Two and a half weeks ago, Ocean Classroom 2022 gathered on the docks of Mystic Harbor in Connecticut, ready to set sail for a term at sea. A last minute repair to the Harvey Gamage delayed their actual departure, allowing the student crew to spend a week aboard the tall ship Joseph Conrad before transferring up the coast to the Oliver Hazard Perry, a historic square rigged tall ship out of Newport, Rhode Island. As repairs continue aboard Gamage, Ocean Classroom continues to learn hard, valuable lessons in patience and persistence as they continue their marine biology, literature, and navigation studies at Camp Wohelo on Sebago Lake, Maine. 

First week! We all arrived last Wednesday, of course exhausted. Even though we spent most of the first week getting over jet lag, we were all able to have a lot of fun. The past week and a half has been orientation and getting ourselves situated in our new lives in France.

Proctor en Segovia Fall 2022 program participants have completed their first full week of living and learning abroad in Segovia, Spain. As they acclimate to new classes and life with a Spanish host family, students learn to suspend judgment and through observation and experience. They also build new connections with each other, their teachers, and their host family, often over a shared meal. In this post, students write about their first twenty-four hours in Spain, communication in a foreign language, and food and cultural differences.

In 1994, Proctor Academy pioneered a trimester at sea program for high school students unlike any independent school had done before. Twenty-nine years later, Ocean Classroom set sail from Mystic, Connecticut with 22 student crew members whose lives are about to be changed forever. 

Our motto, more than 80s years old, combines two simple sentences that define all that we do as a school: Live to Learn. Learn to Live. The first phrase is a mindset we try to instill in each of our students. The second is a call to action for us as educators in our work preparing experiences for our students. 

Circles are pretty sweet. The wheel – Revolutionary. M+Ms – Undoubtedly the best part of any gorp mix. 

As their trimester-long linguistic and cultural immersion program comes to a close, three students reflect on the Proctor en Segovia experience and describe this longstanding off-campus program in their own words.