This may come as a surprise, but my Number One job is communication that stewards relations with people who sustain Proctor with gifts. We need to raise more than a million dollars in "annual giving" to meet budget, and that's a reality. It's amazing how well we are doing to this end. In the end, it takes the inspiration and work of teachers and students to make the dream come true.

 

Yesterday, as usual, I was writing to a donor to a specific scholarship fund that supports one student, and I was reporting on his winter term grades and comments. One teacher wrote, "Often, in class, I can see from the expression on his face that a new concept makes sense to him and that he understands the connection to the other topics we have studied." What a gift that moment represents to a teacher!

 

As teachers, we receive compensation that the school can afford given its remarkably healthy enrollment status, yet everyone knows that the talent of this faculty cannot be measured or rewarded appropriately. Yet Proctor is to some extent a magnet to talented teachers who want to be able to say, "I love that this student really gets it."

 

It's easy--particularly in late winter months--for boarding school teachers to be frustrated by the recurrence of student screw-ups, and we have those. Yet the balance comes in little moments when a student is suddenly transformed, and--believe me--it happens again and again. This group is rehearsing a Catcher In the Rye skit.

 

Everyone feels that Revisit Days were hugely successful, but did any visitor really come away with an understanding for the nature of relationships here? Perhaps a few. But that is an elusive and intriguing goal.


 

One woman said to me, "We're here just to get a feeling for the place."  I can not believe she and her daughter were not successful!

 





Another father admitted, "We went into this thinking of a more formally structured school, but the students here love their school, and that's hard to trump."

 



Prepping a role-play for Catcher In the Rye.