Growing Through Leadership

Several images from the very beginning of this school year remain etched in my mind, capturing something essential about what leadership looks like at Proctor. The first is from the morning of New Student Registration Day. As new families arrived on campus, likely feeling that mix of excitement and nervousness that comes with new beginnings, the first faces they encountered were not adults, but student leaders. Sitting at a table set up near the Stone Table, these students welcomed new families into our community, answered questions, and offered directions. The next morning, a tunnel of returning students participating in Leadership Camp formed a human corridor to send our new students off on Wilderness Orientation. Days later, they welcomed them back, literally walking them to their dorms, connecting, and offering that first sense of belonging.

Leadership Camp 2025

Earlier this year, I sat down with students who had just completed Leadership Camp to capture their reflections as an intense week came to a close, what they had learned about leadership and themselves, and their hopes for student-led initiatives throughout the year. What struck me most was the depth of their thinking. When asked about highlights, they didn't just mention the fun – swimming at Elbow Pond or the escape room – though those moments of connection mattered. Instead, they spoke about the "Be There" certificate training and shadowing facilities, housekeeping, and dining hall staff – experiences that fundamentally shifted their perspective on community.

Peer Mentor Leader Hailey '26 reflected: "The whole experience was very eye-opening. It was really incredible to see how much goes on behind the scenes that we take for granted and how the smallest things – like picking up our trash or just moving our stuff off the counters in the bathrooms – can make such a difference in their day." Assistant School Leader Annie '26 observed, "A lot of students just walk by and take them for granted, like, oh, that's their job. But raising awareness about this throughout the entire school could really help make a difference."

When discussing what student leadership means at Proctor, students emphasized leading by example and student-driven initiatives. Elsa '26 reflected: "I think a big part of Proctor leadership is leading by example. As soon as everybody else gets on campus, the leaders can really set the tone." Viltaute '26 added: "I just love how it's student-led – students taking initiative, and faculty observing us and encouraging us to go forward. At Proctor, you can start your own club. You can lead your team in so many ways."

Leadership Skills in Practice

As the end of the fall term approaches, we have witnessed these lessons from Leadership Camp manifest in various ways across campus. As a dorm parent, I watched our Dorm Pod Leader, Ada ’26, orchestrate the Dorm Leader interview process – from drafting thoughtful interview questions to setting up a group messaging system to maintain open communication between faculty dorm heads and student Dorm Leaders, and sending timely reminders. Rather than adult-directed leadership, this was student leadership in action.

All-school student-led activities such as capture the flag and Field Day brought students together across dorm "pods," creating new connections and shared experiences. As Annie ’26 described at Open House: "The first Saturday of the fall term, we play school-wide capture the flag with all grades against each other. It's super fun. You sprint around campus." The energy around supporting student athletes and performers stems organically from a school and student culture of inviting others in.

Earlier this month, Dorm Leaders and Dorm Pod Leaders met with Josie Lavin and Cindy Merritt in Housekeeping and Justin Truchon and Dara Gove in Facilities to discuss practical ways students can support their work. This continuation of the shadowing experience from Leadership Camp demonstrates how critical it is for our students to understand the complexities of living in community with others, and how our student leaders are taking that responsibility seriously.

Leadership Takes Many Forms

At the opening assembly of the school year, Assistant Head of School, Annie MacKenzie, reminded students of an essential truth about leadership: "The Leadership Council and those leadership kids have been working really hard. They gave up a week of their summer. And I want you to know that they are not the only leaders on campus. Each one of you will lead this year. You will lead down here, up front, under the lights, or you will lead in the classroom. You will lead on the sports field. You will lead quietly from behind or alongside someone or down in front. But you will lead."

This vision of distributed leadership has come alive throughout the term. We have seen it in SOCA (Students of Color Association) organizing a Hispanic Heritage Dinner, bringing the community together to celebrate culture and connection over delicious food. We have also witnessed students organizing around causes near and dear to their hearts – for example, starting a new club to fundraise for cancer research or creating a space for mental health conversations among young men.

We have seen it in the collaborative learning models described during our Open House academic panel – students teaching each other through "dynamic duos," where pairs of students dive deep into material and then teach the class or lead the class during part of a Harkness discussion. Leadership, they are learning, is not about a title or a position. Rather, it is about showing up authentically, seeing others clearly, and taking action to make our community stronger and to make people feel seen and heard – in the classroom, on the athletic field, in our dorm and campus spaces, and outside of Proctor.

Growth Through “Transcendent Thinking”

The research of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang offers a powerful framework for understanding what we witnessed in Leadership Camp and continue to see throughout the year. In a five-year longitudinal study published in Scientific Reports in 2024, Immordino-Yang and her colleagues followed a diverse group of adolescents, examining how their thinking patterns related to brain development and later life outcomes. The study found that when adolescents engage with complex ideas and grapple with big questions – moving from concrete experiences to broader ethical and systemic implications through what researchers call "transcendent thinking" – they actually promote brain growth that supports long-term development, identity formation, and well-being.

This is precisely what happened during Leadership Camp. Students didn't just learn about leadership when they shadowed members of our professional community and saw the real impact of their actions. They were developing a more complex understanding of community interdependence, of how individual choices ripple outward, of their responsibility to others—what Immordino-Yang calls transcendent thinking. As she explains: "When kids dispositionally engage with complex, curious, deep thinking about big ideas, they are physically and functionally growing their capacity to think in ways that over time produce a neural substrate that supports well-being."

This was evident throughout my interviews. When students reflected on respect and compassion as core leadership values, practiced listening deeply and giving meaningful feedback to peers, and sat with difficult emotions in vulnerable conversations, they were engaging in precisely this kind of growth-promoting thinking.

Immordino-Yang's research on teaching suggests that the most powerful teaching happens when educators step back and "entrust students with responsibility." Not simply giving students tasks to complete, but inviting them into spaces where they can discover, create, and construct meaning for themselves, and where they can ask "Why?" and "What if?" and "How else could this be?"

This describes precisely what we do at Proctor. Whether in Leadership Camp, in our Academic Concentration programs, in student-led clubs, or in classroom discussions where students teach each other, we create spaces for authentic student agency; we trust young people to grapple with complexity, make mistakes, discover, and lead.

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