Kate Austin '01 shared the following images from her art class's exploration into art in the landscape late last week. Her photography is stunning, as is the experience she provides her students as they bring their art to life. Thank you to Kate for sharing her photography and for creating lasting learning opportunities for Proctor students.
At 3:45 Sunday morning a group of 40 students and faculty will leave Proctor’s Stone Table bound for a day of peaceful protest at The People’s Climate March in New York City. Driven by the efforts of Eco Dorm and Proctor Environmental Action, the group will join hundreds of schools, environmental and labor groups, scientists, and community organizations in what is being billed as the largest climate change demonstration in history.
In the second week of classes, I have been thinking about relationships as I watch the shifting social landscape of Proctor that teeters, dissolves, and rebuilds. Somewhere on campus, life-long friendships are just beginning, somewhere a social group evolves with new players coming in and old ones exiting. Most of the time this process is healthy, some of the time it is not. It’s a significant part of the adolescent landscape.
We have reached the midpoint of our second week of classes. Leaves are starting to turn, as has the weather. The twenty-two students and three instructors on Ocean Classroom were on campus briefly conducting research on port cities before departing for Hurricane Island for the remainder of the week.
As a school that pioneered a 1:1 laptop program in 2001 and initiated a 1:1 iPad program last year, technology is certainly not new to Proctor's classrooms, nor is it going to leave our classrooms anytime soon. Central to our technology integration strategy is utilizing technology as “A” problem solving tool, not “THE” problem solving tool.
The bell.
Walk up the stairs in Maxwell Savage and there’s the rope, like a thick mooring line tethering us to something important. For years Chuck Will would climb those stairs prior to assembly, check his watch, then set the big bell to rocking and ringing, calling the community together.
As we finish the first week of classes, we pause to appreciate the transitions that have taken place over the past two weeks. New students arrived and immediately took off on a five day hiking trip in the White Mountains. They then returned to campus, were oriented to buildings, classrooms, dorm rooms and have very quickly immersed themselves in ‘student life at Proctor’.
