The Buzz

On our way out of Mississippi we stopped In Jackson to meet with lawyers at the Southern Poverty Law Center whose work focuses on the school-to-prison pipeline. Our next stop was in Bayou Sorrel, Louisiana where we spent the day with the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Greg Guirard, a local legend who salvages old cypress logs. To finish up our time in the Southeast we ate lunch in New Orleans' French Market and chatted with William Most, a local civil rights lawyer. Enjoy Jon's reflection on our time in the Southeast! 

One of the perks of vacation is taking time to look back through the 283 blog posts we published as a community over the past year (wow!!!). Each of these posts, written by faculty, staff, students, parents, and alumni, represents a piece of Proctor’s story. As a whole, they provide a wonderful narrative of a school deeply committed to providing an education that operates at the intersection of individualized academics and experiential opportunities within a strong, nurturing community. Today, we share the Top 10 most read blogs of 2016! 

John Ruskey and Mark "River" Peoples from the Quapaw Canoe Company showed us to an amazing week of paddling that Grayson '18 and Matt '17 have documented below. In our class time we explored James Kilgore's Understanding Mass Incarceration, Richard Grant's Dispatches from Pluto, and a nutritional analysis of prison diets. which allowed us to get to know the prison system through multiple lenses. Enjoy this second update from Mountain Classroom's first three weeks of the term! 

Campus is quiet this week. It’s during vacations that we allow ourselves to recharge. We spend much needed time with family and friends, catch up on appointments we didn’t have time to schedule during the chaos of the regular school day, and make a few last minute holiday shopping trips (don’t forget to visit our Buy Proctor site for some great gift ideas!).  We make a welcomed, tangible downshift from the speed at which our lives are otherwise being lived.

Mountain Classroom began our winter trimester at the Morning Sun Mindfulness Center in Alstead, NH. After orienting the students to the bus, trailer, and living arrangements we all watched The Dhamma Brothers. This film started our first discussion on the term's guiding question: What are the components to leading a fulfilling life? In the Southeast, Mountain Classroom will be exploring the criminal justice system as an obstacle in the pursuit of fulfillment. Our first destination is canoeing on the Mississippi River with the Quapaw Canoe Company in Clarksdale, MS. Enjoy Jaz '17's reflections on our first week together!

While most Proctor students depart for winter break at noon Thursday, six athletic teams are gearing up for holiday tournaments and training camps. Read more about these teams, upcoming games/races, and the exciting international training trips planned below! 

It’s a bell sitting on the edge of my desk, an old sleigh bell dug up on Proctor property by Maintenance Team members Dana Newton and Dave Elwell, two dirt fishermen as they like to call themselves. It was found across from Ives house in the vicinity of an old majestic oak that rises up forty, fifty feet. Maybe at some point in a winter long past, a sleigh crossed snowy ground and the bell jostled loose, fell to the snow to melt quietly deeper through the winter cover, disappearing for good during mud season. No matter, the dirt fishermen found it. And now it sits on the edge of my desk, still with its jingle, a reminder to look for the small marvelous and the spirit of the season. Here’s a little of what I have found this week:

As you sit on your couch this evening and procrastinate your holiday shopping yet again, do yourself a favor and CLICK HERE! If you didn't click and are still reading, we'll work on you a bit more before asking you to click the link again at the bottom of this post. Proctor's alumni network is expansive, and as we seek to strengthen this network of talented, creative, driven individuals, we thought we would take the first step in creating a micro Proctor economy online. We introduce to you: Buy Proctor!