The time is currently 4:19pm on Sunday the 15th of January, we are currently doing chores, that is why I am writing to you now… nonetheless, these “chores” have caused great strife as I hear the echoing cries of Nate who is on bathroom duty.

Over the past two weeks, Proctor’s Ocean Classroom students have experienced life on the open waters. As they entered the Gulf Stream and sailed south, we caught up with the student crew through daily journal entries and photos. Read more from the past two weeks on Harvey Gamage below!

II’s the night before we embark on our 2nd journey of the term, to Valencia, and I want to recap on the past week. Being here for the past month has been a dream, the art, the culture, and the food is all incredible.

As with any ocean voyage, unexpected obstacles early in the term tested the crew's patience aboard the Harvey Gamage, however, the past two weeks of sailing, training, and educational experiences throughout the Gulf of Maine have quickly made up for lost time. As students learn to crew Gamage and begin to experience life at sea, their reflections in daily journal entries tell a powerful tale. Read more from the last two weeks on Ocean Classroom in the words of our students below! 

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. 

At the beginning of last spring, I had the opportunity to observe Tom Morgan’s Creative Nonfiction class in action as students worked in small groups to create podcasts. Their assignment was to document the collective Proctor response to the first weeks of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Tom invited me to his class to discuss the basics of digital storytelling and audio sequencing, including how to select, trim and arrange different audio elements into a cohesive story.

Understanding ourselves is the first step to understanding how to do your best work. As adults, we are cognizant of the environment needed for us to be our best: level of ideal structure, types of colleagues who complement us best, independence, clear guidance. We learn this overtime, throughout different professional experiences. But what about our students? How do we help them understand the conditions needed for them to do their best work, and are we providing an environment in which they can thrive as self-aware, curious, inquisitive, self-advocating learners? 

If you were to create a musical score for the school year, you would feel the cyclical crescendos building toward the end of each trimester. Over the past week, the beat quickened and volume intensified in the background music of our lives at Proctor as we celebrated student work and began preparations for commencement on Saturday.