The Buzz

The first day was a jetlag-drenched adventure, a whirling, overstimulating blur of sunlight and new food and French. There was nothing for it but to follow the Flemings and hope not to fall asleep standing.

During Friday's Admissions Revisit Day, eleven students volunteered their time and to serve on a student-panel for visiting families. After Director of Admission Christina Dotchin opened the floor to questions from families, students responded without a script, prompts, or direction from any adults. It was a wonderful hour long window into the power of the Proctor experience from the student perspective. 

This week’s March 30^th editorial by Frank Bruni, College Admissions Shocker! is a humorous poke at the ridiculously competitive landscape of some of the top colleges in the country. The author of the editorial, and the best selling book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, takes on the foolishness of college admissions rate in a delightfully provocative way. And it has got me thinking on the eve of our own Revisit Day about our own school, our own process, and what the difference is between the landscapes of independent secondary schools and colleges.

Proctor's Mountain Classroom program reconvened for the Spring Term with a new group of students ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime over the next nine weeks. The group arrived in Tucson, AZ last week and headed to their first campsite at Gilbert Ray Campground. We oriented to our academic courses and the equipment that will play a large role in our lives for the next couple months: the bus, trailer, kitchen, tents, and food planning systems. While in Tucson we also enjoyed an afternoon at the stunning Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  Our next stop: rock climbing in Cochise Stronghold! Enjoy student reflections from the first week of the term below. 

Over the next week, more than 100 accepted students and their families will visit Proctor’s campus for one of our two Admissions Revisit Days. Proctor will most likely not be their only stop as each student weighs options and makes an important decision about investing in his or her high school experience. As our accepted students prepare for Revisit Days at Proctor and other schools, we encourage each to follow the following tips:

After months of planning and four amazing days during which small groups of students spent time with one or two faculty members, Project Period is over. Throughout the week, Project Period Coordinator Patty Pond helped capture student reflections on what community means to them. You can hear a few of these snippets in the video below, but if you were present at Proctor's 3rd Annual St. Baldrick's Event, you felt the Proctor (and local Andover) community in action. 

7:30 a.m. Day three of Project Period and it is raining with a light skim of snow on campus. A freezing rain advisory issued by the Weather Channel is in effect until 9:00 a.m. The lights are on in the Community House where Patty Pond coordinates, supports, and cheers on the various groups as they come and go on campus. Soap Making, Conquering Childhood Cancer with St. Baldrick’s Foundation Event, Backcountry Medicine and Leadership, Maple Sugaring, The Lakota Way, Mono Prints…and so many more. Why do we do this?

During most professional development days, guest speakers come to campus and present new information for us, as teachers, to then bring back to our classrooms. Today, Proctor’s faculty took a bold step to rethink professional development by turning internally to our own faculty to share the work we are doing in our classrooms.