Proctor Academy is excited to announce Alisa Barnard as its next Assistant Head of School, beginning July 1, 2023. A New Hampshire native and graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Divinity School, Alisa has spent the last nineteen years of her career at her alma mater, St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, most recently as the Director of the Advanced Studies Program.
Three times a week we gather in the Wilkins Meeting House for an all-school assembly. The agenda for assembly varies each day, however, the purpose remains clear: come together as an entire community to hear announcements, spend intentional face-to-face time together, connect with advisories, and remind ourselves that we are in this journey of learning together, as an entire community, even though we are often going a million directions on our own.
Over the last two weeks, Proctor student leaders Grace ‘23 and Maks ‘23 sat down with Karin Clough, Megan Hardie, and me to chart a road map for their tenure as School Leaders. From the get go, both students brought the most important aspect of their personalities to our meeting and to the Proctor mindset.
Late Friday afternoon, we posted the image below on our social media channels with a caption that read, “These posts never get the most likes or shares, but this group (and a few more that didn't fit on the Webex screen) of Board Members and Members of the Corporation is so critical to our school and its future that they deserve a little air time.”
The role of School Leader at Proctor takes many forms: serving as the voice of the student body, sitting on discipline committees, acting as a voting member during faculty meetings, and so much more. Following campus-wide elections last week, we are thrilled to announce Proctor's 2020-2021 School Leaders Kingsley Palmer '21 and Nate Murawski '21! Read Kingsley's and Nate's thoughts about stepping into their new roles in the fall below.
This past weekend would have been Proctor's Spring Family Weekend. Teachers and advisors would have gathered with parents to discuss student growth. We would have played games Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, seen a sneak peak at the Spring Musical during assembly, and Head of School Mike Henriques would have shared his annual "State of Proctor" conversation with families.
On some level we see it all. We see teachers tack back and forth from Maxwell to Shirley to Fowler Learning Center, see the maintenance trucks and mowers move across campus, see and hear the coaches on the fields in the afternoon, the kitchen crew roll out meals. It’s pretty simple. The workings of community sit right in front of us and are easy enough to discern. But then there are the other layers.
We thrive when our entire body is healthy, when blood pumps through every vein and we tune into the interconnectedness of individual parts as we operate the whole. The same goes for communities. We are only healthy when every layer of our community feels engaged, heard, and empowered to effect change.
