After returning from quite the freezing but thrilling Paria River backpacking expedition where we spent four nights and five days venturing in some pretty ridiculously cool canyons, we ventured back to our home for the next week in the town of Kanab, Utah. Erica and Quinn gave us a tour of the cabin and we rushed to shower as fast as we could, as it had been 9 days since any of us had showered…I know, gnarly. With all of us being relatively tired from our expedition, the rest of the day consisted of exploring the cabin and the surrounding area along with a nice meal cooked by myself and Sasha. 

Proctor Academy’s Winter Ocean Classroom program continues to navigate uncharted waters from their home base in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. While the waters are metaphorical for the time being (due to an extended quarantine period), the lessons remain powerful: patience, perseverance, and making the most of a difficult time.  Read more from the past week on Winter Ocean Classroom. 

After spending our first couple days at Red Rock Canyon in Las Vegas, we all piled onto Deb (our trusty bus) and spent the four hour drive down to Utah playing games and looking out the windows at the beautiful scenery. For our first night we camped in the front country and slept in tent/tarp shelters for the first time on this trip, as we had just been sleeping in sleeping bags at Red Rock.

Although we are not on the cobbled streets of Europe, we find immense beauty in the natural world of central Arizona.

Core to any Mountain Classroom experience is teaching students to adapt, to embrace challenges, to be prepared for the unexpected and to work collaboratively to face each obstacle that arises. When COVID-19 threatened to cancel Proctor’s Mountain Classroom program this winter, instructors Quinn Harper and Erica Hample partnered with program director Patty Pond and Proctor’s Health Center staff to create a quarantine and testing protocol that would allow the program to function, with modifications, and allow ten lucky students to experience a term of place-based learning and expeditions in the American Southwest. Today, we share the group’s first blog post after ten days together. 

For the past 27 years, Proctor students have spent the Fall Term studying aboard an historic tall ship, sailing the eastern seaboard of the United States. This coveted off-campus experience has always been limited to the Fall Term, however, COVID-19 forced us to creatively look at our off-campus offerings this winter. With Proctor en Segovia unable to run due to travel restrictions, Ocean Classroom program director Brooks Bicknell '77 went to work reimagining a winter trimester program partnered with the World Ocean School based in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Today, eight students are aboard the schooner Roseway after rigorous COVID-19 testing and quarantine, ready to launch the experience of a lifetime. Read more from this group's first week together! 

If 2020 has taught us anything it is 1) to remain flexible and 2) the importance of relationships. Ocean Classroom 2020 instilled these two critical lessons in the twenty-one Proctor students who called the schooner Roseway home for the past ten weeks. Congratulations to the crew of Ocean Classroom on completing an unforgettable journey. 

Never has the creation of art been more important in our students’ lives. When our students stepped into the studio, the wood shop, the forge, or on the stage, they shed the invisible weight of a global pandemic and simply immersed themselves in the healing process of creating art. Today, we share student work in a Virtual End of Term Art Show at the link below.