With a busy schedule of advisory breakfast, assembly, conferences, immersion blocks, more conferences, and games on tap for Spring Family Weekend, Head of School Brian Thomas shared a simple piece of advice to visiting families: be present with your child over the next 24 hours.
Life is full of movement, never stopping to allow us to see a moment. Claude Monet captured moments in time with a slight blur, helping us see the movement within the moment that we too often miss. As parents of a boarding school students, life can be filled with momentary snapshots of a child in action - a photo posted to Instagram, an Official Note from their math teacher, a quick check-in after a game, a text from their advisor - and yet when we pause to see those moments strung together over time, we see real momentum in their growth.
Spring Family Weekend serves as an opportunity for all of us (teachers, parents, and students) to both immerse ourselves in a moment, while reflecting on the momentum of our teenagers’ lives. Our goal for this weekend is to provide a window into each student’s Proctor experience: immersive learning experiences, assembly, sports, and, of course, the most valuable aspect of the weekend: 1:1 conferences with each teacher, advisor, and learning specialist. Out of these experiences, we hope each parent sees the support network surrounding their child and the momentum that exists within their child’s life.
It is this web of support that morphs and evolves and grows alongside the student. The conversations with advisors and teachers this spring were likely much different than they were in the fall. As each student matures and grows and navigates life at Proctor, the adults in their life continue to push, to stretch, to challenge them to keep evolving: study off-campus, apply to be a dorm leader, run for student government, attend more extra help sessions, advocate for yourself with more confidence, appreciate the little moments of life at Proctor.
This remains our challenge as a school, as well: keep evolving, while pausing to live in the moment that we have been given. Proctor is a gift to each of its students and parents, but also to us as employees. A parent asked Friday whether we enjoyed these weekends as educators or if we dreaded families descending on campus. While I do not claim to speak for all of my colleagues, I replied that the best part of these weekends, much like our Accepted Student Days, is seeing our students beam with pride in THEIR school. They are eager to show their families their classes, their afternoon activities, their dorm, their friends, their life here at Proctor. They seem to have figured out how to appreciate the moment within the movement of their lives, and that is a beautiful thing to watch, and something we can learn from both as adults and as a school.
