Proctor's Admission Office has extended admission to 200 students for the 2013-2014 academic year with the goal of having a student body of 360 students, including 120 new students, next September. Many of those admitted students will be attending
Revisit Days tomorrow (March 29th) and next Friday (April 5th) to have one more experience with the school they may choose to call home for their high school years.
As the nearly 70 families anticipated for our first Revisit Day tomorrow sit in on classes, attend assembly, and meet with program directors and students in athletics, the arts, and off-campus programs, they will undoubtedly be astounded by both the breadth and depth of Proctor's programming.
While one of our goals as a school is to showcase our classes, teachers, students, and programs, what we really hope each family walks away with is an understanding of just how powerful an experience Proctor can be for their son or daughter. To fully communicate Proctor's experience through writing, pictures or even video is inadequate and does not do our school justice. Instead, just as we believe our students need to experience the content they are learning, we believe prospective families need to experience Proctor first hand in order to truly understand the school.
B and E blocks will be filled with prospective students Friday morning and while there is much energy surrounding the day, we hope each visitor gets a genuine sense of what it is like to be a member of the Proctor community.
Assistant Head of School Anne Swayze shared
this article with me over spring break and after reading the article and watching the associated video of the
Independent Project, two thoughts immediately came to mind:
1) How exciting for those students who are able to take advantage of independent learning by designing their own high school curriculum.
2) Wait, we already do that at Proctor!
I am sure students might make some changes to Proctor if they had a blank slate, but I'm not sure they would change much. Proctor already offers independent studies through various academic departments and regularly offers new classes based on student demand. Student experiences in Proctor's 'classrooms', both on and off campus, create lasting memories, as one alumni shared last year in the paragraphs below:
"So how to construct the environment where the the ideal balance between classroom and experience --and hence the best education -- can be attained? My answer would be this: Limited Structural Construction Necessary. The world about which any student is striving to learn is directly in front of them. Behind them. Around them. The goal, then, of any educational institution -- up to a certain point -- should be to facilitate a student’s interaction with the world and to provide a skeletal framework to guide their initial explorations.The role of teacher --especially at the high school level -- is more that of a facilitator and guide than it is master or instructor. A teacher exists to give context to experience. The focus should be on encouraging an overwhelming sense of curiosity and on unlocking a student’s sense of wonder about the world." "Proctor gave me all that. It was, for me, the place where the boundary between classroom and experience dissolved, where I was able to shed my limited, two dimensional perception of the world and in its place I began to perceive an incredibly beautiful, rich, and complex third dimension. My time at Proctor left me with an intense desire to explore and experience the world outside of my small-town New England roots. From the red-rock desert of southern Utah to the white-washed cement walls of my Physics classroom, the Proctor experience instilled in me at each and every turn an insatiable hunger to learn, a determination to push the boundaries of my knowledge and understanding." 
We are excited about Revisit Days, not just to showcase our unique academic program, but because we cannot wait to have the next generation of Proctor students share the type of educational experience described above!
