P’09 Commencement address last Saturday, he shared a list of ten pieces of advice he wish he knew when he was 18 years old. Number 10 was to spend time with your family and friends because when life gets hard, they are all you have. As we welcomed roughly 200 members of the Proctor Family back home for Alumni Reunion 2019, we were reminded why it is so important to prioritize our relationships with those we love.
Each year approximately 20% of the Proctor Academy's graduating class goes on to compete in collegiate athletics. The Class of 2019 is no exception as 31 members of the class (of 113 students) are pursuing careers at the next level, including seven NCAA Division 1 athletes! Thank you to all members of the Class of 2019 for their contributions to Proctor's athletic programs over the past four years. Be sure to take note of the names below and follow their careers in college and beyond!
A slight breeze, blue skies, and temperatures in the low-70s; Saturday was only the sixth or seventh sunny day we’ve had since March. For once this spring, the weather matched the occasion (it snowed at Prom a few weeks ago), and as the 115 members of the Class of 2019 gathered in Alice’s Garden prior to Commencement, every face was wearing a smile.
Hours remain until we can official begin celebrating the Class of 2019 with Senior Dinner and Senior Recognition Night. Commencement will follow in the morning, and then campus will be empty. An eery quiet will descend upon campus for the summer, a quiet we simultaneously crave and fear as we feel the energy of our students leave us until September. As our seniors take their final steps toward graduating, we reflect on the past week of culminating projects, visiting speakers, awards, and end of year rituals.
We never want to become a school where isolated pockets of academic novelty trump the whole of the work done in our classrooms. We simply want to be who we are, to be who we have always been, long before buzzwords like innovation, maker-spaces, and collaboration saturated our lexicon. We want to be a school where these buzzwords happen naturally through the work we do with our students.
The spring athletic season in Northern New England is not for the faint of heart. It snowed on May 14th this year, and rained nearly every day throughout the months of April and May. The patience of our grounds crew, coaches, athletes, and athletic director were tested as game after game was canceled or postponed due to unplayable conditions. Even though the weather did not cooperate, the lessons our athletes learned on the playing fields this spring undoubtedly will last a lifetime, as will the relationships built within teams.
In the midst of celebrating the end of the school year, student accomplishments, the performance of the spring musical, art show, and saying goodbye to retiring faculty and staff, we pause to honor the life's work of former faculty member and legendary coach, Spencer "Spence" Wright P'72, '75 who died at the age of 94 on May 14, 2019.
Over the past decade, a shift toward competency based education (CBE) has flooded the world of higher education as universities look to become more efficient in developing a graduate’s skill set while ensuring each student possesses baseline proficiencies. Plenty of obstacles exist to implementing a competency-based educational model in higher education, however, Proctor’s World Language Department continues to pioneer a rethinking of the traditional approach to assessing and evaluating student development used by most high schools.
