When Cope ‘17, Jay ‘17, Carl ‘17, and Cros ‘17 began singing “A Prayer for the Children” during Sunday afternoon’s vocal music ensemble recital, it felt as though someone pressed the pause button on life. Their impassioned voices carried the words off the page and into the hearts of the seventy-five parents and community members in attendance. “Can you feel the hearts of the children? / Aching for home, for something of their very own / Reaching hands, with nothing to hold on to, / But hope for a better day a better day.”

On Wednesday afternoon, the Proctor community celebrated Senior Projects and senior art awards with our first annual Express Fest! For decades, the final Wednesday afternoon of the academic year has been dedicated to showcasing Senior Project exhibits, but as we looked to provide balance to awards given at Senior Dinner, Arts Department Chair Bill Wightman brainstormed a collaboration of art awards, Senior Project exhibits, and an all-school barbeque outside the Meeting House. It was a fantastic way to gather as a community one last time and to celebrate the contributions of our seniors over the course of their Proctor careers. 

Different moments throughout the year provide opportunities to reflect on who we are as a community. Ironically, it is usually during the busiest seasons that these moments occur. This weekend was packed with activities on campus, and it was through these varied interactions with students, alumni, and parents that we were all reminded of who we are as a school. 

 Each spring, Proctor's theater department works magic to build a detailed set, create elaborate costumes, and rehearse for endless hours in anticipation of the Spring Musical. This year, the theater department chose Urinetown, a satirical comedy that satirizes big business, social irresponsibility, the legal system and much, much more. 

For more than sixty years, Proctor Academy students have built boats in the school's woodshops. Originally, the building of these boats was a necessity for those students wishing to take part in Proctor's sailing team that competed in regatas around New England throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In recent decades, the building of boats in the Alan Shepherd Boat House is a rite of passage for many students looking to craft their own vessle. For Doug Park '01, his passion for boat building fostered at Proctor in the woodshop and aboard the Harvey Gamage on Ocean Classroom led to a career working on wooden boats for Redd's Pond Boatworks. 

This week’s blog reflects on our trip to Spain last week but before I go into that, since we didn’t have a blog last week to say this, we would all like to thank Tina and Benoît Tari, aunt and uncle to Boomer Vazquez, for an awesome day at their house and vineyard.

Each week a new student gets to write the blog. We can write about whatever we want.  The thing is when teachers give you the freedom to write anything it is either amazing and the words come flowing onto the page, or a painstakingly slow process where you are stuck so long looking at a blank screen that you start to hallucinate or forget what words even are. So where to start?

As Proctor wraps up exam week, closing out the winter term, reflection on the work of the many diverse arts disciplines on display over the past couple of weeks offers a wonderful sense of satisfaction for all. Both visual and performing arts were hard at work throughout the term, finding considerable success on many levels.