Never underestimate the ability of one person to change the world.

In 1974, Proctor hired a lovely, dignified, veteran visual art teacher named Dorothy Relyea Perloff. Over eleven years, "Dottie" established a standard for teaching excellence that has empowered the arts at Proctor to their current, remarkable status. Dot insisted  that drawing and painting were the product of really seeing, and she witnessed beauty in the commonplace: sunlight through an icy branch, an easel, the magnificent windows of Slocumb Hall. 

 

Slocumb, of course, was Dottie's studio. Here, on her prized, antique easels, she taught hundreds of boys and girls to see. She taught them to see life as fleeting and painfully beautiful. She poured herself into relationships with teenagers who had never known a septuagenarian who spoke of lost love and loneliness, and of joys awaiting youth.

 

Proctor continues to build on Dot Perloff's legacy, but she is only one of many who created unstoppable momentum at this very human school. Consider Captain Walter Rounds, who introduced boat building in the early 1940s (during the months he couldn't sail Casco Bay!) Or super-hip Paul Silverman, who brought jazz, rock and recording to the school in the '80s. Tim Norris and ski jumping.... Bert Hinkley and kayaking....George Emeny and the Native American connections....



 

The talent of a stable faculty is an irreplicable asset. (Incidentally, "irreplicable" is not a word, but just go with it.) But what kind of asset to a learning community is an invested student population?


 



Dot Perloff created passion through her passion. That's the key to great teaching.