This is blog post #122 for the Academic Lens after two years as a part of Proctor's web-presence. Chuck Will has posted nearly 1300 blog posts on Chuck's Corner since his first post in 1999. Each of Proctor's off-campus programs has blogged on a weekly basis each term for the past few years. Proctor's homepage has welcomed thousands of images to its Flickr page from parents, alums, students, and program directors and our videographer, Ethney McMahon, has posted 89 videos to Proctor's homepage over the past three years.



Each of these pieces of content shares a chapter of Proctor's story, and when woven together over the course of a year, two years, or decade, you get a pretty good idea of who we are. English teacher Peter Southworth passed along this series in Middlebury Magazine, featuring reflections on story telling in a digital age.



Sarah Kramer, a Middlebury alum and writer for the NY Times notes, "At its core, digital storytelling hinges on a narrative; yet it’s often nonlinear, interactive, and invites audience participation…It’s important to identify who you’re telling stories to and for, which seems obvious but is essential. With the ability to collaborate and share online, a part of the storytelling process is about feedback, dialogue, and creating conversation. A sense of joint authorship exists. For this to be successful, it’s the journalist’s role to create the narrative framework so people will want to participate and will understand what contributions are meaningful."



Over the past year, this blog has attempted to engage you with stories, insights, highlights of the academic life at Proctor. Chuck's Corner has been the model for educational blogs around the nation for the the past decade by capturing all aspects of school life in action.

So how can we continue to improve our story telling? While we attempt to engage each of you, our readers, we must continue to embrace the concept of 'joint-authorship' noted above, for it is when each of you helps tell our story that our story will be most authentic.



I can sit at my desk (or in a dorm common room on dorm duty as I am now) and share my view of what makes Proctor special, but I am just one voice. We want our story to be written collectively in order to be as whole as possible.



As we conclude this school year with final exams this week followed closely by graduation on June 1st, we will wrap up another chapter in our story. Our hope is that as we move into next year, you will help communicate who we are to those who do not yet know us. We invite your comments and insights on this blog (and all of our school blogs) regarding YOUR experience as a Proctor student, parent, faculty/staff member or simply a friend of the school because it is YOUR story that we are trying to tell, not just our own.