Roughly 25% of Proctor's students live locally and make the commute to Proctor's campus each day. While day students take part in study hall, eat meals in the dining hall, attend extra help sessions in the evening, participate in all campus activities, and have access to all Proctor has to offer, life as a day student differs from those of boarding students.
Our motto, more than 80s years old, combines two simple sentences that define all that we do as a school: Live to Learn. Learn to Live. The first phrase is a mindset we try to instill in each of our students. The second is a call to action for us as educators in our work preparing experiences for our students.
As a school, we can become so focused on “doing” that we do not take the necessary time to listen to our parents, to our students, to our colleagues, and to those who share in this grand experiment in building an intentional community at Proctor.
We are just over a month removed from the end of the school year. A summer routine has settled on campus as Gordon Research Conferences arrive each Sunday afternoon to share their research over the course of the week. Those of us who remain working throughout the summer are busy with projects and planning for the upcoming school year, but it is a simpler existence. We are attempting to do less each day, and in that simplicity we find creativity as we downshift and decelerate out of life’s fast lane.
The last two 4th of Julys in Andover have been incredibly quiet as COVID-19 canceled festivities in town. Today marked the return of the small town Americana scenes that have played a central role in our town’s Independence Day Celebrations for the past 80 years. For those who have never experienced Andover on the 4th of July, add it to your bucket list.
As independent schools in northern New England have worked to diversify their student bodies in recent decades, that same diversity has lagged in the faculty and staff of those institutions. In 2019, conversations began among heads of schools in the region to create a network of future educators in order to build a cohort community that would be both supportive and appealing to join. The result of these conversations is a groundbreaking collaboration among northern New England independent schools and Dartmouth College to create a fellowship program that will provide aspiring educators an opportunity to receive a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) while participating in a two year practicum at one of the participating independent schools.
From the moment we unlock our phones in the morning until we find the willpower to set them down at night, we are barraged with messages of insufficiency. Targeted ads tell us we need to lose weight, be more productive, be more beautiful, take a new job, be more masculine, be more feminine, be more straight, be more gay, start a diet, exercise more, and countless other not-so-subtle messages of not being enough.
A week from today is July 1, an uneventful turn of the calendar that marks the true start of summer for many. For all of us at Proctor, it is the start of a new fiscal year. Proctor's June 30 fiscal year end marks the end of the 2021-2022 annual giving cycle. We don't talk often about school finances, but as a 501(c)3 non-profit, Proctor relies on tax-deductible donations to meet its operating budget, a budget that unlocks a world of opportunities for our students.
