Two years ago, our school community was deeply engaged in a Strategic Visioning process alongside our partners Mission & Data. We met in focus groups, discussed the “immovables” of the Proctor experience, and considered how we might continue to evolve as a school while ensuring that immovable core remains a throughline for each student. A thread in these conversations, one that we have struggled, like most organizations do, to pull is the same concept of "doing less" that Shankar Vedantam explores in this episode of his Hidden Brain podcast.
As educators, the summer months remind us of the value of doing less, and yet when school is in session we shift gears completely to a lifestyle of doing everything - teaching, coaching, advising, mentoring. It is in this space of complete immersion that we see the “Proctor Magic” at work. We find joy in the pace of life at Proctor, and yet feel challenged, both personally and institutionally, to be everything to everybody.
Proctor’s challenge, and I would argue every school’s challenge, is to, with intentionality, pursue excellence in that which is absolutely core to our mission, while cutting through the noise of the arms race of "elite" programs, facilities, and other “features” of our schools that look sexy, but are short-run bandaids to long-run challenges facing the independent school financial model. We are incredibly fortunate as an organization to be in a position of enrollment and fundraising strength that affords agency over our institutional decisions as we consider our future.
As today’s stewards of Proctor, we have a responsibility to embrace this position of strength and consider how to best position Proctor to handle large scale challenges on the horizon: changing expectations of parents and students, climate change, evolutions in artificial intelligence, a mental health crisis augmented by social media and smartphones, the potential for economic downturns and political instability, a shifting workforce, and a need for increased endowment to provide access and affordability to Proctor’s educational model that we know simply changes lives.
Too often schools shorten the time horizon of their planning to that which is comfortable. Reactive solutions are necessary to keep our institutions running, but they are far from strategic. Our charge as we welcome Interim Head of School Steve Wilkins to campus this week is to simultaneously implement our Strategic Plan as we have over the last year, while embracing the “undiscussable” conversations that are tempting to ignore when a short-term solution can provide immediate relief to the budget or to enrollment pressures.
Through a series of interviews in the podcast linked above, Vedantam discusses the inherent desire to “add” as we plan or redesign. It is the rare individual (like Anna Wagner Keichline) or organization that is able to fully embrace the benefits of subtractive design. As we embrace the slightly slower pace of summer, it is a perfect time to reflect on this concept. How might we be revolutionary in the independent school world as we consider both the most sustainable future for Proctor and the highest impact educational experience for our students and their families?
Learn more about Proctor's Strategic Plan Here!
- Head of School
- Strategic Planning