Congratulations to our Accepted Students! Late this afternoon, families received admissions decisions for the 2022-2023 school year, and we are incredibly excited about the group of students who make up this year’s accepted student pool. Students hail from all over the world with talents as diverse as their backgrounds and learning styles. They found Proctor because they believe there is more to high school than traditional classrooms, and know there is a better way to “do” school.
Proctor’s Winter Ocean Classroom program took on a new theme this year as we joined forces with the MET School of Providence, Rhode Island and Sailing Ships Maine to design a shared trimester at sea program that would sail from Charleston, South Carolina around Florida to Mobile, Alabama. Along the way, students from Proctor and the MET School studied historic Southern ports, involuntary servitude, and the lasting impact of slavery on both economic and social systems throughout America.
Proctor Academy's winter 2022 Mountain Classroom program has come to an end after ten weeks of exploring, adventuring, learning, and bonding as a group. The off-campus experience is like none other, pushing students so far outside their comfort zone that individuals learn to rely on each other, and to understand fully the impact of their individual actions on the well-being of the group. For this Mountain Classroom group, like all groups, that learning has laid a foundation for the rest of their lives. Read more from Colin '22 and Calista '22 in these final reflections from the term.
Yesterday was Head’s Day. Like many traditions at Proctor, I do not know when it started or why it has survived, but the thing I knew for sure was not to mess it up.
In the midst of the daily grind of teaching adolescents, we risk drifting away from our “why”. Why have we dedicated our life to education? Why have we chosen Proctor as the fertile ground into which we will sow our seeds of hope for the next generation? In order to best serve our students, we must nurture daily habits of centering around our “why”, both as individual educators and as a community.
As an Administrative Team, we are reading the book The Social Profit Handbook by David Grant. Core to Grant’s writing is a commitment by organizations to designing rubrics to assess our individual and collective progress toward our mission. Grant notes, “Used wisely, a rubric not only measures success, but also defines it and helps its users maintain momentum toward future plans and goals.” As we surpass the midpoint of the year and students receive feedback through winter midterm grades, we reflect on what it means to understand our individual and collective growth.
On a good day, there isn’t time to get to everything on my to-do list. During a January complicated by illness on campus, winter storms, and all the complexities that come with operating a boarding school during a global pandemic, to-do lists at the start of each day merely serve as a feeble attempt at grasping for what little control we have in how we choose to allocate our precious time. The anxiety that daily walks arm in arm through the door of uncertainty impacts us as adults, and most certainly impacts our students.
Monday's MLK Day celebration combined the inspiring elements of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life with that of another human rights movement icon, Dr. Wangari Mathai of Kenya. Dr. Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, also helped lead a revolution for climate justice with other women in her nation to protect the land and forests after colonization and African patriarchal rule from the late 1970s until her death in 2011. We certainly know more about the powerful parts of Dr. King’s life, work, and legacy than we do of those who marched in his footsteps like Dr. Maathai, but the lesson that students came away with during our assembly and discussions afterwards was all about standing for what they feel is good, right, and just.
