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.
As we finished our last week in Vauvenargues and Aix we are starting to realize that the term is coming to an end. A scary thought appeared in our minds and reality slapped us in the face: Even though we as a group are still going to talk, we are not going to see each other everyday.
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.
I’ve called these places soul corners in the past, the pockets where energy coalesces in a particular way to reveal something of a community’s heartbeat, its delight, its potential. They are not often manicured spaces, prim and dolled up. They have an aura of work surrounding them, of student effort expended and adults guiding. Slocumb is one of those spaces. The tech lab, the woodshop, the machine shop, the forge - all soul spaces. So, too, is the Norris Theater with its paneling, the wooden beams that hold up the grid, the scene shop. It’s one of those spaces that invites lingering. It’s calming and energizing. It’s a place of music, of singing, of acting and set magic, of students making birthday announcements and game recaps. It’s a place of laughter and sometimes somber talks. It’s one of those places that makes Proctor…well, Proctor.
As the year winds down, things are just heating up in Proctor’s Drama department. Opening night of the spring musical is fast approaching (Friday at 7:00 PM is the first show), and the hard work that students and faculty have put into this show will finally be on display.
